CRM definitions and acronyms

Active Loyalty

Customers who repeatedly purchase products and services from the same company are described as being "actively loyal."

See also Passive Loyalty.

Analytical CRM

Analytical CRM (analytics) refers to the analysis of data created on the operational side of the CRM equation for the purpose of business performance management. Analytical CRM is directly related to data warehouse architecture.

Association

This term refers to rules that enable the presence of one set of items to be correlated with the presence of another set of items.

Attrition

A term used in the banking industry to describe customers leaving to use the services of another bank. The more commoditized products become, the more frequently this process takes place. In the telecommunications industry, the same process is called churn.

Business Drivers

External influences that affect a business and cause a shift in focus and/or change in course; for example, increased competition may force an increased investment in R&D to maintain a competitive position.

Campaign Management

Management of single and multichannel marketing campaigns based on the customer intelligence gleaned from mining a data warehouse.

Channel Management

Monitoring the effectiveness of sales and distribution channels (e.g., Web, ATM, face-to-face, call center, and so on) to ensure maximum return on investment and increased client satisfaction.

Chief Customer Officer (CCO)

Many organizations that implement a CRM strategy have a Chief Customer Officer (CCO), whose role is to oversee the continued implementation of the CRM strategy, ensuring that the cultural and customer interaction changes necessary for successful CRM are in place.

Churn

A term used primarily by telecommunications companies to describe the loss of customers to competitors.

See also Attrition.

Clustering

A data mining approach that attempts to identify distinguishing characteristics between sets of records and then place them into groups or segments.

Collaborative CRM

Collaborative CRM refers to the application of collaborative services (e.g., e-mail, conferencing, real time) to facilitate interactions between customers and organizations and between members of the organization around customer information (e.g., customers to sales, sales to marketing, and community building).

Conditioning

Preparing data for input to the data warehouse or data mart.

Corporate Culture

Refers to the operating parameters of an organization-the way it conducts business and manages customer relationships.

CRM

CRM is a companywide, ongoing process whereby customer information is intelligently used to serve customers more effectively and efficiently, fostering customer loyalty and retention by optimizing customer satisfaction and improving corporate profitability.

CRM Architecture

The infrastructure of a CRM system, including the data warehouse architectural model that supports analysis of customer relationship management systems through the use of technology, tools, and applications for the purpose of business performance management.

Customer Interface/Point of Interaction (POI)

The point of interaction (or contact) between a customer and an organization. This can include the Web, telesales operator, call center, and sales counter.

Customer Retention

The strategy of keeping existing customers.

Data Cleansing

The process of removing inaccurate and historical data from operational systems to use in a data warehouse. Data must be accurate and consistent in order to increase the accuracy of the data mining process.

Data Mart

A departmental data warehouse, or summary data store, usually storing only one specific element of a corporation's customer data at a summary level.

Data Mining

Data mining refers to the sorting and exploration of data with a view to discovering and analyzing meaningful patterns and rules. A variety of tools and techniques is used-some of which have been developed explicitly for this purpose, others of which have been borrowed from statistics, computer science, and other, similar disciplines. These include clustering, classification, time series analysis, and OLAP (online analytical processing).

Data Model

To analyze data it is often necessary to build a "data model." In its most simple form, a data model takes a given number of inputs and produces a given number of outputs. For example, a churn data model might take in information on customer transaction history, demographics, and product information and provide an indication on how likely a customer is to leave the company.

Data Warehouse

A data warehouse is a database of information explicitly designed for decision support purposes. Unlike a database, which is just a means of recording and storing transactional data, a data warehouse is designed to make the right information available at the right time.

Delta Updating

A learning algorithm that uses a linear approximation to an error function to compute and apply a correction factor.

E-CRM

Electronic CRM is the use of Web channels as part of the overall CRM strategy and may include other electronic business elements, such as e-sales, e-marketing, e-banking, e-retailing, e-service, and multimedia customer contact centers.

Event-Driven Campaigns

Campaigns whose genesis comes from customer intelligence, for example, banks conducting a marketing campaign for car loans based on the knowledge that a target group X will be graduating soon and is likely to start work, have a disposable income, and therefore be prospective new car buyers.

Operational CRM

Operational CRM refers to the automation of horizontally integrated business processes involving customer touch points-sales, marketing and customer service, call center, field service-via multiple, interconnected delivery channels and integration between front office and back office.

Pareto's Law

Also know colloquially as the "80/20 law" and meaning that 80% of profits are derived from the top 20% of customers. Some analysts increase this to 140/20 when dealing with financial institutions.

Passive Loyalty

Customers may appear to be loyal on examining the database; however, they may not have transacted business with an organization in years.

See also Active Loyalty.

Pilot Test

A pilot test is the small-scale implementation of a new CRM system within a small section of a company to help employees familiarize themselves with it. This process provides feedback, helps solve any unforeseen problems prior to full implementation, and evaluates different approaches to achieving CRM objectives..

Points of Interaction (POI)

The point of interaction (or contact) between a customer and an organization, including the Web, telesales operator, call center, and sales counter.

See also Customer Interface/Point of Interaction (POI).

Recency and Frequency

Both recency and frequency are used to measure customer loyalty. Recency refers to the last time that a customer contacted an organization, and frequency refers to the regularity of their contact. Both definitions exclude contact initiated by the company to the customer, for example, direct marketing campaigns, telemarketing, and so on.

ROI

Return on investment-the return, in terms of increased revenue, that can be achieved from an investment in a CRM strategy or other major corporate project.

Segmentation

Dividing target markets into segments with homogenous characteristics such as lifestyle, demographics, or even consumer behavior.

Touch point

See Points of Interaction (POI).

Transaction History

The data recorded after every customer transaction, which is often used in data mining to gain valuable insights about customer segments and behavior.

Visualization

This process takes large amounts of data and reduces them into more easily interpreted pictures.



Call Center Operation(c) Design, Operation, and Maintenance
Call Center Operation: Design, Operation, and Maintenance
ISBN: 155558277X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 90
Authors: Duane Sharp

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