Every businesses deal requires two parties – one that buys and one that sells. While both are critical to the existence of the other, in a market that has many products and many sellers, the importance of the buyer would go up (the converse is true as well). Customers being critical to the existence of any business, it is a primary tenet of business practice that customers are important. Nowadays, this dictum is expressed in the motto “the customer is the king”. It is also a generally accepted truth that holding on to a customer is more difficult than getting a new customer, as the expectations keep increasing, and fulfilling them becomes difficult.

Customer management refers to the process and practice of boosting and retaining the customer base. The process is a complex one and usually is referred to by the modern management principle of ‘customer relationship management’. Customer management primarily entails improving customer service, which encompasses: better and more accessible product information, technical support; swift identification of problems; user friendly and preferably human interface; a fast mechanism for managing and scheduling maintenance, repair, and on-going support (improve efficiency and effectiveness), etc. The basic objective is always to make the customer feel important, to ensure that he or she has a good experience with the product or service, and that he/she derives satisfaction so that it translates into more sales.

Today, the medium sized and larger companies use software solutions, called CRM software, that are used for comprehensive customer management. Providing the advantages of automation, databasing and centralizing of information, these software solutions enable more efficient management and user satisfaction.
This section of the directory provides links to various related resources, from information resources on customer management to software solutions.

 Related Resources