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Proposal E-mail
To: sales_department@mail.com
From: headofmarketing@pdtr.com
Date: 2nd December 2020
Subject: Recommendations for Improving Customer Relations
Statement of the Problem
Over the past few years, the company has registered improvement in the sales volume, primarily
due to the high investments in the marketing department. However, the company's products are
in the maturity stage, and as such, there are additional business objectives rather than focusing
solely on sales. The previous actions have led to poor relationships between the firm and its
customers. This has been reflected in the reducing rate of return customers and poor reviews of
several sales employees. For this reason, the company needs to reengineer the marketing
function to include relation-building with the clients, especially in the current knowledge-based
environment. The company also needs to provide practical training to marketers on ensuring they
build trust and loyalty among consumers.
The Recommendation
For the company to ensure that the company establishes good relationships with customers and
enhance its sales, there is a need for new and improved customer-centric practices. The current
practices seem too outdated and not effective in engaging with the customers directly. Current
customer-centric practices fail to emotionally connect with customers. Hence markers do not
understand the feelings of the consumers towards their products. At the most fundamental level,
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the best examples of customer-centric companies are oriented around a customer-centric mission.
For instance, Ethos' mission to protect the next million families is part of what draws more
consumers towards the company. Globally leading companies like Amazon, for example, built
their entire model by being customer experience-obsessed. Thus, the company should focus on
its mission's ethos to enhance its emotional connection with consumers.
Current practices do not incorporate different ways in which marketers can comprehensively
understand customers. As a result, customers feel ignored and neglected, making a start seeking
other competitive companies. One best practice that the company can use to build a customer-
centric experience is for marketers to understand the customers deeply. That might sound
obvious at the surface level, but the truth is the company does not do this at a detailed enough
level. Marketers need to first understand what motivates the customers to interact and how their
needs and motivations vary to best serve them. They need to go beyond the surface-level, and
never regard their customer base as a monolith. Nonetheless, marketers need to learn who the
customers are at the level of their motivations, needs, and desires. One practical approach is to
clearly articulate those learnings in the form of personas. Then, saturate the company with that
insight. If conversations are made consistently tangible, marketers will be able to quickly
evaluate decisions from the customer's perspective, like their reactions towards a product update.
The business needs to engage in collaborative sales. This is a strategy that has been ignored by
the organization for the longest time. The current sales process is not cooperative, and customers
cannot take an active role in what they want to purchase. One innovation that gets swift adoption
in marketing platforms is interactive marketing. The organization should allow the customer to
take an active part in the sale process under this concept. It would inspire confidence and
ensuring that the consumers are more satisfied with the service offered by encouraging them to
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work hand in hand with the salespeople and design innovative concepts. Secondly, by
encouraging openness, the management of business marketing can create trust. Confidence is at
the core of a long-term friendship with a customer. The more clients feel familiar with the
expertise and skills and what the firm is doing, the more they can expect them to have the best
solutions.
For the past few years, the company has significantly failed in matters that concern the
customers. As a result, the company has lost most of its loyal customers due to a lack of trust.
Businesses often meet a committed customer with ethical considerations and responsibilities
when trust is formed. Firstly, the company must not use trust and misuse it to its fullest
advantage by selling poor quality goods and services or offering its product at higher prices.
Secondly, the organization is obligated to report reliable facts and awareness about a given item,
its usage level, and any harmful consequences of using the item. Trust does not negate the ethical
and moral responsibility to the target audience in certain conditions. Finally, the corporation
could rely even less on the selling of the commodity in question. Changing the commitment of
the corporate marketing team is another approach to forming relationships with customers. Most
salespeople also believe that selling goods is their obligation. Statistics suggest that marketers
often approach buyers well before they can make an offer. Consumers can feel like their needs or
concerns are not addressed by the business. The corporation should now concentrate on
identifying its consumers and marketing the product that suits their requirements.
Objectives and Expected Outcomes
The main aim of this proposal is to improve customer relations. This process-based view of the
strategy acknowledges multiple conventional CRM cycles like the strategic development
process, the value creation period, and the multichannel integration process. Nonetheless, the
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expected outcomes include higher levels of return clients, good customer reviews, customer
loyalty, and higher refer levels. The organization has placed consumers on the market as the
cheapest choice. The business will offer merchandise at significantly less expensive costs than
competitors would, produces supermarket outlets that provide a wide range of products, and has
no other rewards or services. Coupling this with better services will increase the overall sales.
To ensure that marketers can follow customer-centric practices and build trust, there is a need for
practical training. Special training on customer-centric practices is a significant capability
development activities essential to ensuring that the marketers possess the most appropriate skills
for their work. The customer-centric practices and capability development training will be
codified into the human resource management calendar and enforced by the department with
support from the administration. The rationale of the training programs is developing holistic
individuals who will ensure they cultivate trust and effective relations with the customers.
However, due to globalization and the changing trends, especially in marketing, the company
will redesign its training programs to ensure the best talent is developed among marketers. This
will help equip them with knowledge and skills that will enable them to perform efficiently and
will allow the company to achieve its goals in the competitive market.
Implementation Plan
The current approach intended to strengthen interactions between an organism and its clients is
Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The CRM principles vary from specific tools to
rigorous strategic management frameworks. The students and administrators have paid a lot of
interest in recent years. The implementation of the proposal, as mentioned above, will require a
complete change in the marketing strategy. This means that the departmental head refocuses the
investments on a collaborative approach and maintaining better relationships. The investment in
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raising sales will be rerouted to training all the salespeople on maintaining better customer
services. As such, there will be no additional investment in the department. This strategy will
have limited or no resistance from the top management and the sales team in the long-run.