Technology meets marketing: customer relationship management can reduce costs, increase revenue.

Fuel Oil News, May, 2005 by Hatch, Mike

Technology has transformed the way many companies now approach marketing and the management of customer relations. Many highly successful Fortune 500 Companies have successfully employed CRM, or Customer Relationship Management technology. The technology has provided significant competitive advantages while reducing costs, expanding capabilities and growing revenue.

In the oilheat industry, our customers have hierarchical value based on the services they purchase. For example, an auto-delivery customer is more valuable than a will-call customer. Likewise, a customer that purchases annual services like a tune-up or service contract is more valuable than those that do not. There is a relatively short list of comparisons and a simplified version of this customer...