Exegesis of Zappos’ strategies on customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning
How Zappos stands out with customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP)
One of the primary goals of any marketing strategy should be to identify and meet the needs of the consumer. Implementation of a Customer relationship management (CRM) has contributed to Zappos’ greater customers satisfaction and the long-term relationships with companies and customers.
“Customer relationship management (CRM) is a means of managing all aspects of a customer’s relationship with an organization to increase customer loyalty and retention and an organization’s profitability” —Paige Baltzan
Zappos is a good user of the two primary components of CRM strategy: operational CRM and analytical CRM. Through operational CRM, Zappos communicates with its customers via various communicating channels, and satisfies their needs by ordering different styles and sizes products as they want and providing free shipping and free return. Zappos then keeps tracking their customers and get customer information such as shopping preferences and behaviors.
Through analytical CRM, Zappos can make relevant strategies for advertising and marketing based on customer information, which in turn, helps Zappos keep the existing customers and attract more potential costumers. Accordingly, implementation of a CRM increased the customers’ satisfaction and creates strong loyal customers for Zappos.
The implementation of CRM and enterprise resource planning (ERP), as well as SCM, for a connected corporation can be attributed to Zappos’ valuing all the partners, suppliers, customers and employees. Zappos offers an enormous selection for customers (e.g. more than 90,000 styles), works with many suppliers (e.g. more than 500 brands), provides excellent employee benefits (e.g. “The Offer”), and processes numerous customer requests (e.g. the call center receiving more than 5,000 calls a day).
