Many people
claim to know CRM or even Social CRM, but fact is: they do not fully understand
the key drivers and thus fail to succeed in a highly competitive environment,
where mistakes a crucially punished and where only few leaders reap above
average results.
CRM is a
business strategy to maximize revenues (Sales), profitability (Marketing) and
customer satisfaction (Service). And this has a major impact on necessary
leadership, organization, people, culture and technologies…
Effective CRM
Companies
must manage all tasks through a customer centric process cycle: Segment
prospects, develop offers, launch campaigns, manage leads (increase win rate),
configure quotes, manage eliminate orders (capture/ eliminate), activate
service and assure service.
Marketing
is to manage the process of anticipating, identifying and satisfying customer
requirements profitably. Focus is on
Analytics (Segmentation/ Pre-Analysis, ROI Analysis), Campaign design (Budget
Allocation, Product/ Offer definition, Creative development), Campaign
Execution and Campaign tracking.
Marketing
must understand the customer throughout the entire journey: Awareness,
Consideration, Purchase, Service and Loyalty. The challenge is that Online and off-line
interactions become increasingly interwoven and must be effectively managed
throughout all touchpoints.
Customer
service is provided through assisted (email, IM, Contact Centers), self (Web
portal, ATM Kiosk, IVR/ Speech) and field (agents, partners/ dealer) service. Its role is to build increasing customer
insight to improve operations.
CRM’s goal is to increase the opportunity by
improving the process to communicate
}
Right
Customer: Manage
customer relationships throughout their life cycle. Realize customer potential
by increasing “Share of Wallet”.
}
Right
Offer: Efficiently
introduce customer and prospects to your company and its products and services.
Customize your offerings for each customer
}
Right
Channel: Coordinate
communications across every customer touch point. Communicate to customer’s
channel preference. Capture and analyze channel information for continuous
learning.
}
Right Time: Efficiently communicate to customers based on time relevance. Communicate
with real or near-real time or traditional marketing.
Trust is very important
Companies
need to understand the different kinds of trust: blind trust; trustworthiness based
on reputation of a person or product; contextual trust (dependent on
circumstances) and referred trust based on opinions/ recommendations of people
we respect or admire.
Depending
what kind of trust an individual prospect or customer has, companies need to
customize their communication style and promotional efforts.
Objective is to develop a full 360 degree
Customer view:
-
Descriptive
data – Who?
o
Attributes,
characteristics, relationships, self-declared information, geographic &
demographic data
-
Behavioral
data – What?
o
Orders,
transactions, payment & usage history
-
Interaction
data – How?
o
Email
or chat transcripts, call center notes, web click streams, in person dialogues
-
Attitudinal
data
o
Opinions,
preferences, needs and desires.
Starting point is a solid CRM strategy
Starting
point is solid CRM Strategy to acquire new customers (new product launch,
prospecting & lead generation and qualification, new sales), to optimize existing
customers (Cross & Upsell, increase product usage), to retain customers
(retention & loyalty, customer care & service, win-back) and to
optimize margin (Channel migration, results measurement, product
stratification).
New success drivers to ensure organizational collaboration
-
Trust
& Relationship
o
Communicate
common vision
o
Make
true client engagement part of organization’s culture and DNA
-
Direction
& Leadership
o
Executives
and management to role model a participative/ servant leadership style
o
Offer
freedom and support to excel
o
Drive
brand values
-
Innovation
and continuous improvement
o
Drive
customer understanding
o
Strive
for creative, close engagement
o
Develop
right skills, positive management reinforcement, coaching
-
Agility
& Alignment
o
Create
necessary new roles to address needs
o
Build
fluid teams working in matrix or customer focused structure
o
Nourish
community engagement
o
Implement
relevant metrics
o
Align
compensation with customer expectations
-
Process
optimization
o
Establish
department specific, cross departmental (quote to cash, campaign to
compensation, etc.) , industry vertical specific
-
Offer
right tools
o
Use
of latest technologies
o
Offer
enterprise mobile apps for internal workforce
o
Provide
external apps (customers, partners, etc.) and cross functional apps (real time
mobile BI)
Example: Focus points of Telecommunication
operations
-
Case management
o
Create,
track and manage customer service requests integrated with contract management
-
Service progress work flow
o
Case
queues to manage agent work load
o
Rules
based case assignment
o
Customizable
business process
-
SLA Tracking & Management
o
Contract
management and service level commitments
o
Escalation
and notifications
o
Follow
the sun support
-
Unified Agent Desktop
o
Simple
and intuitive user interface
o
Single
desktop for all supported channels
-
Integrated CTI
o
State
of the art telephony with rules based routing and context sensitive screen pop
ups
o
Outbound
dialing and support for call scripting
-
Email management
o
Auto
acknowledgements with rules-based personalization
o
Library
of email responses
o
Email
tracking, monitoring and integration
Social CRM
Social CRM is the company's response to the customer's ownership of the
conversation. It enhances and not replaces CRM described
earlier. It is a business strategy not a technology, tool or platform. It is
designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to
provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business
environment.
All businesses have always been social;
what’s new is the set of observable
behaviors and available technologies that enable businesses to
leverage these to solve business
problems.
Social CRM must be understood in the context of Experience, Networks and
Events.
Consumers, and people in generally, do not want to be sold anymore. In
response, effective companies develop and practice the art of storytelling. They
describe with talking about situation that starts with a Challenge (1) that a
Character (2) has and then moves readers/ listeners to a solution (3) through a
roadmap. Conflict is used to maintain suspense and interest.
Social
CRM changes approach of traditional CRM
Now, everybody in an organization has CRM responsibility. Now, the
customer defines the engagement process, determines the channels, engagement
time, level of interaction. Companies now need to truly align to customer needs
and specific expectations.
Companies must strive every hour to build, maintain and develop a happy
customer into an advocate and life-long customer. Consumers today have an
immense knowledge and power to switch to a competitor with a few clicks.
CRM and Social CRM combined gain a crucial part in the success of a
company. Both functions, ideally integrated and managed as one, need to help its
organization understand the motivations, experience and objectives of the
internal and external clients of the organization.
Further,
CRM and social CRM should
-
Provide focus to the organization, community and networks
-
Drive improvements of processes, participation and
relationships
-
Offer knowledge (explicit, emergent, embedded)
-
Help leverage transactions, innovation and interactions
-
Measure effectiveness, efficiency and engagement
For more
thoughts on successful implementation and supporting technology aspects, please
refer to previous articles in my blog section covering social media, mobility,
cloud, big data and digital transformation.
+++
To share your own thoughts or other best practices about this topic, please email me directly to alexwsteinberg (@) gmail.com.
Alternatively, you also may connect with me and become part of my professional network of Business, Digital, Technology & Sustainability experts at
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwsteinberg or
Xing at https://www.xing.com/profile/Alex_Steinberg or
Google+ at https://plus.google.com/u/0/+AlexWSteinberg/posts
+++
To share your own thoughts or other best practices about this topic, please email me directly to alexwsteinberg (@) gmail.com.
Alternatively, you also may connect with me and become part of my professional network of Business, Digital, Technology & Sustainability experts at
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwsteinberg or
Xing at https://www.xing.com/profile/Alex_Steinberg or
Google+ at https://plus.google.com/u/0/+AlexWSteinberg/posts
