Questions 16-22
· Read the report below about a talk on Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM).
· Are sentences 16-22 on the opposite page ’Right’ or ’Wrong’ If there is not enough information to answer ’Right’ or ’Wrong’, choose ’Doesn’t say’.
· For each sentence (16-22), mark one letter (A, B or C) on your Answer Sheet.
CRM-Marketing in the 21^st century
With over 1,000 published newspaper articles, three successful books and his current job as Chairman of his own marketing consultancy, Swan Partners, Richard Swan is well qualified to lecture on marketing. At the industry’s recent annual conference, he focused his talk on Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM).
According to Swan, existing customers are between three and eight times more likely to buy than a non-customer with the same profile, so increasing customer loyalty is important: if you record the measurements of someone’s jeans, next time you can offer them a pair that fit exactly; note which hotel guests ask for ice in their drinks and produce it next time they visit. Although it is essential for effective CRM to record customer information on a good computer database, the real skill is in interpreting what your customers tell you and knowing what promises they think you have made.
Swan believes that success requires an equal mix of market research, delivering what the customer expects, finding any weak areas in the system and asking customers for their after- sales opinions and suggestions. ’But,’ he warns, ’approach CRM with care. If you can’t measure customer response, then it’s better to keep to more traditional marketing methods.’ Swan believes the CRM approach is best suited to service industries.