Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is in vogue. CRM is being touted as the solution to all marketing problems. Managers swear by it. Every company claims to doing is better than others. Academic journals write about its merits. However, Avinash Narula thinks its about time we separated the rhetoric from reality. Avinash Narula suggests that whenever you adopt a new concept or technology like CRM, you are not replacing your car with just another car but actually you are replacing it with a helicopter. Just as you change the way you travel when you acquire a helicopter, you have to also change the way you think when you implement a new concept like CRM.

Everybody is talking about Customer Relationship Management (CRM). However, most of us do not understand what the concept really means and as such, implement it poorly. Avinash Narula suggest that there is nothing new about CRM as businesses have been managing relationships with their customers since times immemorial. What has really changed is the way we maintain relationships with our customers which depends on the available technology. Implementation of CRM has been a function of the existing technology. Technology today allows us to maintain one-on-one relationship with our customers worldwide just like the pre-industrial era, that is, the ability to tap the smallest niche-the individual customer. Hence, the hysteria.

However, Avinash suggests that businesses have not been able to exploit the potential of CRM because most of us do not understand the meaning of CRM. As such, he explains what each alphabet in the acronym CRM actually means, the difference between loyalty and customer retention as well as what attitude has to do with what kind of CRM system you will implement. He goes on to suggest that if CRM has to work, business will have start thinking about the position of the customer service representative in the organization structure as well as how they treat them. Lastly, he deals with the topic of everybody’s interest, that unsolicited calls. Believe it or not, he has the simple win-win solution to the problem.

As usual and as per his style, he has supported his ideas with a large number of interesting customer stories which will convince you that its time we became TRUE BELIEVERS in the concept of "Customer is King."