CRM is the total of all the continuous business processes that allow us to record, understand and meet the needs of customers. It is about highly defined procedures, not software, although the software is vital in carrying out the procedures. CRM is also a point of view: that the customer comes first in a marketer’s thinking, not the product.

The main CRM objectives of businesses are usually  customer retention, customer acquisition, and improving brand awareness. Customers use a variety of offline and online media. They use search engines, check websites, make telephone calls, read brochures, papers and magazines, watch TV, listen to the radio, look at posters, go to exhibitions, open mail shots, and may even walk into your office. Online may be a major part of their lives, or a small part, or no part at all. Cross-media CRM should therefore be a key part of your business processes and the ICT systems that support them.

CRM is:

• Customer data capture (customer acquisition) including details of transactions, if any
• Analysing the customer data so that it can be actioned (customer knowledge)
• Communicating on an ongoing basis with customers to persuade them to travel (‘customer activation’)
• A unified view of each customer, across all the channels used

The operation of the systems that support these business processes, offline and online, usually resides in the e-marketing team. The non-technical challenges for e-marketing CRM staff are:

• To gain acceptance, by online and offline marketers and customer service staff, of the hard and soft procedures and customer service standards that are necessary
• To provide training and support for them to apply the procedures and maintain their motivation
• To ensure adequate monitoring and feedback of performance

The CRM database fields may need to cover:

• Demographics – such as gender, age group, income, education, size of household, location, and occupation
• Psychographics – such as personality and emotional factors connected with buying patterns; is the purchaser likely to be an impulse buyer, for example?
• Lifestyle – the customer’s choice of leisure and entertainment, interests and hobbies, and holidays
• Lifestage – for example, pre-teens, teens, families with young children, and empty nesters
• Values – for example, cultural and national
• Travel intentions – including when, how, and budget
• Travel group – for example, couple, family, extended family, or interest group
• Contact history – including recency, frequency, email open rate, and amount of address data held
• Occasions – for example, wedding, anniversary, or football match

Some of this data will be explicit – given by the customer and used to tailor the content you provide for them on your website or in your newsletter. Some will be implicit – deduced from their actions as a user of your website or e-newsletter. Do not confront your customers with big forms to fill in. Out of perhaps 50 or 100 possible data fields, your business needs to identify a very few as high priority for information capture. All campaign activity should be designed to acquire these. A key tactic is to ask the customer for a little more each time that contact is made.

Note: The information on this page is drawn from resources produced and used by E-Tourism Africa trainers Peter Varlow (TEAM Tourism) and Damian Cook. Please do not reproduce or publish this material without permission. This information is an overview of content from our Training Seminars. If you'd like learn more about this topic, attend one of our events and join the E-Tourism Seminars.