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1. Operational CRM It refers to products or services that allow an organisation to take care of their customers. So, it is oriented towards customer-centric business processes such as marketing, selling, and services. It provides support to front-office business processes that involve direct interaction with customers through any communication channel, such as phone, fax, e-mail, etc. Each time a customer interacts with the organisation , the details such as their requirements, preferences, topics of discussion etc., are stored in the customers’ contact history and can be retrieved by the organization’s staff whenever required. Main purpose of this type of CRM is to generate leads, convert them into contacts, capture all required details and provide service throughout customer lifecycle. It concentrates on 3 areas of business processes: computerisation, enhancement and improvement of services. Example: a current customer calls up to query the current interest rate on his account, possibly thinking of switching to a competitor; instead of just telling him the answer, the CRM pops up a current deal relating to reduced interest rates so you are not only able to retain him but make him additionally happy. Sales Force Automation :SFA is the application /use of technology to manage selling activities. Sales automation helps an organization to automate sales process. It standardizes a sales cycle , so that acquire new customers , deal with existing customers, and the sales issues among all the sales executives of an organisation. It organizes information in such a way that the business can meet customers’ needs and increase sales more efficiently and effectively. It includes various CRM sales modules like Lead management, Contact management, Quote-to-Order management, Sales forecasting. Product Configuration − It enables salespersons or customers themselves to automatically design the product and decide the price for a customized product. It is based on if-then-else structure. Quotation and Proposal Management − The salesperson can generate a quotation of the product prices and proposal for the customer by entering details such as customer name, delivery requirements, product code, number of pieces, etc. Accounts Management − It manages inward entries, credit and debit amounts for various transactions, and stores transaction details as records.
Lead Management − It lets the users qualify leads and assigns them to appropriate salespersons. Contact Management − It is enabled with the features such as customers’ contact details, salespersons’ calendar, and automatic dialing numbers. These all are stored in the form of computerized records. Using this application, a user can communicate effectively with the customers. Opportunity Management − It lets the users identify and follow leads from lead status to closure and beyond closure. Marketing Automation Main purpose of marketing automation is to find out the best way to offer products and approach potential customers. Marketing automation involves market segmentation, campaigns management, event-based marketing, and promotions. The campaign modules of Marketing Automation enable the marketing force the use of the actual information of a specific customer in determining, evaluating and developing communications aiming at customers. So the company can have access to customer-related data for designing, executing and evaluating targeted offers, and communications. Event-based (trigger) marketing is all about messaging and presenting offers at a particular time. For example, a customer calls the customer care number and asks about the rate of interest for credit card payment. This event is read by CRM as the customer is comparing interest rates and can be diverted to another business for a better deal. In such cases, a customized offer is triggered to retain the customer. As far as marketing is concerned, it helps businesses when offering products and provides ways of communicating with customers. It enables sending emails, phone calls and meetings to be tracked and organized to reach potential customers. Service Automation Service automation enables business to retain customers by providing best quality of service and building strong relationship. Service automation involves service level management, resolving issues or cases, and addressing inbound communication. It involves diagnosing and solving the issues about product.
Sales and customer service personnel can use the information provided to support and improve customer relationships. Information will be gathered from many different channels and then analyzed in a structured way, enabling companies to put business methodology in place and effectively analyze KPIs. Companies that run an account management driven sales procedure with a finance led management style will find the analytical CRM well suited for their purpose. It will be able to collect, store and evaluate information provided from all departments, helping to plan marketing campaigns based upon accurate data. Example: a customer buys a printer from an online store. In the background, this information is taken and fed into the CRM. When she next goes online, matching items will be flagged up to match her printer i.e. consumables such as ink and paper. When new models come out, they will be emailed to her, enabling the company to use her data for promotions and surveys. This will better satisfy customer needs and help build market share. For example, a business may want to analyze how customers are interacting with its website. It has access to data about the online features customers are using, customers’ locations, and when they’re logging on. Having a comprehensive picture of this data could give salespeople insight into how, where, and when they should be reaching out to prospects.
