A Few Intricacies of Marketing Online...

For organizations that sell products and services to more than one geographic region, online marketing can create a windfall of revenue. At the same time, there are several ideas that must be considered as part of an overall customer service strategy.

(Sherman, 2019)

CRM Companies ought to maintain information about each and every customer that chooses to interact with the company, limited by budgets. To wit, companies can take advantage of data and patterns from customers, through the tracking of digital customer payments (e.g. credit cards or loyalty programs), buying quantities for given time periods, and returns/complaints -- while respecting company warranties, customer privacy, and ethics. Making customers trackable in a CRM improves a company’s ability to recognize patterns in Attitudinal Loyalty, Behavioral Loyalty, and Satisfaction, which are helpful for reviewing / planning Marketing Strategies.

E-CRM Using customer “emails, websites, chat rooms, forums and other channels to achieve CRM objectives” (Techopedia, 2016) ought to be the norm for all companies’ E-CRM, Social CRM, and Retention/Loyalty systems. The prevalence of online systems, including product/service review websites, social media platforms, and content creation systems allows existing and potential customers to use Word-Of-Mouth more than ever! Customers may interact in an E-CRM style before, during, and after purchases, putting the onus on companies to track the myriad of relevant online systems that may be useful for E-CRM, and perhaps to design their own.

PROBLEMS
COMPLAINTS - According to ‘CRM at the Speed of Light’ (Greenberg, 2009), companies should be worried about bad reviews from verbal terrorists, in that “customer satisfaction scores could be less important to a firm’s success or failure than the number of complaints it gets.”

Greenberg (2009) states that “if a company can resolve a customer’s complaint well, then the customer’s attitude toward the company is improved, possibly even beyond the level of his or her original satisfaction,” which is a good thing for companies that are subject to complaints.

IDENTIFICATION - Companies sometimes are unable to create a holistic customer record, mostly due to the proliferation of multiple ‘accounts/identities’ online. For example, Justin Trudeau may be ‘Justin T' on Facebook, ‘Prime Minister’ on Twitter, and Trudeau@gmail.com on email. The task of linking all accounts to the same person is daunting, flying in the face of good CRM theology and defeating most forms of analytics. Companies may have a Community Manager resolve such conundrums, linking up each identity manually, or design a loyalty program with incentives to encourage people to enable such tracking of themselves.
CUSTOMER GAPS Marketing is usually positive, in that it promotes the benefits bestowed by products/services to customers. Unfortunately, when marketing is too positive, there may be a significant Gap “between customer expectations and customer perceptions,” from the company over-stating the benefits (EPM, 2018). However, if companies promote their products in an understated way, customers can be pleasantly surprised (Gap) by all of the many benefits that are unexpected.

For instance, a few years ago, I was pleasantly surprised (positive Customer Gap) that ‘Bed, Bath, and Beyond’ provided a lifetime return policy. Yay!
Recently, customers were saddened by the removal of their iron clad return policy (which is a negative Customer Gap).  SOLUTIONS As stated in Principles of Marketing (2010), a company’s best practice for achieving the Retention and Loyalty of all customers is to maintain the best possible CRM, E-CRM, and Social CRM possible, “perform[ing] at or beyond customer expectations so fewer complaints will be received in the first place.” All feedback can be collected from Customer Records, E-CRM, and Social CRM interactions, for the purposes of product/service improvements.
Several companies (Cooper, 2018) have been praised as good examples for gaining positive rankings by using CRM tracking, E-CRM, and Social CRM to respond to any less-than-positive communications about their product / service. The following re-framed messaging is paraphrased from Greenburg (2009):

Customer: ‘The chocolate is missing from my chocolate chip cookie?!’
Company: ‘This is extremely rare! You should celebrate your good luck in finding such a rarity!’

SUMMARY Companies need to have a CRM system for tracking customers that are happy with their products/services, and more importantly, customers that are dissatisfied; if complaints are handled well, perhaps with humor, customers may have a higher satisfaction rating of the company. Concordantly, E-CRM and Social CRM are useful for companies to track customers across online media; unfortunately, effective tracking may require a manager dedicated to discerning customers across a myriad of possible usernames and identities. Products / services ought to be promoted in an understated way, such that customers are pleasantly surprised (positive Gap) by how much more value they receive than anticipated.

REFERENCES

EPM. (2018, March). Gap Model of Service Quality. Expert Program Management. Retrieved from https://expertprogrammanagement.com/2018/03/gap-model-service-quality/
Greenberg, P. (2009, December 9). CRM at the Speed of Light, Fourth Edition: Social CRM 2.0 Strategies, Tools, and Techniques for Engaging Your Customers.
Hart, Stefan & Kassem, Gamal. (2012). Social Customer Relationship Management – From Customer To Friend.
Principles of Marketing. (2010). Retrieved from https://open.lib.umn.edu/principlesmarketing/part/chapter-15-price-the-only-revenue-generator/
Sherman. (2019, September 27). [Online Image.] Online Marketing 101: The First Steps to Becoming an Expert. LYFE Marketing. Retrieved from https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/online-marketing-101/
Techopedia. (2016, December 28). Electronic Customer Relationship Management (E-CRM). Techopedia. Retrieved from https://www.techopedia.com/definition/30914/electronic-customer-relationship-management-e-crm