When companies treat customers as royalty, can technology be far behind? The methodical, automated and algorithmic-driven processes of “knowing the customer,” “managing customer expectations” and “keeping the customer” makes CRM an indispensable tool in business.
“What's actually driving businesses to adopt a CRM strategy today is that products and services are now too commoditized. There's no differentiation any more. There is more competition around the globe and customers have higher expectations. Call centers, for example, is a very competitive market. So how does one call center BPO differentiate itself from all the others?” said Chandru Relwani, senior CRM director for APAC and Japan at Oracle.
“One should be able to provide customers products and services that differentiates the organization from competitors. That is where the biggest value of CRM,” he added.
The findings of Harris Interactive's customer experience impact report 2009-2011 hardly surprises anyone in the business of customer relations: 82% of respondents would stop doing business or purchasing products from a competitor as result of one negative experience. Just over a quarter of consumers posted this negative experience on a social networking site.
“Effectively, what that means (for businesses) is that as a consumer if I go to a bank and I get a negative experience, chances are I'll go to the next bank to get the same product or service,” Relwani said. “On the other hand, if I get good service I would recommend it.”
In the call center space, a negative service could mean the failure of the call center agent to resolve customer issues immediately or the failure of a customer channel such as a website, a mobile application, to engage the customer at the point of need.
“In the past, there has never been any talk about the need to collaborate with the customer across the different channels -- be it a cellphone, website, tablet, social media, face-to-face, kiosks etc. So when we talk about collaboration, it's also about being able to do instant chat, or being able to talk to a relationship manager,” Relwani said.