CRM & Privacy

Two weeks ago, I posted the blog about the relationship between convenience and privacy. I wrote that convenience and privacy are the relationship of inverse proportion. Today's post is also related to it.

Recent marketing trend shifted from mass marketing for gaining new customers to targeted marketing for maintainig existent customers. It was because low economic growth made it difficult to gain new customers. (I heard that according to the research by an automaker, they have to spend $7,000 to gain new customer. If it's true, it's ridiculous.) It is easier for them to maintaining existent customers, so they focused more on maintaining the good relationship with customers. That's why CRM is important today.

To maintain the good relationship with customers, it is important to give personalized service to each customer. They must collect each customer's personal information such as name, age, interest, etc, as much as possible, and analyze it to give them adequate service. Thanks to the development of technology, the management and analysis of customer information became much easier, and also there are many CRM software to help them.

However, as the management of customer information become more important, they have to store more personal information. They will use it for better CRM, so they store it in their server. Of course, I believe they place strict control on such information and anyone can't access it easily. But again, we have to give up privacy for convenience.