3. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT
Customer relationship management (CRM) is building profitable customer relationships while increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the Postal Service. While there are many meanings of CRM, our strategy includes basic principles that are commonly found throughout industry:

• Align people, processes, and technology to build one view of the customer and one view to the customer.
• Increase knowledge about customers regarding who they are, their value, needs, preferences, and behaviors in order to differentiate them and treat them more effectively. Ultimately customers want to be treated as individuals, with unique needs. The movement toward self-service and customization is a hallmark of the type of treatment strategies in customer relationship management.
• Use customer knowledge to improve internal processes and create outstanding customer interactions and experiences. The focus is typically on the channels through which customers interact: customer services, marketing campaigns, and sales.
• Develop long-term, mutually beneficial business relationships to efficiently gain and retain profitable repeat business. To add value to the customer, the Postal Service can either reduce the cost of doing business and/or improve the quality. This must be done cost effectively.

In 2002, a unit was established in the Service and Market Development Office of the Marketing department to integrate these principles into the way we do business with our customers, primarily through improved technology. These assist our ability to identify customers, differentiate among their needs, interact with them and customize as necessary.

A business portal through which our largest customers can access multiple Postal Service systems is under development. This one-view, one-stop-shop for Postal Service information and access to systems such as PostalOne!, Confirm, ADVANCE, Centralized Account Processing System (CAPS), and Drop Shipment Appointment System (DSAS) improves the customer experience around the interact component. End-to-end, our Business Service Network will gain improvements through new technologies that provide both web and telephone-based service. The result will be improved data integration, more customer service options, access to service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and a better ability to manage the flow of information between the customer and the service representative. This end-to-end program builds on the identify and differentiate capabilities and will add to the interactive quality component of value for the customer, at a more cost-effective rate for the Postal Service.