Give
them the ‘corner shop’ feeling we’ve lostCRM: all you need to know before you make your choice
Choosing a CRM package is a big step which involves some tricky decisions. Success is more likely if you take the advice of these experts
Give
them the ‘corner shop’ feeling we’ve lost
COMPANIES looking to deliver successful CRM projects need to revert back to what we’ve lost in modern societies — the traditional “corner shop” model of personalised service.
Look to provide a more proactive service than one that simply deals with customer issues and problems. Go beyond satisfaction and create an emotional connection between the company and customers. Often, this will require re-thinking customer interaction models that are for the most part predominantly centred on inbound customer inquiries.
Several forward-thinking companies have made great in-roads into addressing these issues successfully through “dynamic customer engagement”.
Strong ties with customers can be built through pro-active contact to offer them new products and services, and introduce cross- and up-sales.
However, this is still clearly a “sell” and so the potential for customer scepticism remains. Ninety per cent of consumers would have a more positive opinion of a company if they were to receive a courtesy call, to follow up after a new contract, upgrade or change in service. Customers appreciate a quick phone call to thank them for their business, and to check that they are satisfied with what they have received. Having this kind of service in place is another factor that can distinguish your business from your competitors and create a strong, sustainable relationship with your customers.
Planning, executing and managing this kind of outbound campaign without adding cost can be initially daunting. However, the ability to do this is dependent on the set-up of the call centre and its processes. Segmented and siloed contact centres will find it difficult to manage this kind of blended approach. However, a dynamic call centre enables you to effectively integrate the separate elements that make up an effective, multi-channel customer service approach.
How? And is it expensive to implement?
Remember that, essentially, any employee is capable of making a courtesy call or informing a customer of new products and services – it doesn’t just have to be your most experienced agent.
Use staff in the back office as well as agents, and you’ll be able to keep up more regular contact with your customers and optimise the effectiveness of every person within the customer service organisation. This is key to strengthening customer relationships, customer loyalty and enhancing your company’s brand.
Mind
the queue
IN OUR survey, seven out of 10 British people said they were not happy to hold for more than three minutes before talking to an agent. Another 27pc said that they would wait between three and 10 minutes. Just two per cent would not hang up after more than 10 minutes — so they say.
The reality is different. More than 43pc of callers have spent 10-30 minutes waiting for advice or support at least once. An astonishing 28pc have experienced waiting times of more than half an hour.
Now combine these numbers with the fact that consumers believe that the qualitative differences between products are shrinking. What is very clear is the companies have to get a grip on their call centres and customer service. Now.
Technology is indeed a powerful enabler for significant improvements in call centres. But there are still way too many call centres using ancient communications systems running, completely separate from customer service processes with no direct connection to other relevant systems such as CRM, databases and monitoring tools.
Connecting communications and CRM and allowing businesses to identify the caller before the agent picks up the phone should be quite simple.
But taking it to the next level by being able identify agent availability and route the call to the agent the customer last spoke to improves the level of service and customer experience as the agent has prior knowledge of the customer’s enquiry and background. This also helps agents quickly access customer records, process orders and resolve problems.
Successful businesses integrate their communications with their customer service processes and CRM systems (i.e. an all-IP solution), benefiting from faster processes and satisfied customers. For the rest, the phone might remain silent.
Kris Mckenzie, head of CRM, SAP (UK); kris.mckenzie@sap.com
Don’t
bombard them…tell them only what they need to know
MOST call centres have a traditional data-centric approach. They bombard agents with every bit of customer data, wherever stored and whatever its relevance. It relies on the agents to do the analysis to create the right view of customers when they call.
In an ideal situation, this provides class-leading and efficient customer service — where the best-trained and most experienced agents, fully-motivated and skilled at manipulating the data in front of them, deliver a truly personalised response.
The problem is that this takes time to achieve. It’s dependent on the ability and attitude of the individual agent, requires a real commitment to training and demands that data is in a consistent and accessible format.
The key here is to recognise the importance of process.
In adopting a process-centric approach, the need to analyse data is taken away from agents. Process management software looks at all the data automatically, applies intelligent analysis in real time and instantly provides agents with only what is relevant in each case. Managing data delivery during calls removes dead time as agents trawl multiple systems, yet provides the right data at the right time.
This is intent-driven processing. Agents not only have access to a complete record of the customer’s interactions with your business, but they are automatically prompted — before they take the call — as to the most likely reason for that call and the appropriate processes required to deal with the anticipated query.
By having this prepared, together with all the relevant information, you show that you truly understand and value your customers. And it significantly cuts call times, stress levels and staff attrition…and improves first-time resolution.
Put simply, the call centre delivers the equivalent of the best service from the best agent — every time.
Bryn Standrin, contact centre business consultant, Pegasystems; bryn.standrin@pega.com
Hosted
vs. on site: questions to ask yourself
IF YOU’RE looking seriously at buying a CRM package, you will quickly come across the long-running debate about the pros and cons of on-premise vs. hosted.
Choosing on-premise means that your company holds your data and software applications in-house. Staff at their desks, via the web or a mobile device can then access information. Hosted, or on-demand, is where the servers and data are housed by the vendor and available via the web. Then there’s the hybrid option where a third party hosts the data and applications, but ownership is still held internally.
