CRM: Profiting from understanding customer needs

Customer relationship management requires the alignment of three building blocks: insight into customer decision-making, information about customers, and information-processing capability. However, its emphasis on the latter has outpaced the first two, so that CRM rarely realizes its full potential. The guidelines presented here can help managers build a full-spectrum information portfolio for CRM that, through the thoughtful integration of existing tools, information properties, and communication channels, can provide a more complete picture of customers and form the basis for longlasting and profitable relationships with them.