company logo
CRM Solutions for Customer-focused Businesses
by James Haensly, Chief Technology Officer, Avaya Asia-Pacific
Article
Abstract
Businesses everywhere are recognising the importance of managing customers as
strategic assets and have begun focusing on superior customer service in the
context of a long-term relationship as a means to attract, acquire and retain
customers. Successful enabling of CRM begins through an understanding of today's
key business drivers-top line growth through efficient and effective multi-channel
customer relationships that leverage the full power of the enterprise.
Telecommunications without applications makes as much sense, or noise, as the
famous 'sound of one hand clapping.' A New Zealand-based financial services
company, was established as an Internet gateway for customers who want to
control their own financial destiny without the pressure often associated with
financial planning and investment. According to the company's Chief Executive
Officer "From a business perspective, the key driver was to offer consistency in
delivery of both service and information, irrespective of the communications
channel used by our customers. They can send us an email, phone us from a wired
handset or cell-phone, or use voice over IP via our web-site. Our communications
is seamless..." CRM systems are at the heart of this package.
Australia's leading Internet travel company, intends to more than triple the success
rate of its online booking services using an Internet Call Centre. By allowing
clients to click through to talk to an online travel adviser at critical times during
browsing, they believe many more people will complete their online travel
purchases. "It's all about turning lookers into bookers," explains the travel agency's
e-Business Systems Manager.
By implementing advanced CRM systems the agency will quadruple the capacity
of its communications hub and allow it to consolidate its offices in Sydney city,
Parramatta and Adelaide onto a single network for handling travel inquiries. It will
also allow a number of home-based consultants to be linked into the network.
What do we mean by CRM?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a rapidly emerging business
discipline being deployed as the best path to profitable growth by leading
businesses worldwide. In the Asia-Pacific region alone more than 25 per cent of
companies are currently investing in some form of CRM. But what exactly is
CRM?
Through a commitment to CRM, businesses serve their customers by managing a
total relationship with their customers, rather than through individual transactions.
Studies in the US show that businesses lose as much as 50 per cent of their
customers every five years. Combine this fact with the consideration that a one per
cent increase in customer retention can increase business profits by 25-30 per cent.
It shows businesses that ignore effective CRM implementations will struggle to
maintain a competitive, profitable edge in today's customer-focused business
world.
The goal of CRM is profitable growth through delivery of the right product or
service, to the right customer, through the right channel, at the right time and at the
right cost. The benefits of CRM are contained in results: top line growth, bottom
line performance, and employee and customer satisfaction. Pursuit of these goals
means aligning the entire enterprise around serving customers within a longer-term
context and can begin from many vantage points.
As businesses strive for greater expertise and the related support in systems and
technology, it is becoming even more challenging to align the enterprise in order to
meet the needs of the customer. Meeting customers' demand ranges from being
available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week through the telephone, e-mail, the Internet,
through to having accurate records of customer inter-actions and resolving issues
quickly and with care. Statistics show that today in the US as much as 75 per cent
of a business' interactions take place not through face-to-face contact, but through
the Internet. As the popularity of the Internet grows globally, it is only a matter of
time before similar customer interaction statistics are reflected in the Asia-Pacific
region.
As the range of products and services expand and customer demands increase the
support systems and tools become the 'integrating factor' in the operations of the
business.
The ability for an employee, or self-service option, to serve the customer well
depends on:
o the speed and latency of the infrastructure moving the data to the person who
needs it;
o the data profiling tools to understand a customer's preferences rapidly; o well-
constructed web interfaces and
o the ability to manage it all as if the company is aligned around delivering on each
customer's needs.
The challenges that leading edge companies are tackling today are aligning the
organisation and integrating the many transactions into a holistic view during each
customer interaction. A commitment to CRM means moving beyond serving the
customer in a transaction and sourcing new and improved tools and support
systems that can link together the many pieces of the enterprise into an aligned
delivery engine. CRM means that businesses can now match the customer's vantage
point, perhaps for the first time. Customers, as front line employees know, see the
company as an overall entity. When a customer contacts a business by e-mail, fax,
or in person, these interactions are part of an overall impression of the business and
how it delivers on its promises.
Consistent delivery on these promises is the key to CRM. With multiple customer
segments and multiple products and services, it is increasingly difficult to deliver
the expertise required to keep the many promises a business is making every day.
To do this and concurrently maintain a competitive cost is challenging. The
solution to this problem is intelligent and proactive software that can manage
various interactions and follow-up work items in a manner that aligns to the
business goals and delivers the promises made, over and over again-which leads to
attracting new customers and keeping them.
