Customer Relationship Management - Essay Example

The paper tells that privacy refers to a state of personal information being kept free from unsanctioned intrusion. It is concerned with the handling and protection of personal information that is sensitive. Individuals often give such information in the course of everyday business. On the other hand, data security is a means of ensuring that personal data is kept safe from corruption and access suitably managed and controlled. The differences between privacy and data security are important in handling customer information.

This is the reason many organizations have staff responsible for data security totally separated from those in charge of privacy. The differences will ensure that the company responsibly uses customer data to avoid legal suits related to misuse of customer information. It will also help in building customer trust. Building customer trust is vital for the company’s success. This is because it has the impact of building or breaking customer loyalty with the company. For this reason, customers prefer that their private information be kept secret, only being disclosed to authorized persons under their consent.

It is, therefore, important that the company maintain both data privacy and security. Customers mainly trust those companies that they believe maintain a high degree of privacy and security of their information. However, companies that do not maintain security and privacy of customer’s data may not be able to ensure customers’ trust. This in most cases resulted in legal action by customers who feels aggrieved by leakage of their personal information. Selladurai, (n.d) notes that companies that apply mass customization realized many positive outcomes.

The advantages they attribute to the fact that mass customization increased their market share, customer satisfaction, expanded customer knowledge, and reduced their order response time. Others reported reduced manufacturing cost, which resulted in increased profits. Customers benefit from the fact that they are reasonably priced, and products are manufactured in accordance with their personal preferences and specifications. Disadvantages of Mass Customization Companies that practice mass customization reported a number of disadvantages.

Most notable one is the fact that it increases the cost of production. This is due to the use of premium cost that the manufacturing system incurs for factoring in the flexibility of customization, and for sacrificing a certain degree of cost efficiency that is associated with standardization. Mass customization also lowers on time delivery to the customers. It lowers supplier delivery performance due to uncertainty in customer specification, which result in increased order response time. The method may also result in low product quality.

On the customer’s point of view, mass customization result in increased lay over time. This makes the product take longer to reach them. Customers are also not given a chance to return a customized product in case they are unsatisfied with the quality (Selladurai, n.d). Types of Mass Customization Component Sharing Modularity Mass Customization In this case, component swapping modularity is used to customize products by reusing a functional module across a variety of products. It can be a single motor across the power tools or in case