Benefits and liabilities of relationship marketing

¶ … Technology Impacts Relationship Marketing

The use of guided selling technologies is pervasively used throughout manufacturing and services companies to provide responsive support to customers online, on a 24/7 basis. Cisco, Conair, Schneider and many other companies rely on guided selling to stay more connected with their commercial accounts on a 24/7 basis (Lager, 2006). Guided selling technologies are often used to sell commodity-level products that do not extensive long sales cycles and are purchased more on brand loyalty alone. Consumables are sold for example by Staples over their websites to both consumer and commercial accounts through a guided selling system. The purpose of these systems is to provide the guidance sales representatives can give, yet guided selling can impart expertise at no cost. Cisco relies on guided selling systems to also serve their low-volume resellers and partners, as is it more cost effective using guided selling over having an individual sales representative call them (Lager, 2006).

Guided selling systems are based on a technology that applies a series of constraints to a product catalog, making it more perfectly aligned with the preferences of the customer (Ong, Lin, Nee, 2006). Called a constraint engine, the approach these software applications use is to concentrate on a unique set of customer inputs, typically gained over a website, to provide a solution set for the customer. Cisco has created a guided selling system that will configure an entire network, and American Power Conversion has also created one that can configure an entire raised floor it installation. The use of guided selling systems and configurators for the strengthening of customer relationships has been a very successful strategy on the part of the companies mentioned in addition to many others, as this technological approach saves salespersons' time while also providing customers what they need when they need it, as is the case with commodity products for example.