The Reality
In managing relationships with customers, organisations need to employ a range of
processes and technology, usually from different sources. This requirement makes
presenting a single holistic view difficult to achieve, unless a sound integration
strategy is adopted. There are a variety of technology tools that are employed to
help the organisation maintain relationships with customers. Much of the confusion
about CRM lies here, because vendors of different types of software all lay claim to
the title 'CRM Software' and therefore to all the benefits of CRM. It is worth noting
that in the US alone, companies are expected to invest US$106.5 billion by 2004 in
CRM solutions-such investment means there can be little margin for error when
implementing CRM systems. The fact is that there is no one kind of CRM software,
but a mixture of different tools and techniques required to meet CRM objectives.
This raises two issues: o That there are certain functions that a CRM strategy
requires software to perform, but vendors do not provide products that map directly
to those functions. There is always a mixture of products required to fulfil such
requirements; o That the integration to make it all work together is complex.
Successful CRM strategies need both planning and execution. However, most
organisations place emphasis on achieving this by one path only-either planning or
execution. The fact is that both are necessary and there needs to be interaction
between them to achieve the full potential of CRM i.e. 'closing the loop'. Such
integration:
o Automates the 'closing of the loop' between business processes for planning
CRM strategy (for example, determining customer profitability, segmenting
customers and the establishment of cross-selling rules) and the business processes
in the front-office that implement such strategies (for example sales and support). o
Establishes a definitive and consistent picture of customers, including past and
present 'in progress' customer interactions. o Allows re-use of the effort required to
build and maintain separate customer information for use by different software
systems.
There are many integration methods to implementing a CRM solution. However as
the complexity of integration increases, long implementation lifecycles start to
occur which may derail the organisation's CRM strategy. Along with the
integration complexity comes the issues in CRM planning and execution:
o Managing multi-channels and making it work with media: increasingly,
customers are choosing how and when they wish to do business with the vendor,
rather than the other way around. Moreover customers want the option to buy at the
same time as they seek service and to seek support advice from sales. The
complexity of this multi-channel environment has created a need for improved
communication and information sharing-not just within departments or for a
particular channel, but across all customer-facing functions and across all channels;
o E-commerce: this business approach has the most significant impact on CRM
strategy when an organisation uses e-commerce to sell to its customers;
o It is important that transactions performed in e-commerce are captured and
treated as part of the holistic customer relationship interaction. Customer records
are updated accordingly and made available to all other channels. Effective CRM
databases enable skilled employees to cross and up sell a company's goods and
services tailored to a particular customer. Case studies have shown this CRM
strategy can increase sales per order by up to 35 per cent;
o The Web is another important medium for interacting with customers, especially
if customers want to speak to a human being when the problem is urgent or because
they do not trust the transaction media. Additionally organisations will want to talk
to their customers to offer 'high touch' service or to chase non-payment;
o Consistency of processes across all channels of interaction: there needs to be one
consistent source of customer data, and one set of sales and support processes,
regardless of the means by which customer interaction occurs;
o Back-office integration: an organisation has functions that are not necessarily
'customer-facing', but that are still integral to managing an organisation's
relationships with the customers. These include accounting and billing functions,
product development or production, order processing and fulfilment and even
information from human resources systems that may be important in dealing with a
customer. For a complete view of the customer at the point of interaction, processbased integration between front office and back-office applications is necessary;
o Productivity gains from automation versus true CRM: an organisation will
achieve productivity gains that impact the bottom line by using sales force
automation, call-centre soft-ware, customer service software and campaign
management software. However, the realisation soon dawns that the best that can
be achieved under this approach is productivity gains, not the larger benefit of
business expansion promised by CRM. Achieving true CRM means that business
processes are looked at holistically and that these processes are performed
consistently across all channels with the ability to rapidly deploy them as the
dynamics of business change;
o A single logical view of data: a single, logical source of customer-data is vital.
Typically, front-office and back-office software packages are provided with their
own customer data models and associated implementation of a database. However,
these software packages are never installed in isolation. All existing organisations
have customer data and databases before they buy these software packages. In most
cases, the organisation will install the software package as another 'island' of
customer data, alongside existing ones. Clearly, this is contrary to the purpose of
installing the software in the first place, which is to enable one consistent view of
the customer across the organisation. Additionally, buying front-office and backoffice software from the same vendor does not guarantee that these two suites
necessarily use the same data model, or that they are well integrated.
Conclusion
Businesses everywhere are recognising the importance of managing customers as
strategic assets and have begun focusing on superior customer service in the
context of a long term relationship as a means to attract, acquire and retain
customers. Successful enabling of CRM begins through an understanding of today's
key business drivers-top line growth through efficient and effective multi-channel
customer relationships that leverage the full power of the enterprise.
HomeMagazine Contact UsCareers Tell a FriendSiteMap
©Copyright World Info Comms Ltd.