3. Collaborative CRM Collaborative CRM, sometimes called as Strategic CRM, enables an organization to share customers’ information among various business units like sales team, marketing team, technical and support team. With a collaborative CRM, a company’s various departments all share customer information freely with one another. The hope is that this system will improve synchronicity within the business and give each department a better understanding of their customers’ needs, wants, and interests. Example: a customer buys a new car and then has a problem with it. The customer service department liaises with the technical and the data is fed into the system. The department that sold the car can communicate with the buyer, making sure their problem does not manifest into a lost customer, also taking the time to ensure that their problem is rectified correctly and they are made aware of offers and deals particularly suitable to them i.e. warranty cover etc. For example, feedback from a support team could be useful for marketing team to approach targeted customers with specific products or services.
Collaborative CRM helps to unite all groups to aim only one goal – use all information to improve the quality of customer service to gain loyalty and acquire new customers to increase sales. Collaborative CRM enables smooth communication and transactions among businesses. Though traditional ways such as air mail, telephone, and fax are used in communication, collaborative CRM employs new communication systems such as chat rooms, web forums, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). Collaborative CRM is an alignment of resources and strategies between separate businesses for identifying, acquiring, developing, retaining, and maintaining valuable customers. It is employed in B2B scenario, where multiple businesses can conduct product development, market research, and marketing jointly. Sometimes referred to as a Strategic CRM, this shares customer information between business departments such as sales, marketing, technical, support etc. Feedback from support can be used proactively by the marketing team to connect with targeted customers, relating to certain products. Without the collaborative CRM this would generally not happen as data is not often shared and losses can occur as well as damage to customer relationships. The overall aim is to improve the customer experience, improving loyalty and boosting sales. Those companies that have many departments linked to the CRM, a variety of locations with most of the communication occurring online and who are happy to have customer data easily accessed by all staff will find the collaborative CRM very suitable. It will enable them to pull together and share client information with all teams, improving client relationships and boosting customer satisfaction and therefore loyalty. Highly capable and motivated people are at the center of service excellence and productivity. Behind today's successful service organizations stands a firm commitment to effective management of human resources, including the recruitment, selection, training, motivation, and retention of employees. Organizations that display this commitment understand the economic payoff from investing in their people. Managing People for Service Advantage will give an insight on how to get HR right in service organizations, and how to get satisfied, loyal, motivated and productive service employees.
judged by an abstract image but a service is already abstract. Therefore, we will evaluate a service with comprehensive or tangible things. As the service itself is not tangible, the peripheral clues will be evaluated. In schools, man evaluates the buildings, the classrooms or the staff-rooms for instance. Bitner defines servicescapes as the “physical environment” of the service encounter or the “man-made, physical surroundings as opposed to the natural or social environment”. However, this last definition does not fit perfectly with the school servicecape. Indeed the natural surroundings of a school such as the sea or the mountain nearby, might influence the service. “Research suggests that the physical settings may also influence the customer’s ultimate satisfaction with the service”. Some classrooms with nice decoration and materials on the walls are more welcoming for students than others, austere and disorganized with Spartan atmosphere. The willingness to learn is higher for students in nice servicescape and their perception of the service is by consequence higher. The service is often produced and consumed simultaneously: therefore, the surroundings might have a strong impact on customer perception and be consequence on customer experience of the service. (Bitner) Because of this time consideration (services are produced and consumed simultaneously) it appears that the satisfaction of both— employees and customers—are strongly linked. In some schools, the classrooms are very hot in summertime and very cold in wintertime. These bad climatic conditions of classrooms, will afflict the working conditions of the teacher and thereby’, the quality of the service for their students. According to environmental psychologists, individuals react to places by avoidance or approach (Bitner). Depending on the classroom, staff and pupils will show a behaviour willing to stay, explore, work and affiliate or reluctant to these actions.
However, employees and customers have different needs and desires for their environment surroundings. Teachers prefer to have their own classroom to have all the materials they need to teach, whereas students might prefer to have their own classroom as well to avoid to move thirty students each hour from one room to other.
