Chapter 5 really caught my interest in regards to customer relationship management and how business succeed and fail in this category. I have taken a few classes specifically related to CRM and while having internal records of customers, customer demographics, and customer transaction all are an important part of CRM, I still believe the most effective use of CRM is simply giving the customer what they want and giving the customer a satisfying experience as opposed to making a quick buck. When I start talking about CRM the first business that comes to my mind is Nike. If anyone is having trouble with their CRM practices I believe they should take a close look at how Nike handles their customers.
I have a few personal examples with Nike and how well they handled their relationship with me. I bought a jersey from the Nike website around Christmas time and it was shipped to my house. The postman delivered it to my front door when I was not home and someone took it. I called Nike and explained the situation and without hesitation they shipped me another jersey at no cost to me and just requested that if the other product turned up to please mail it back. I also bought a pair of Nike shoes from their website and after a few months, the stitching began to come out and they were no longer wearable. Again, I contacted Nike and explained the situation and I sent the shoes back and within a week received a voucher for the full price of the shoes. Normally, many businesses will require you to go through a long process for both of these instances and after weeks of frustration and headaches, the outcome is not fulfilling or satisfying in the least. This might have saved the company a little money in the short term, but I would never order products from these businesses again after thinking back to the frustration I went through in order to correct the issue. Sure, Nike did not have to ship the jersey and could have went through that long drawn out process to try and save a little extra money but I can assure you that if I was to buy another jersey and they did not reimburse me the first time, I would not be buying another one from them. Since that was not the case, I confidently shop on Nikes websites over competing businesses because I