In the early 1920’s a bakery shop opened in Calcutta in the main market area. It was quite the talk of the town. A young man would pass the shop every day on his way to home from work. One day he stopped to admire the beautiful cakes in the display window, and after a few moments carried on, but decided that on his wife’s birthday, he would gift her a small cake from the shop. The day approached and he ventured inside the shop to make his selection. He was captivated by the enamouring delicacies, and enquired the price of some of them. The price was more than he could afford, ‘We don’t even cut cakes, a rasogulla is the preferred sweet for us. Let me just head home,’ he thought.
The shop owner was keenly observing the scene, and was quickly able to place the customer as the regular passer-by. The next evening when the young man approached the shop, the owner came out to greet him; this continued for many days. A few weeks later, the shop owner invited the young man in and took him straight to the kitchen. While showing how cakes were baked and decorated, he offered the young man a juicy slice of a freshly baked cake. That day onwards, a cookie, a cake slice or a pastry awaited the young man at the shop.
Some months later, the young man had developed a taste for the baked eatables and also a comfort in eating them and sharing them with his family. One day he bought a beautiful cake for his father’s birthday and became a regular customer of the cake shop, recommending many of his friends and family.
The small act of the shop owner to develop a relationship with the young man led to an association of a lifetime, with many others entering into the fold. It was essentially a customer relationship management strategy.
Similarly, businesses should develop and activate a customer relationship policy with a prospective customer not once he /she buys the product/service, but immediately after he/she shows an interest in the product/service offered by the business, otherwise, it would make a customer of the competition. A successful business has a CRM department that works from pre-sales to during sales, and also after sales.