Customer relationship management (CRM) – 2

Unlike previous times, these days’ customers have many choices and they have become very particular about the place and company they are going to choose for dealing in their requirements. Today, there are plethora of products available to consumers and that too from hundreds of companies. It has also become increasingly difficult to differentiate in quality between same category products offered by companies. In earlier times, consumers did not have many choices and they had very little choice but to choose whatever companies used to offer. But, in the era of globalization, Customers have the option of going for best of the lot from all over the world. It’s not for nothing that customers are said to be the king today. Now, customers don’t hesitate in looking for other options in case they are not pleased with the services offered.

Customer relationship management is basically aimed at maximizing profitability by implementing various customer centric strategies. It helps businesses to distinguish themselves amongst its peers. CRM is nothing but grand total of all the deployed methodologies covering all the functions of business including marketing, sales, customer service, human resource management etc. It is instrumental in coalescing consumer’s faithfulness, enhancing revenues, reducing costs on the whole, superior cross-selling prospects and reorganization inter-related business process by having a holistic approach.

Customer relationship management (CRM) - Introduction

The dynamics of business has kept on changing over the years. Increasing competition has forced companies to set up new strategies and think over the old ones. In accordance with changing times, the corporate mindsets have also changed. Now every business strives to make good, long lasting relationship with its customers. Because success of every business depends upon how good a relationship it shares with its customers. The dawning of this realization in corporate boardrooms has propelled the theory of customer relationship management to the vanguard of many businesses’ tactical planning.

So what is CRM? CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. Basically, CRM is a process or method which is used to gain knowledge about consumers' requirement and actions in order to grow stronger and better relationships with them. With technological advancement, CRM has acquired various tools but it would not be a great idea to evaluate its importance in purely technological terms. At the core of CRM is a continuously evolving process that helps in bringing together multiple and multi-layered pieces of information about consumers, marketing, sales, awareness and trends prevalent in the market. Its primary function is to help business in using technical know-how and human resources to gain insight into the behavior of customers and the importance of the values that these customers bring.

Crisis Management - Conclusion

There are many crisis management consultants worldwide who helps organizations in dealing with crisis situations. Based on their expertise, there are few recommended steps to be followed in times of crisis.

· Informing and organizing the crisis team.
· The crisis team must be skilled, trained, multidisciplinary and tested.
· Launching two-way communications with all parties involved. This ensures better crisis response because two-way communication promises better results.
· Team should strive to substantiate incoming information as quickly as possible. Normally, it has been found that most of the preliminary information coming in is incorrect.

· Focus on controlling the crisis. This is initiated by taking instant crisis response actions to diminish the damage.
· It’s also very important to visualize how the crisis can spiral in severity.
· Checking "What if" unconfirmed information is, or is not, true?
· Recognizing worst possible scenarios and taking preventive measures.
· Identifying the ways when this situation can swell out of control?
· Categorizing all impacted stakeholders who are harmed or feel themselves in jeopardy.
· Methodically attending to their apprehensions and needs.
· Visualizing the prospective effect on core assets of the business such as People, Trust, Brand, Reputation, shareholder value, Finances, Business operations, intellectual property and Physical property etc.

· Finally taking essential decisions.
· Intended outcomes.
· Foreseeing the outcome of your decisions.
· probable inadvertent consequences
· Execution of the plans on a real time basis with the help of crisis response and revival phases.
· Implementing focused de-escalation.
· Keeping all channels open for receiving sensible inputs and continuing to observe impact on stakeholders (real and perceived).
· Lastly when the incident is over, carrying out a lessons-learned debriefing as a mandatory guiding principle.

Crisis Management-3

One more example of Crisis management was Nestle-Coke fiasco. In this case, worms and use of insecticides were found inside the bottles. Consequently, their sales took a great dipping. Apart from sales, their images went for a toss. People stopped drinking colas. Sales of chocolates were greatly affected. What followed afterwards was first major instance of crisis management in India. Image building exercises were carried with aplomb. Their products were endorsed by famous celebrities. It was followed by major PR blitzkrieg. The resulting effect was palpable after few months. All these frantic activities helped in damage control. It has been said that in times of crisis companies should never get defensive. Companies dealing the crisis situations with a proactive approach have better chances of emerging on top when the dust is settled.

Similarly in case of automobile major Honda, it had to face huge public embarrassment due to some technical snag found in its automobiles. It was forced to withdraw its vehicles from all over the world because a particular engine part was malfunctioning. This one incident dented Honda’s reputation like never before. It also had to face financial, legal, environmental and political implications. Thereafter, it was a huge exercise for the crisis management team of the company to rebuild the brand image or else the company ran the risk of losing its reliability. These examples prove that, the complete build up towards contingency plan is not easy but forecasting disaster and being prepared for it with convincing solutions helps a lot in the long run.