2. What does the Servicescape Include? Bitner refers to the servicescape as the “built environment” or, more specifically, the “man-made, physical surroundings as opposed to the natural or social environment”. The three important aspects of the servicescape are: (1) Spatial Layout and Functionality: Because service environments generally exist to fulfill specific purposes or needs of customers, spatial layout and functionality of the physical surroundings are particularly important. Spatial layout refers to the ways in which machinery, equipment, and furnishings are arranged, the size and shape of those items, and the spatial relationships among them. Functionality refers to the ability of the same items to facilitate the accomplishment of customer and employee goals. The spatial layout and functionality of the environment are particularly important for customers in self-service environments, where they must perform the service on their own and cannot rely on employees to assist them. Thus the functionality of an ATM machine and of self-service restaurants, gasoline pumps, and Internet shopping are critical to success and customer satisfaction. The importance of facility layout is particularly apparent in retail settings, where research shows it can influence customer satisfaction, store performance, and consumer search behaviour. Research conducted in two department stores in Korea found that store facilities significantly
particular service establishment, they will look for environmental cues to help them categorise the place and begin to form their quality expectations. In a study of dentists’ offices, it was found that consumers use the environment, particularly its style of decoration and level of quality, as a cue to the competence and manner of the service provider. (3) Ambient Conditions: Ambient conditions include background characteristics of the environment such as temperature, lighting, noise, music, scent, and colour. All of these factors can profoundly affect how people feel think, and respond to a particular service establishment. For example – a number of studies have documented the effects of music ort consumers’ perceptions of products, their perceptions of how long they have waited for service, and the amount of money they spend. When there is music, shoppers tend to perceive they spend less time shopping and in line than when there is no music. Slower music tempos at lower volumes tend to make shoppers more leisurely, and, in some cases, they spend more. In the Mayo Hospital lobby, piano music serves to reduce stress. Shoppers also spend more time when the music “fits” the product or matches their musical tastes. Other studies have similarly shown the effects of scent on consumer responses. We know that scent in bakeries, coffee shops, and tobacco shops, for example, can be used to draw people in, and pleasant scents can increase lingering time. We also know that the presence of a scent reduce perceptions of time spent and improve store evaluations. Scents that are congruent with the product type, cause customers to spend more time thinking about their product decisions. A nursing home chain discovered that in its facilities “the best odour was no odor.” Patients and their families believed that unpleasant odours signified an unclean facility, whereas the odor of cleaning solvents signified that unpleasant odours were being covered up.
As a general rule, ambient conditions affect the five senses. Sometimes such dimensions may be totally imperceptible (gases, chemicals, infrasound) yet have profound effects, particularly on employees who spend long hours in the environment. The effects of ambient conditions are especially noticeable when they are extreme. For example, people attending a symphony in a hall, where the air conditioning has failed and the air is hot and stuffy, will be uncomfortable, and their discomfort will be reflected in how they feel about the concert. If the temperature and air quality were within a comfort tolerance zone, these ambient factors would probably go unnoticed. Ambient conditions also have a greater effect when the customer or employee spends considerable time in the servicescape. The impact of temperature, music, odours, and colours builds over time. Another instance, in which ambient conditions will be particularly influential, is when they conflict with what the customer or employee expects.
