英国航空公司的客户关系管理

Abstract 2,129 words British Airways (BA) has always devoted into the most profitable airline company in the world. In the year of 1992, European Union published a proposed law, that the barrier of airline trade had been cancelled. It means that each airline company in the EU district can fly in the designated area. As the result of this, a large number of competitors who are new and low cost appeared, BA had not responded quickly to the change, and then had a 1,600 million loss in 2000, this is the first loss in the history of BA. However, Rod Eddington, the CEO of BA had utilized CRM strategy to remedy and improve the loss and situation, and then gain 5,580 million in the next two year. (Weiyun, S. 2005)IntroductionNowadays, the competition among enterprises is increasingly intense, the difference, that between the products or service from hundreds of enterprise is more and more tiny relatively. Whether the enterprises can create customer satisfaction and interact with the existing customers or not will become the most important elements which can he lp to survive and develop in today’s era of the business realm. Generally, CRM is a continuous process that communicates with right customers and understands what they needed, and then improve the products and services in order to make satisfaction.The appearance of CRM is inevitable, it is a significant problem to all the enterprises that how to be efficient during the process of production and service. A dozens of years ago, the produce activities was inchoate, enterprises maintained that produce is the core, they committed themselves to increase the manufacture and sales efficiency accordingly, reduced the cost to expand the market. However, with the aggravation of market competition, the previous method was not going to work, customers can be seemed as the benefit, the enterprises must cater to the customers, show the talent and advantage to the customers. The enterprises begin to take CRM seriously.PART ONECRM process should be upgrade according to the needs of both organisations and customers. In the late of 1990s, the Meta Group had defined the CRM Ecosystem which is the four types of CRM strategies. (Solvis Consulting, 2009) CRM is a process that keeps developing from shallow to deep. These four basic levels of CRM strategies are necessary and important to an organisation, and they in sequence develop.All the strategies are set up for organisation’s benefit, and customers can create benefit. Organisation should keep an active relationship with customers; the suggestion and dissatisfaction should be adopted and remedied, giving customers what they want can increase customer loyalty.More positive interaction, more supporters, and then the mutual benefit canbe created between organisation and customers.Operational CRMIt is a basic business management, the first step of CRM. Usually, operational CRM is not involved in any upper class function like data analyse and tracing, it only in charge of organisation, marketing management and service. This level is set up for gathering and storing the customer information. BA acquires customers, mostly BA can know about their customers from tickets booking, internet consultation, European travel bureau, and competitors etc. After that, BA should collect customer data so that the analysts can do customer segmentation later.Strategic CRM“It is a customer-centric strategy which maintain on winning and keeping profitable customers.” (Francis, B. 2009)This level is about customer segmentation and data analyse. Not all customers can provide the same value to BA. According to Pareto principle (or 80/20), 20% customers can create 80% profit to BA. In other words, organisation should to customer segmentation,so that the profitable customers can be identified. according to the loss in 2000, Rob Eddington found that the original, simple and perfunctory complain system can not reflect the real situation, most of customers will not complain even if they do not satisfy with the services, because they consider that complain is useless and the process is complex. As the result of this, the CEOdecided that the organisation must adopt some measures to increase customer complain rate. One of them is setting up pocket keyboards in Boeing 767 and 777 so that customers can leave their dissatisfaction or suggestions right away.In this step, mutual benefit is forming according to the customer satisfaction; the interaction with customers should be involved in the purchase activities. Collaborate CRMThis level of CRM can help to improve to communication among organisation, partners and customers; can be described as a communication platform, the materials and information will store in the CRM system. Generally, Collaborate CRM will combine with email system, calling centre ande-commerce business platform so that it can provide a widely communication to both of customers and organisation. The organisation needs to upgrade the communication platform.Mutual benefit keeps rising; diversification of communications can help to disseminate BA’s services. Good brand power can influence customers’ loyalty and reliance.Analytical CRMThe most important level of CRM, it maintains the operation that can enhance the value between organisation and customers. It is about the use of customer data perfectly to achieve customer intimacy. Customer details will be stored and the figure will be extracted, processed and reported that the system willdo the information classifying. Analysts can find out who the most profitable customer is and which the most welcomed service is according to the system. These will be provided as the information support for the decision making.PART TWOCRM, just as its name imply, maintain on customer and the relationship with them. “Large companies must succeed at CRM.” (Ronald, S. 2001) Companies must realize not only who the customers are but also what they need, and company can improve the current state through CRM value chain. The value chain can be divided into five parts as the following and BA will be put into use as an example.Customer portfolio analysisIt is rather significant that BA needs to segment the customer base. In order to identify who can become the most profitable customer, which customer spend the most on the product or service of BA and which group of customer can help to disseminate the company image and services. “We rate and segment our clients into groups that are most desirable to do business with because they meet our criteria for what a desirable customer is” (John Stevenson. 