The Ultimate CRM Handbook

Book Snapshot: The book examines the reasons why customer relationship management (CRM) has not been able to deliver its promises and what steps must organizations take to improve returns on investments made in CRM. It discusses the most contemporary innovations in the CRM field. The book contains 32 chapters and several insightful case studies on many globally recognized companies. The chapters discusses how organizations can use CRM effectively to significantly improve the efficiency of their sales and marketing operations and provide the best customer service by enabling more effective interactions with them.

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In the third section, the editor has introduced new and lesser-known concepts including silent commerce and advanced tagging & sensor technologies as well as broad topics such as application of mobile technologies to gain insights about customers. The article mentions about other technologies like Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), e-ink and Object Internet Standards and examine their applications in CRM. However, these new technologies require huge investments and hence it's not possible for many companies to implement them. The chapters 11 and 12 in the third section are quite informative. They discuss about data technologies like data warehousing & data analysis tools that are important for every company regardless of their customer database. These chapters are a must read for companies who are really looking for use their customer database effectively. The case of Harley- Davidson provides how this company has used customer database to examine and understand customer behavior. A few more case studies to show the importance of data analysis would have been better. Here, the editor could have dedicated data analysis and technologies a separate section rather than making it a part of gaining customer insights.

By giving a separate part on data analysis, it would have given a clear view to the readers specially those who are looking forward to gain an in-depth understanding of customers' database solutions and their importance. The section four of the book discusses why customer communication is important and how companies can make the maximum use of customer data when they interact with customers. Two chapters in this section describe about mobile communication and messaging technologies. However, the section covers basic information about communication technologies. The chapters describe how customer representatives should communicate with customers.

In the first chapter in this section "Making Customer Interaction More Profitable" was not so informative suggesting the old concepts like workforce should understand, what exactly they need to do to get more profit from each and every customers while maintaining longer term relationships. The chapter on website was quite informative since most of the customers today would first like to visit the website making themselves informed about the company's products and pricing. In this regard, the book has given a useful information on the importance of web site design and tips on how user friendly website makes a lot difference when it comes to customer support.

The part five of the book deals with various concepts of marketing and makes the readers familiar with branding concepts and how it makes a difference for customers. This section is devoted more on explaining e-marketing concepts.

Those who have less time and want to go learn more about CRM concepts will find the last section "CRM at Work" very informative. This part provides information on how the different industries are using CRM to offer more value added services to customers. This section covers sectors like government, retail and manufacturing. The editor may have provided more case studies that would have made this section more interesting.