3. Types of Servicescapes: Is a framework for categorising service organisations on two dimensions that captures some of the key differences that will impact the management of the servicescape? Organisations that share a cell in the matrix will face similar issues and decisions regarding their physical spaces. The physical setting may be more or less important in achieving the organisation’s marketing and other goals depending on certain factors: (i) Servicescape Use: First, organisations differ in terms of whom the servicescape will actually affect. That is, who actually comes into the service facility and thus is potentially influenced by its design—customers, employees, or both groups? There are three types of service organisations that differ on this
The physical environment is particularly salient for services, as most services are produced and consumed simultaneously, with the consumer “in the factory” experiencing the total service within the firm’s physical facility. Bitner suggested that the service setting can affect consumers’ emotional, cognitive, and physiological responses, which, in turn, influence their evaluations and behaviours. Our focus is on affective responses or feelings that are created by contact with the physical environment. Environmental elements within the services setting influence emotions in two dimensions – pleasure and arousal. The ‘pleasure dimension’ refers to the degree to which a consumer feels good or happy with the environment, whereas ‘arousal’ refers to the degree by which the person feels excited, stimulated, or active in an environment. Servicescape may influence the consumer’s affective state in either a positive or negative direction, which in turn may affect post-purchase evaluations. The framework for understanding servicescape effects on behaviour follows from basic stimulus — organism — response theory. In the framework the multi-dimensional environment is the stimulus, consumers and employees are the organisms that respond to the stimuli, and behaviours directed at the environment are the responses. The assumptions are that dimensions of the servicescape will impact customers and employees and they will behave in certain ways depending on their internal reactions to the servicescape. That human behaviour is influenced by the physical setting in which it occurs, is essentially a truism. Interestingly, however, until the 1960s, psychologists largely ignored the effects of physical setting in their attempts to predict and explain behaviour. Since that time, a large and steadily growing body of literature within the field of environmental psychology has addressed the relationships between human beings and their built environments.
Various theorists have tried to examine the content of affect, the dimensions that underlie it, and the distinction between types of affect. Different approaches have been used – facial expression research, language-based research and logical theory derivation and testing based on a psycho-evolutionary perspective. Although most empirical studies on emotions in satisfaction research have used Izard’s Differential Emotions Scale, Russell’s model of affect was chosen for the present investigation for several reasons. First, the two models based on facial expression research and psycho-evolutionary perspectives only define discrete dimensions, which do not capture the possible similarities and differences among emotions. Second, the Russell model separates cognition from affect. Russell defines affect as an internal state being comprised of pleasure and arousal. This two-dimensional matrix categorizes all affective responses as valenced combinations of pleasure and arousal. Other dimensions of affect (e.g., locus of causality, importance of the emotion, locus of control, and dominance) can thus be interpreted as cognitive appraisals. In contrast, Izard’s and Plutchik’s frameworks implicitly include cognitive processes in their models. Third, our goal was to assess consumers’ responses to the pre-consumption retail environment as opposed to interpersonal aspects of consumption, thus further justifying the use of this emotions scale. Mehrabian and Russell suggested that affect mediates the relationship between the physical environment and an individual’s response to that environment, thus resulting in two behaviours – approach or avoidance. Approach behaviours are represented by an individual’s desire to stay, explore, or work in an environment, whereas avoidance behaviours refer to the opposite.
services. It has been stated that “all social interaction is affected by the physical container in which it occurs.” The “physical container” can affect the nature of social interaction in terms of the duration of interaction and the actual progression of events. In many service situations, a firm may want to ensure a particular progression of events (a “standard script”) and limit the duration of the service. Environmental variables such as physical proximity, seating arrangements, size, and flexibility can define the possibilities and limits of social episodes such as those occurring between customers and employees, or customers and other customers.