Crisis Management-2

One of the famous examples of crisis management is during a board meeting; the images of a laptop that suddenly burst into flames were captured on an employee’s cell phone. That particular recording was seen online by millions of awestruck viewers. And the manufacturer of the battery was renowned Sony Corp. Before Sony could do anything the clip was already seen by millions and damage was done. Sony had no choice but to recall millions of lithium-ion batteries which were used in various laptops models. At the same time, they worked to calm and handle the end users and media criticism that ensued.

In disasters like these, the lead role of soothing the ruffled nerves is performed by the PR department. PR department focuses on reconstructing the brand image by promising the consumers about the quality of the products and subsequent services. At the heart of Crisis management is preparation of emergency plans and providing exact information to the public, media and shareholders. While developing appropriate Crisis management plan, companies basically prepare themselves for any crisis that may arise in the future. Crisis management is more effective when swift moves are taken for superior long term results. It’s very important for companies to tell the truth in times of crisis because it reflects their uncompromising uprightness in the ethical and moral sense. This way, the status of the company is protected because the path becomes unambiguous by allowing those outside the team to stay focused on the business.

Crisis Management-1

Crisis management has come up big way in the scheme of the management. Although a topical breakthrough in management plans, it works as a superb tool in the hands of the management. Talking about its function, crisis management is basically concerned with forecasting and anticipating crisis a management could face and the subsequent methods to deal with them. Crisis can be defined as an unpredictable occurrence with potential to cause huge damage to the organization. The damages could be in form of financial loss, loss due to natural causes or perceptual damage. Natural damage is also termed as sudden crisis. Natural loss can be due to natural disaster like, explosions, earthquake, flood, twister, or fire etc. violence could also be a reason for sudden crisis situations. In the event of sudden crisis, organization focuses more on ensuring nominal damages and swift recuperation.

Crisis management helps management in handling unanticipated disaster situation. It also prepares organizations in categorizing the nature and origin of the crisis. Further, it helps in taking precautionary measures, restrict damages and finally recover as quickly as possible. Crisis management is more focused towards damages caused to the image of the organizations. When image of the organization takes a beating, it can prove to be the worst form of crisis for any business. It is often termed as perceptual crisis. In such cases, management deals with the situations on various levels

Media Management-3

Media management plays a great deal of active role in corporate world. Media management decides upon what sort of marketing and advertising policies should the company employ and how PR activities can successfully help the company.
These days, Most of the management institutions exercise the option of industry inputs on how to make media management courses more relevant that caters to the requirement of the industry. In India, the number of colleges offering media courses is relatively less, but with increasing demand more and more institutions are likely to come up with these specialized courses!

Few of the niche courses offered in mass media management are:-
Post Graduate Courses-
Post graduate Course in Cinema Studies
Post Graduate Diploma in Applied Design
Post Graduate Diploma in Documentary Film Production
Post Graduate Diploma in Electronic Cinematography
Post Graduate Diploma in Film Direction
Post Graduate Diploma in Post Production (Editing)
Post Graduate Diploma in Radio & TV Journalism
Post Graduate Diploma in T.V & Video Production
Post Graduate Diploma in Video Production
Post Graduate Diploma in Journalism
Post Graduate Diploma in Communication
Post Graduate Diploma in Advertising
Post Graduate Diploma in Public Relations
Post Graduate Diploma in Advertising and Mass communication
Post Graduate Diploma in Event Management

These are few of the courses offered under Mass media management.

Media Management-2

Unlike a decade ago, media industry is much more organized today. With growing influence of media, jobs in media have become more lucrative. At the same time, this industry is relatively small so positions are few, hence fierce competition. Media management courses have been of great help to the media houses because professionally trained manpower is in short supply in the industry.

Because of the fast speed at which this industry works, most of the media organizations do not wish to waste precious time in training an employee for its work. Success of a media organization is heavily dependent on effective management of time. That explains why production houses, television industry, advertising agencies and corporate need professional skilled employee force that can handle the business from the day they resume work.

So what exactly constitutes a media management course? Media management includes the entire relevant and necessary course elements which are needed by different sections of media houses. Like for television industry, media management skills are of great importance in the marketing department, especially for selling air time and handling different time slots. For advertising agencies, media planning is essentially the sector that takes care of media management. Client servicing takes care of the clients.

Media Management

We are fully aware of the fact that, in current day scenario, management is one of the most appealing and interesting careers that youngsters and professionals can pursue.
We have previously talked about various specializations available to students. In fact, students no longer face the constraint of only few traditional specializations. Just few years back, the specializations available to students were marketing, finance, system and human resources. But, with changing times and increasing competition, a whole new set of specialized courses are available to students. This has managed to open new exciting avenues for candidates. It won’t be wrong to assume if we say that, today students are spoilt for choices as far as management specialization are concerned.

One of the career choices is media management. This particular specialization is the latest buzzword in the industry. This career stream is gathering more and more momentum because of the fact that media industry has evolved in a major way in last decade. It is gaining importance and growing rapidly. In simple terms, media management involves, planning and controlling media activities effectively to promote products and services or to entertain masses. Many MBA colleges are offering media management as part of their curriculum. Apart from full time media management course, part time courses (mainly one year media management programs) are also available across the country.