CRM Master Key -
Foreword by Sir John Harvey-Jones MBE

The need to “manage” and hopefully improve your relationship with your customer is accepted by all. Indeed a strong purposeful and proactive relationship with your customer is probably the only sustainable, competitive, advantageous differentiator a business can develop. Customer relations are the key motivating force for all the members of an organisation. They are our only security and our reason for existence and yet they are elusive and difficult to maintain for they depend on an attitude of mind, which seems almost un-British. The statistics on customer relations are both compelling and well known. 20% of all customers usually contribute 60%-80% of the profit and 20% of the customers cause a loss of profit. It costs 5 times more to take on a new customer than service an existing one and increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profitability by 25%-85%. Add to all this the fact that less than 10% of the dissatisfied will actually tell you and we should not be surprised that the marketing of customer relations programmes is a runaway success. The availability of software is only exceeded by the quantities of consultants happy to charge £1,000 to £2,000 a day for their time.

The big snag in all of this is that not only does a badly applied customer relation’s initiative fail to deliver the promised customer satisfaction, but even worse it actually fuels the dissatisfaction it is meant to cure.

This is the last area where a “one style suits all” policy will or can work. Customer satisfaction will only follow a differentiated and personalised service when accompanied by a sincere and seamless belief in satisfactory service to the customer that is the overriding top priority.

This is where the CRM Master Key comes in and why I am so glad to be able to say a few words as a Foreword. It contains an encyclopaedia of information and clear thinking which will enable any business of any size, from the large to the small, to gain the maximum practical advantage from the CRM technology available. You don’t have to be a computer nerd to work through this CD but you do need to believe in the importance of your relationship with your customers and to have the determination to do something about improving it.

When the potential rewards are so high, and the consequences of getting it wrong are so dire this CD, should be an essential resource for every businessman or woman.

However, the world is full of seemingly automatic easy options which promise sure-fire success for minimal effort and little thought.This is not the way in which businesses can succeed in today’s ever more competitive world and is not the manner in which this product should be approached. Only those who study what is needed, think of their own experience as a customer and utilise technology to produce their own unique service will win.

I wish the product and its users every success.

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