Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has been particularly influential in triggering this shift of thought and action. Before its renaissance over the last few years, only the powerful brands of the world, and those companies with a clear understanding of what a brand strategy is all about, had really bothered about the brand experience and realized how powerful it could be in building both sustainable competitive advantage and profitability.

The advent of CRM techniques – not new in concept – but new in their form of execution – has lifted the veil of helplessness from many marketers’ eyes, by showing them how, at last, marketing in a true one-to-one sense can actually be achieved. And not through loyalty schemes and the like, but through real one-to-one relationships, where each customer is treated differently.

Others have written about CRM and one-to-one marketing, but what they have failed to do is link CRM with the brand-building process. It is in the realm of building brand equity and value, and in speeding up that process, that CRM makes its real contribution. This book is about this link and more. It not only shows how CRM can drive brand power and value, but also describes how CRM works and how all companies can implement its principles in a very practical way.

Romancing The Customer
Sadly, for many companies in the last century, building powerful brands often took decades. This fact alone dissuaded many CEOs from even starting to take brand building seriously. Then along came CRM in the late 1990s, aimed at enabling companies to do all these things in a new way, and voila! everything changed. Now brands can be built in just a few years. The world of branding has now embraced CRM, and the strategic role of CRM is to build brands. When done well, CRM programmes help to build brands by contributing to all eight of the key characteristics of brands (described in Chapter 1). And as far as the brand-customer relationship is concerned, the end result is “Je t’aime”.

We have called this book Romancing the Customer because the ideas it contains will help you to make your customers feel happy, appreciated, and even loved. The book will map out how you can build your company’s brand name by achieving a special relationship with each and every customer. By doing so, it will help you to:

achieve greater levels of customer acquisition and retention;
become outstanding at service quality;
build your profit margins through bigger price premiums;
achieve a sustainable competitive advantage;
increase the asset value of your company; and
give each of your customers that warm glow that comes with
feeling appreciated and cared for.

As you will see, the ways in which you can employ the techniques of CRM will transform the development and management of your brand. But the book won’t only show you how massive the impact can be; you will also be shown many ways of improving your business, just one or two of which can change your company’s future and success. If you take all of them on board, your brand will soar far and away above those of your competitors. And so will its financial value.

The Reader
In looking at the readership for this book, we feel that it will be of real benefit to:

CEOs, CFOs and CTOs;
Marketing directors and managers;
Brand and category managers;
Customer managers (few though they may be);
Entrepreneurs;
Marketing, brand, and management consultants;
Customer service managers;
Students of business and management;

And all those who want to survive in an increasingly competitive world, where only the strong brands will survive.