The future of customer relationship management

Customer relationship management (CRM) is often perceived as a technology s olution, an idea promoted by the technology vendors, but it has become appa rent that the best organisations look towards customers to drive the way th at they do business. CRM requires a basic shift in organisational culture, cross-functional integration, politics, management philosophy, process engi neering and systems design. It demands the destruction of traditional silos that are marketing, sates, service and IT. For CRM to survive in a turbulent market where service and customer value p rovide the differentiator in an increasingly commoditised market it must be harnessed to make companies truly different. It needs to acknowledge that customer relationships are about emotion not logic, that processes are fit to deliver the customer experience and technology is deployed to enhance th e experience not detract from it.