5. Roles of the Servicescape: The servicescape can play many roles. An examination of the variety of roles and how they interact, makes clear how strategically important it is to provide appropriate physical evidence of the service. (1) Facilitator: The servicescape can also serve as a facilitator in aiding the performances of persons in the environment. How the setting is designed, can enhance or inhibit the efficient flow of activities in the service setting, making it easier or harder for customers and employees to accomplish their goals. A well-designed, functional facility can make the service a pleasure to experience from the customer’s point of view and a pleasure to perform from the employee’s. On the other hand, poor and inefficient design may frustrate both customers and employees. (2) Socialiser: The design of the servicescape aids in the socialisation of both employees and customers in the sense that it helps to convey expected roles, behaviours, and relationships. For example – a new employee in a professional services firm would come to understand her position in the hierarchy
partially through noting her office assignment, the quality of her office furnishings, and her location relative to others in the organisation. The design of the facility can also suggest to customers what their role is relative to employees, what parts of the servicescape they are welcome in, and which are for employees only, how they should behave while in the environment, and what types of interactions are encouraged. For example – consider a Club Med vacation environment that is set up to facilitate customer-customer interactions as well as to facilitate guest interactions with Club Med staff. The organisation also recognises the need for privacy, providing areas that encourage solitary activities. To illustrate further, in some Starbucks location the company is experimenting with shifting to more of a traditional coffeehouse environment where customers spend social time rather than coming in for a quick cup of coffee on the run. To encourage this type of socialising, these Starbucks locations have comfortable lounge chairs and tables set up to encourage interaction and staying longer. (3) Package: Similar to a tangible product’s package, the servicescape and other elements of physical evidence essentially “wrap” the service and convey an external image of what is “inside” to consumers. Product packages are designed to portray a particular image as well as to evoker particular sensory or emotional reaction. The physical setting of a service does the same thing through the interaction of many complex stimuli. The servicescape is the outward appearance of the organisation and thus can be critical in forming initial impressions or setting up customer expectations—it is a visual metaphor for the intangible service. This packaging role is particularly important in creating expectations for new customers and for newly established service organisations that are trying to build a particular image. The physical surroundings offer an organisation the opportunity
hotel may have several levels of dining possibilities, each signalled by differences in design: Price differentiation is also often partially achieved through variations in physical setting. Bigger rooms with more physical amenities cost more, just as larger seats with more leg room (generally in first class) are more expensive on an aeroplane. A development in movie theatres is the addition of luxury screening rooms with club chairs and waiters. Taking advantage of this alternative, customers, who are willing to pay a higher price to see the same film, can experience the service in an entirely different environment.
6. Internal Responses to the Servicescape: The perceived servicescape does not directly cause people to behave in certain ways. Although the internal responses are discussed independently here, they are clearly interdependent – A person’s beliefs about a place, a cognitive response, may well influence the person’s emotional response, and vice-versa. In other words, employees and customers respond to dimensions of their physical surroundings cognitively, emotionally, and physiologically, and those responses are what influence their behaviours in the environment. For example, patients, who come into a dentist’s clinic that is designed to calm and sooth their anxieties (emotional responses), may believe as a result that the dentist is caring and competent (cognitive responses). (1) Variations in Individual Responses: In general, people respond to the environment in the ways just described — cognitively, emotionally, physiologically — and their responses influence how they behave in the environment. However, the response will not be the same for every individual, every-time. Personal differences as well as temporary conditions such as moods or the purpose for being there can cause variations in
how people respond to the servicescape. One personal trait that has been shown to affect how people respond to environments is aroused seeking. Arousal seekers enjoy and look for high levels of stimulation, whereas arousal avoiders prefer lower levels of stimulation. (2) Environment and Cognition: The perceived servicescape can have an effect on people’s beliefs about a place and their beliefs about the people and products found in that place. In a sense the servicescape can be viewed as a form of nonverbal communication, imparting meaning through what is called “object language.” In other cases, perceptions of the servicescape may simply help people to distinguish a firm by influencing how it is categorised. The overall perception of the servicescape enables the consumer or employee to categorise the firm mentally. Research shows that in the restaurant industry a particular configuration of environmental cues suggests “fast foods,” whereas another configuration suggests “elegant sit-down restaurant.” In such situations, environmental cues serve as a short-cut device enabling customers to categorise and distinguish among types of restaurants. (3) Environment and Emotion: In addition to influencing beliefs, the perceived servicescapes can directly elicit emotional responses that, in turn, influence behaviours. Just being in a particular place can make us feel happy, light-hearted, and relaxed, whereas being in another place may make us feel sad, depressed, and gloomy. The colours, decor, music, and other elements of the atmosphere can have an unexplainable and sometimes very sub-consciousness effect on the moods of people in the place. For some people, certain environmental stimuli (noises, smells) common in dental clinics can bring on immediate feelings of fear and anxiety. Environmental
