Session 3: Assignment One Question

Questions:
This week we talked about Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as a process and as a software application. Based on the CRM concepts learned, answer the following questions:
List the customer data elements generated when a customer interacts with an airline by (a) making a reservation, (b) using frequent flyer miles, and (c) completing a flight. How does information from CRM improve these interactions ?
What are the benefits of integrating the sales, marketing and customer support function using a single software package and a centralized database ?

Answers:

(a) By making reservation, individual identification such as: name, year of birth, gender, language of communication, mailing address, job, email address, telephone number... will be generated, so can understand the customer profile better and plan the marketing strategy through market segmentation. Also, it is easy interfacing to reservation systems for capturing and updating traveller data

(b) Individual characteristics (pattern of flying, frequency of flying, purposes: business or leisure?, destinations...) and behavioural patterns of travellers will be generated through the frequent flyer miles. It can understand the customers' needs and expectation, such as about the pricing, favourite destination...Original and diversified Loyalty Schemes offered exclusively by airline or in collaboration with the business partners

(c) Through providing the services, airline can understand customers' satisfaction e.g. by filling the questionnaires; towards the inflight services entertainment, inflight service by crews, food and beverages... so can help airline to improve their hardware and software through such information.

With marketing and marketing communications providing context and helping to condition the marketplace for the sales people, and the sales department generating leads, closing deals, and providing the feedback necessary to focus marketing efforts where they will have the greatest return on investment. CRM software can also improve businesses client retention and relationships

Using one single data base can:

• Improved marketing effectiveness: with input from the sales teams and customer support data which leading to marketing initiatives that are more likely to reflect customer needs and are well- planned and coordinated with sales, reducing mistakes in expensive marketing pieces ·
  
• Improved sales effectiveness: with more focused marketing initiatives helping to increase the closing ratio and the average sale per customer, as well as to improve customer satisfaction.
  
• Enhanced employee satisfaction: as sales and marketing, employees who are involved in the entire process are likely to show higher levels of job satisfaction and potentially lower turnover.