Crisis and Market Competition: CRM as a Code for Survival?

In today’s global and local market environment the urgency of income increases puts tremendous pressure on companies, regardless of their size. They are compelled to attain higher and higher performance, and they are forced to sell more and more efficiently, while at the same time they must maintain their clients’ commitment and loyalty. Customers are increasingly better informed, as they in turn force companies to provide more for less. Under such circumstances even the most successful companies realize the fact that their strategic policies and their sales methods cannot be applied in the future in the same form. Maintaining and increasing a firm’s competitiveness has a significant role in the success of long-term strategic planning.
In the era of the economic-financial crisis, Customer Relationship Management has gained more value. Companies must strive for more effective operations and cost reduction, whereas at the same time there are strong and basic expectations regarding strengthening relationship with clients, increasing clients’ loyalty, the use of more efficient marketing campaigns and expectations toward income increase and growing work capacity.
They must change the methods they have used in the past so that they can assure and preserve their profitability in the long term, can shorten their sales cycles, and build up a reliable long-term clientele to contribute to increasing the company’s competitiveness.