Planning Customer Relationship Management Program - Essay Example

Planning Relationship Management Program [N a m e] “PLANING RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT PROGRAM” Planning and implementation of the customer relationship management program is not easy and requires considerable amount of focus and attention from all levels of organization. Apart from integrating the Customer Relationship Management with the vision of the company it is also necessary to understand the needs and requirements of the customers. Along with this one of the most important measure which should be taken by the management is to ensure that all internal employees and stakeholders are ready for the change and understand the new program.

Change of any kind, results in resistance on part of employees and other people in the initial phase. In order to minimize this resistance it is important to involve all related stakeholders in the overall process of decision making and change management. The overall process of implementing Customer Relationship Management program at Verizon has been more complicated and difficult as compare to any other implementation of the CRM program, because of the merger of two different organizations, Bell Atlantic and GTE.

Both organizations already had well establish Customer Relationship Management strategies and vision and had educated and trained their employees accordingly (Dyche & Wesley, 185). Now after merger the first step was to come up with a single vision and focus for the Customer Relationship Management program, which in turn results in the requirement of extensive training and education to the employees. The new organization was able to come up with the appropriate design and framework for the Customer Relationship Management program.

However there are some issues and challenges which should be solved with the help of appropriate strategies. The biggest challenge in this regard was of achieving consensus about the overall values of the Customer Relationship Program. Apart from this other issues faced by the management of the new organization were acceptance on part of employees, support from top management, developing understanding of the new CRM program, etc (Dyche & Wesley, 188). In order to solve these issues and come up with effective and efficient Customer Relationship Program, the management has to employ appropriate change management strategies.

It should be understood that the implementation of the Customer Relationship Program requires involvement of all important stakeholders of the organization. The first step in this regard is the scanning of the internal environment in order to understand the level of acceptance from the internal stakeholders of the organization. In order to ensure successful implementation of the Customer Relationship Management program in the organization, management of Verizon should keep in consideration the changes in the internal business processes associated with Customer Relationship Management program.

It is important to makes sure that the organization is ready for the new process. In this regard the most important step is to train and educate the employees whose job functions are directly affected by the new Customer Relationship Management system. Apart from this the implementation of the new system will result in downsizing in the organization as there will be some jobs which will be eliminated because of the implementation of the new technology. Hence the management of Verizon should focus on proper change management strategies in order to increase the organizational readiness and should train and educate the employees about the new technology and Customer Relationship System.

Works Cited Dyche, Jill, & Addison Wesley. The CRM handbook: a business guide to Customer Relationship Management. Boston, MA: Longman Publishing Co., Inc., 2002.