Customer Relationship Measurement – Meaning, its need and importance

Customers are the most important part of business. There cannot be any business without them. Only satisfied customers will be interested in buying and they will also refer other customers to buy. By measuring customer satisfaction a supplier can maintain a quality and long term relationship with customers and secure their future business and financial assets. This measurement is essential for suppliers to understand that their strategies are in right direction.

Market research or market survey is the tool that can be implemented to measure customer relationship, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. This tool is capable to furnish accurate information on the following main facets of customer relationship - 1) Loyalty 2) Satisfaction 3) Customer Behavior 4) Response 5) Service 6) Customer Compensation 7) Customer Needs.

This tool furnishes the above related information not only with accuracy but also with their future aspects which is a very important asset for business perspectives. By knowing the future perspectives of customers it becomes easy and efficacious for suppliers to build a medium term or even long term relationships with customers. These future perspectives of customers are related to following factors:

1. Present customer needs - By analyzing current needs of customers the suppliers can determine the trend of buying of customers. How the present needs of customers can change in past can also be predicted by these sophisticated research and analytical tools by deriving some important trend variables of these customers.
2. Suppliers influence on products and services - How the suppliers are influencing the customers by their products and services is an important factor for this research.
3. Competitors influence on products and services - Competitors are also the important factor for analyzing future needs of customers. If competitors are making more prominent impression of products and services then it is important for suppliers to mould their business strategies to meet future needs of customers and to attract them to have business with them.
4. Environmental or market effects - By predicting the current market trend suppliers can analyze how the market is going to perform in the coming future. This research includes deep analysis of the financial and economical conditions.

Market research is a strong tool that renders the customers with important and unique data on customers’ needs which helps them to create business strategies and come up with considerable business decisions. It helps the organization to encapsulate future business by determining business goals and objectives to meet business targets. It also helps providing feedback regarding image and performance of the organization so that they could leverage the strategies to meet the targets. It helps them to be always on top.

Building relationship with customers in current market trends is the most important aspect that an organization should focus on. Today distinction and eminence are the most sustainable approaches for which developing good relationship with customers is essential. Hence incorporating techniques which could measure the relations with customers are very important for all the organizations so that they remain in this bonding forever.

Every business unit uses different approaches according to the business they posses to measure their relationship with customers. Also, these approaches of measuring customer relationships are associated differently to different types of customers according to their individual importance. By doing this the organizations are able to decide which area requires application of resources to get best business impact.