Customer Relationship Management in Reverse Logistics

Customer Relationship Management in Reverse Logistics

Explain what customer relationship management is and what the correlation of customer relationship
management and information technology is as part of reverse logistics concept of the supply chain.

Use one of the four management philosophies to help frame your answer.

Find an example from a real company and include some policy from them; show a product picture of the

activity if you can find one.

Customer relationship management is a system or strategy used by companies to
manage relationships and interactions with both customers and prospective customers. Customer
relationship management frameworks help companies to stay connected strategically to
customers as well as streamline the process and improve company competitive advantage and
profitability. Customer relationship management and information technology are by companies
to manage customer relationships and equip teams with capabilities to record, report and analyze
interactions between users and companies. Thus, CRM is a strategy used by companies as a
business philosophy to understand how relationships with both customers and potential
customers should adequately be managed. Besides, CRM provides the systems that a business
can adapt to manage and nurture customer relationships (Lai & Cheng, 2016).

Customer relationship technology is crucial as it helps companies to record
customer contact information such as emails, website social media profile and telephones.
Customer relationship technology is also essential as it helps to automatically pull in other
information like recent news about activities of the company as well as can store details such as
communications and personal preferences of customers. Thus, CRM organizes customer
information to give companies a complete and comprehensive record of individuals and

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companies to understand your relationship over time. The primary objective of CRM is to
improve customer relationships by creating a 360 0 view of customers and capturing their
interactions with a reverse logistics business network to surface the information needed to
establish better conversations with customers (Lai & Cheng, 2016). Therefore, CRM enables
logistic companies to deepen their relationships with customers, colleagues, partners, service
users, and suppliers to establish and maintain effective and efficient reverse logistic networks or
chains. This is because forging good relationships and keeping track of customers and prospects
is vital for both retention and acquisition of customers (Ptak & Schragenheim, 2016). Besides,
CRM allows companies to see everything in place through a simple and customizable dashboard
that provides previous history or information such as outstanding customer service issues and the
status of customer orders. Thus, CRM technology enables logistics companies to establish
sustainable competitive advantageous by strategically solving customer problems and
establishing strong customer relationships that allow firms to understand and meet customer
demands. This leads to improved customer satisfaction and improves company profits. Customer
relationship management provides companies with strategies that focus on the future through
forwarding-thinking business and providing a reverse logistic framework to establish productive
and profitable customer relationships (Ptak & Schragenheim, 2016).

Management philosophies allow companies to effectively and efficiently integrate
and coordinate resources in reverse logistics chain to achieve the desired goals. Therefore,
management processes allow logistics managers to create a climate for improved customer
relationships in order to achieve personal and organizational growth through proper planning,
staffing, organizing, controlling and leading management functions. Using system philosophies,
reverse logistics companies can transform inputs into outcomes while continually interacting

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT IN REVERSE LOGISTICS 3
with its environment. This philosophy allows companies to automatically use CRM technologies
to forge better relationships with customers in order to attain competitive advantage. This allows
companies to establish policies and framework that lead to improved business performance (Ptak
& Schragenheim, 2016). The product of effective CRM policies is improved profitability and
business performance.
CRM Framework

Information technology and customer relationship management have a positive
correlation as they lead to improving business performance in reverse logistics. This is because
an efficient information technology system is essential in supporting reverse logistic functions in
various stages of the product lifecycle (Romero & Vernadat, 2016). Information technology
creates linkages for logistic companies to make reverse logistic operations useful as well as track
and trace customer relationships in different activities of the company. Information technology
capabilities in reverse logistics significantly influence company competency by providing
improved relationships and coordination in the entire reverse logistics process. Information
Customer Relationships

Customer Pressure
Corporate Social
Responsibility
Technology Information
Government Regulations

Business Performance Reverse Logistics

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technology capabilities support a customer relationship management system in order to achieve
adequate and sufficient reverse logistics operations by promoting and providing accurate
information, which enhances company visibility. Integration CRM systems and information
technology allow companies to improve the performance of reverse logistics through proper
handling of customer issues and product returns. Information technology helps CRM system to
have end-to-end capabilities for return forecasting and ensuring customer return collaboration
(Romero & Vernadat, 2016).

Information technology and customer relationship management provide reverse
logistics companies with knowledge-based systems in order to remain competitive by designing
reverse logistic frameworks or networks that traditional rival systems about cost-effectiveness,
efficiency, customer satisfaction and competitiveness (Romero & Vernadat, 2016). Therefore,
information technology and customer relationship management provide strategies, policies, and
technologies that reverse logistic firms use to analyze and manage interactions between
customers and data throughout the customer lifecycle. Thus, the primary objective is to achieve
improved customer service relationships and help in retaining customers as well as drive the
growth of customer sales. Besides, information and CRM systems consolidate customer
documents and information into a single database for easy access and management (Romero &
Vernadat, 2016).

In summary, customer relationship management and information technology give
logistic companies the ability to track and improve performance and productivity. This is
because they allow workflow and marketing automation, sales improvement, geographical
marketing campaigns, human resource management and effective customer relationships. Thus,
proper CRM systems ensure that improved business performance of reverse logistic companies

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by increasing customer loyalty and usage behavior as well as reducing customer complaints that
lead to customer satisfaction.

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References

Lai, K. H., & Cheng, T. E. (2016). Just-in-time logistics. Routledge.
Ptak, C. A., & Schragenheim, E. (2016). ERP: tools, techniques, and applications for integrating
the supply chain. Crc Press.
Romero, D., & Vernadat, F. (2016). Enterprise information systems state of the art: Past, present
and future trends. Computers in Industry, 79, 3-13.