2007) Customer intimacyThis part is most significant in the CRM value chain. “Customer Intimacy is going beyond simply building a stronger relationship with your client base toseeking ways to build solid win-win relationships.” (Stephen, C. 2009) Usually, there are a few most profitable customers behind a success company. The same to BA, in 20 customers, 1 is profitable customers. These customers are the core benefit to BA, it is about time to keep and invest. Talking about the intimacy, the target customers must worth to be on intimate with, investing on the unstable customer will just lose time and money.Network developingOriginally, network is built for delivering information between internal employees. However, with the needs of organisation’s and customers’, not only employees, but also external users like suppliers, partners and customers are involved in the network.BA needs to deal with customer consultation, complain and organisation’s internal problem every day. Customers need not wait in a long queue or call holding time, the appearance of network accelerate the whole organisation’s process.Value proposition developmentIt emphasis organisation should care about the value not the benefit customers that can provide. And organisation needs to provide extra services or high quality services which are ove r customers’ expectation as balance. BA is a people-oriented organisation which insists on giving well services to customers. Totally, the organisation should provide the right service to the right customer at the right time.Management of the Customer lifecycleIt is a process that describes customer consider, purchase, use, and maintain loyalty to BA’s services. This is a circulatory process, naturally and inevitably, will affect another customer to join in the cycle. ()Case study AssumptionThe success of BA owe to the combination of CRM strategy and its process. BA had analysed the customer data through ticket system, vocation journey and official website, and redesign the sales strategy which helped BA to acquire 5 million customers.The mutual benefit between organisation and customers can be reflected in each part of CRM value chain, and this benefit is not going to appear when the organisation get to the top, it is developing gradually along with the growth of organisation.In the first step, the organisation segment customer, and BA should serve them according to their expectation and spending power. Totally, types of customers can be divided into several categories, they are:Potential customer – The customers who have heard about the brand of BA from the media or their friends, but they never purchased the services or only few times. There are a huge number of these customers around the company, they are dissociated and unstable. Although they can become loyal customersto BA, the company need to spend lots of money to do an investment. On the long-term situation, the paid will higher than the gain.Loyal customer –In these customers’ mind, BA already become their ideal airline company, they are willing to purchase and try most of services BA launched. The organisation should keep and invest these customers that they can create more to BA, because the cost of acquire a new customer is higher than keep an old one.Supporter – They are the highest class and most powerful customers. Some of them usually received first class, regular long trip that provide huge benefit to BA. Much more than this, these customers will propagandize and recommend to another customer group initiative.The mutual benefit is potential and invisible because it is just the beginning. But the basic customer segment can identify who is the customer organisation wants to invest.In the second step, customer intimacy is the most important element to create the mutual benefit, because they directly relative. Customers are sensitive, especially organisation’s supporters, they want to be served and concerned well, they want to enjoy the services that other airline company cannot provide. Some customers have a regular trip like meeting or travelling, they will be very pleased and surprised that receive a phone call from BAlike ”Dear sir/madam, are you preparing the meeting in China next week?” when they are packaging their luggage. Whether BA can provide what theyneed or not will be the key reason to decide their leave or stay. Basically, the identity, profile, characteristics, requirement and expectations of the target customers should be collected, further, contact detail and buying history are necessary so that BA can transact some promotion activities like loyalty card, VIP card or mileage card for the customers. Customer intimacy cannot be rigid; it ought to be changed according to the customers’ need s.It is the high time that maximum mutual benefit, the number and the satisfaction of customer can impact the mutual benefit. Some customers can become the regular partners to BA, the more organisation provide, the stronger relationship will be developed.In the third step, BA deals with customer complain and consultation, they are not only using telephone, but also voice system and email. On one hand, it can save time; on the other hand, it is more effective. Customers will be glad when their problem is solved perfectly in a short time.In the fourth step, in order to create extra customer satisfaction, BA has recommended a wonderful service; customers can select their seat and print their boarding check 24 hours from the BA official website before boarding. Customers can enjoy the services as much as they like during the voyage, for example, entertainment and the regularly renewal red wine from France or Italy.In the last step, BA acquired customers, and recommend services to them, customers purchased and satisfied with the services, and then they will turninto a loyalty customer. Fast more than it; some customers will attract other customer groups into the cycle depending on their satisfaction and loyalty to BA’s services. The growth of customers’ means BA has more opportunities to communicate with potential, maybe profitable customers, some of them can be invested, and developed more mutual benefit.ConclusionCRM is an intelligence industry that will never stop. Both of organisations and customers need it, and these two elements are relative and mutual promote. Organisations need customers; customers need better services and products, so organisations do the improvement to cater to customers’ need. Although CRM can help organisations to develop, they should not be controlled and limited by the strategy, organisations need to find their blue ocean if they want to defeat the competitors and occupant the market finally.ReferenceFarncis,B. (2009) Customer Relationship Management. 2nd edition. Elsevier Ltd. Page 4 to page 12Ronald, S. S (2001) Accelerating Customer Relationship. Prentice Hall PTR. Page26, page75Graham Oakes Limited (2005) what does a successful CRM strategy look like? [Online] available from:/downloads/What%20does%20a%20good%20CRM%20strategy%20look%20like.pdf [Accessed on 7th Jan 2010]Richard Adhikari (2009) Why Businesses Needs a CRM Strategy. [online] available from:/webcontent/article.php/3800911 [Accessed on 7th Jan 2010]Farncis,B. (2000) The CRM Value Chain. [online] available from:http://www.wtcbrescia.it/upload/0-FButtle_CRMvalchain.pdf [Accessed on 18th Jan 2010]John, S. (2007) The CRM Value Chain. 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