Approaches to Customer Retention on E-Commerce Websites - Term Paper Example

The online recruitment has been developed to a very successful sector for businesses that choose this area. This development can be more clearly explained through the strong competition that characterizes the modern labor market while the pressure for the acquaintance of skills is becoming more intense every day. In this context, e-commerce can offer to the employers the possibility of choice in accordance with their specific demands and to the employees the knowledge on the current requirements regarding each particular employment sector.

Customer Relationship Management or CRM is a combination of enterprise strategies, business processes and information technologies used to learn more about customers' needs and behaviors in order to develop stronger relationships with them [8]. In this context, the life cycle of CRM can be considered as consisted of three particular phases – ‘customer acquisition, customer relationship enhancements, and customer retention’. The first of these phases – customer acquisition – allows companies ‘to effectively promote and market their products and services to prospects through the application of contact management and direct marketing modules’.

This procedure furthermore can help to the acceleration of the acquiring processes and to the reduction of the acquisition costs involved. The second phase of CRM – customer relationship enhancements - CRM helps companies ‘better understand existing customers' needs and behaviors and enhance the profitability from existing customers by cross-selling customizing their products and services to individual customers' needs and preferences’. The third phase of CRM – customer retention – has been related with the customer support and the design and operation of call center services.

Customer service module of CRM system gives the organizations the edge in customer support and call center services which can’ increase customer satisfaction while reducing the cost of support’. In this context, customer retention is considered critical to the overall profitability of an organization’.