CRM AND CUSTOMER WOW

Initially there was the concept of customer service to deliver customer satisfaction. Then came the concept of customer delight and today everyone talks of customer WOW. So what is this Customer WOW?
At a fundamental level the end objective remains the same which is to create a strong rapport and bond with the customer to ensure long-term loyalty and repeat purchases. The customer has no switching cost between the stores and therefore the role of emotional bonding become very crucial.
Now I am just trying to explain the concept of customer wow by relating it with CRM concept i.e. Customer Relationship Management. I will take a very simple and practical example that every one of us has sometime or the other either seen it or realized it.
What is the service that the kirana delivers that constitutes value?? He caters to our whim and fancy; literally and figuratively. By sending even a small item to our homes, taking orders even at 9.30pm and so on. And also by remembering the exams of our children, remembering to ask how your backache is, being contrite when something is not good and so on.
And what enables him to do that? CRM. Not the customer relationship management that one usually reads about. His CRM is Care, Respect and therefore the motivation to shop with him.
There is two parts to this: his ability to recognize you and your family members remember your shopping habits and more importantly your monthly spending. Then his brain analyses and generate business intelligence in the form of your lifetime value to him.
Several Corporate Retail chains have tried to duplicate this through loyalty programmes and membership cards. However these are again dependent on the store staff to be efficient. Whether I have a loyalty card or not I will develop a high relationship quotient and therefore loyalty to a store which understands my needs and works towards building a relationship with me. In the absence of that customer would have loyalty cards from different chains and just accumulate points which end up being an added cost for the Retailers.
The core to a successful programme is a one-to-one orientation versus a one-to-many orientation.
This is where most Retailers have an issue. Because Retail is by nature a mass business it becomes very difficult for Retailers to manage these two divergent thought processes. However, once this conflict has been resolved, the CRM programme is bound to be an unqualified success. A lifestyle Retailer in India runs a very effective programme by effectively mining sales data, understanding customer’s needs and expectations and meeting them. The reward is that such loyal customer generates more than 40% of their sales.
This is because they have clearly understood what their core customers expect and they deliver the same consistently to deliver customer WOW. This could be in the form of preview sales, special billing counter, special offers, etc. The underlying theme is to recognise and reward loyalty and thereby further reinforce this and create a virtuous cycle.
So this how small things that a person does lead to the objective of CRM and thereby creating Customer WOW. It is a new concept that has come in Retail Sector but very important to know all these because somewhere in future we need to follow these.