The customer is king This familiar slogan is more contemporary than ever today. For companies, this means coming up with new ways to make customers happy and keep them loyal. By developing an interdepartmental Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, Gira has chosen to use a digital tool. Janina Becker, Director of Marketing Services, explains what exactly CRM is, where we stand with regard to customer relations, and where we want to go.

Customer Relationship Management today is indispensable in ever more companies for the maintenance of customer relations, and is also being talked about by employees everywhere. What does CRM mean at Gira?
Janina Becker: As the name indicates, the customer is central to CRM. It is a question of maintaining customer relationships. In the widest sense, this includes all measures that a company and its employees take to communicate with customers, to satisfy them, and to keep them loyal to the company. In the strict sense, CRM is the maintenance, administration, and analysis of data, and the use of this data to optimally support the customer. The new CRM system is intended to effectively interlock the fields of Marketing, Sales, and Service and to provide a transparent platform for approaching, acquiring, and maintaining customers. The goal is to support customers in a target group-specific way in order to optimally utilize customer potential.

What are Gira's plans for this?
Janina Becker: Early next year we will "go live" with the CRM tool, so that we can be active in early 2018 for the next "Light+Building", a trade fair which is very important to us. Our associates should have enough time in advance to become familiar with the tool so that we can profit from the new functions at the fair - from the lead management system, for example.

A brief look ahead: How does CRM help Gira meet the challenges of the future?
Janina Becker: The new CRM system helps us enormously because it gives us a 360-degree view of our customers, which is something that helps us to understand them much better. All important information is collected centrally in the system so that we can support our customers in a more sustainable way. We will also be able to take a big step forward in the field of reporting - something which would be almost impossible to achieve with our current sales information system. In summary, we have the ability to control the individual areas of the customer relationships much more effectively. This makes our customers more satisfied - and satisfied customers ensure the future of our company.