The importance of eCRM

Customer relationships are a decisive factor in corporate success, because strong relationships with stakeholders lead to mutual value. However, customer relationships provide more than just corporate and economic success: they are about creating lifetime value for the organisation and the consumer.

If a corporation were to solely pursue new customers then its business would eventually fail. Customer relationships are about creating a dialogue between the consumer and the company so that repeat transactions can be encouraged. Social networking sites and online forums have allowed businesses to create and maintain this dialogue with their customers.

An online dialogue enables a customer to give feedback about a product or service, which in turn allows the company to improve upon its products and services. By improving its products a company is not only better suited to meeting the needs of its customers, but also allows them to attract more customers in the long run.

The nature of the online consumer market is widely regarded as complex, and with increasing amounts of adverts vying for a customer's attention, the importance of strong eCRM has increased. Also, it must be noted that a symptom of increased advertising messages is a decrease in the consumer attention span.

Electronic services play an important role in customer retention. For example, if the functionality or accessibility of a website is poor, then a customer will go elsewhere.

Customers are becoming more technologically sophisticated and increasing levels of marketing and advertising literacy means that they are better judges of promotional material. By logging how customers use their websites, a company can customize interaction in order to enhance the consumer experience.

There must be a reliable system in place to ensure that e-services increase e-relationships. Because promotional material can be dismissed with click of a button, it is important that offline techniques are also used that are much more difficult to ignore. This ensures that there are always channels that a company can use to interact with its customer base.