Reflection Journal

Week 2
General Reflection:
I think this course will really help me in many different roles I may take in my career in the future. Before this, I did not even know what CRM stood for. I work for a concert promotion company and from time to time help post things to social media and help come up with ways to engage customers, but I never really thought about everything that could go into it and should be considered. I would just do some brainstorming and go with something that seemed like a good idea and others agreed with.

Week 3
Discussion question:
How is relationship marketing different from customer relationship management? What similarities do they share? Why is it important that customer relationship managers understand relationship marketing concepts?

Relationship marketing is a marketing focused on creating long-term reliable customers by forming a strong relationship between the company and customer. This is done by making customers feel wanted and fulfilling their changing needs. CRM is not a sales or marketing technique, but instead it is the data collection and analyzing that is the backbone to those things. CRM collects data and allows companies to determine what customers want. They can then put these things into use and it allows formation of these relationships which lead to more sales. They both share in that they focus on the customer getting what they want and being happy with the company. CR managers must understand relationship marketing because they must be focused on getting useful data and making sense of it so relationship marketing managers can successfully use it.
General Reflection:
Customers expect to be pleased. They expect companies to go out of their way to make the customers want them. Even if a company has a really good product, if their service or experience is not up to standard of the other companies, customers will likely choose the less quality product because they feel like the companies care about them more. This is something all companies now realize so the bar keeps rising and rising. Some smaller companies will likely not be able to compete with large companies investing so much money into CRM.
Week 4
General Reflection:
CRM software must not be something that companies skimp on. In this day and age it is something all companies are using so any company who doesn’t, will not keep up. This is often expensive software and comes with much training for employees. All of this together must be given the proper amount of time and preparation to be done well. If employees do not fully understand their role in the entire system, their portion will lag and will bring down the rest of the system as well. Some old school managers may not realize the importance of this and may try to cut corners. This will likely be very damaging down the road, but will not show up immediately, making it even more dangerous. If a company cannot do a good enough job and buy the proper hardware and software or train the employees properly, they might want to look into contracting it out.

Week 5
Discussion question:
How critical is it for today’s CR Managers to understand the impact of social media on customer/client relationships? Is the use of social media an effective way of engaging customers and do you see social media replacing more traditional forms of client contact such as direct mailings, e`mails and even face to face client meetings?

It is more critical now than it ever has been before. Almost everyone is engaged in social media throughout their day. This includes current and potential customers. Most people check their Facebook or Twitter many times more each day than they check their email. Emails from companies are often viewed as spam or advertisements while posts on social networks integrates the brand into the person’s life. This can also lead to customers feeling like the company