Whichever route you choose, there are a number of questions you need to ask yourself first:
How important is customer data? If your is “very”, an on-premise application will enable you to have the most control over your data. But if you don’t want to dedicate resources system maintenance, hybrid may be an attractive option. This enables you to take complete ownership of your information and the software application, while utilising a third-party partner for other services.
What is the total cost over five years? The cost and scope of CRM go beyond the software alone. Successful CRM is achieved by using a package to optimise processes and training the staff to use it properly. You need to take into account the number of licences, additional hardware, implementation, training and support. Whether it’s capital expenditure or an operational expense, understanding the total cost over the next five years will ensure that you’re focusing on the total RoI — and that you are not surprised by unexpected charges.
Can I integrate CRM with my existing systems? Giving staff the ability to call up back-office information is critical. They may need to check credit balances, outstanding invoices and product details. You need to bring key pieces of relevant information into a CRM system for sales and service staff to use. It may not be feasible to customise or integrate a hosted CRM solution so you need to ask how the solution is hosted and how it affects your ability to integrate it with your back-end systems.
Whatever system you chose, success will come through effectively training staff to use it to its maximum benefit. Selecting the right vendors and partners will yield great returns in staff productivity, management visibility, greater customer relationships — and increased sales.
Not
all the information, just what’s needed
EVER since their first appearance in the1990s, CRM systems have promised much and delivered less.
Even for those call centres that beat the odds and had a successful implementation, the management perspective was that CRM just created another application that the agents had to navigate around and enter data into.
In some cases, it increased the number of applications on the desktop to more than 20 — almost none of which had been designed with agents in mind. CRM is especially a problem with the embedded processes developed with the needs of the marketing and sales departments in mind rather than those of the agents or customers.
No one will argue that keeping your customers happy is vital; but is a 360-degree view of the customer really needed in a call centre to keep customers happy?
While it’s important to have information about the customer, an agent needs to access all the information about that customer that is relevant to the call, with the information easily accessible at the right time during the call. To achieve this, and to get the most out of the CRM and other applications, it is necessary to implement a unified agent desktop.
The “unified” or “intelligent” agent desktop provides a single point of access to all the mission-critical applications and tools required by the agent for effective customer interactions.
More importantly, it provides an integrated, automated, contextual view of customer data and customer service processes. It automates workflow to align agent tasks with the intent of the customer, and streamlines the interaction to deliver a more efficient and effective customer experience. It is a desktop solution that works with existing business applications, leveraging the logic and data in these systems through native and “non-invasive” integration techniques, to deliver an intelligent and dynamic view of the customer.
An intelligent desktop can improve almost any metric associated with efficiency and effectiveness — from handle times, training costs, call resolution, and revenue per call to ultimately improving the customer experience.
It can also have a dramatic positive effect on a company’s ability to enforce policies and procedures and achieve compliance. Bottom line — a unified agent desktop reduces cost, increases customer satisfaction and drives revenue growth.
Guy Tweedale, senior vice president European operations, Jacada; gtweedale@jacada.com
Turn
your call centre into a CIH
CUSTOMER service success depends upon an emotive response to the exchange of credentials and information, completed with efficiency, openness, personality and style.
The key to 21st century CRM lies with the true integration of all customer interactions. Customers no longer accept being the glue across multi-channel interactions or contending with multi-agent conversations; disparate organisations turn them off.
Whilst multi-channel can bring great productivity and efficiency gains, without a high level of synergy between all front and back-end operations the customer experience can still suffer.
Synergy doesn’t happen on its own; multiple channels don’t necessarily mean multi-channel. It’s critical that people, processes and technology must work towards delivering a unified and consistent customer experience that can:
deliver a profitable return on interactions for all parties
increase customer satisfaction and brand loyalty
make more effective use of agents for adding business value, and
create an openness to cross and up-selling.
The more varied your interaction options, the more important it is to support them with the same information, best practices and metrics. Astute organisations are transforming traditional call centres into multichannel customer interaction hubs (CIHs). At the heart of every successful multi-channel customer interaction hub is a common infrastructure that is open, robust and designed for growth.
Organisations seeking to improve services and achieve more profitable returns on customer interactions are moving beyond traditional CRM to this more collaborative approach, enabling them to present a single face to customers and to recognise and know them at every contact point.
Andrew Mennie, general manager, eGain EMEA; amennie@egain.com
Getting
your CRM system to work for you.
SOME people, rather unkindly, think that when I started in business I chalked my contacts’ details on a slate board. It was a bit unfair. In fact, we had Rolodex cards, where we could keep name, address, phone and fax details (no email or web addresses then) on one side and use the other side for notes. It fell short of even early CRM software.
In the past 20 years CRM packages have developed from a flat file database with basic information — such as contact and company name, address, web site, email and phone details — to very sophisticated modular software systems incorporating email, quotation systems, sales order processing, HR and linking to marketing modules.
With 50-plus packages now on the market, the challenge is to find one that will work for your business and one that will be capable of growing organically with you.
With so many choices, you’ll need to look at some key points.
First, where do you want to host the system: in house, on your own network or hosted online by a third party? The answer depends on the type of company you are, your IT infrastructure, expertise in-house and the stability and speed of your internet connection.
Other things to consider are how do you work now as a company and how you match features of the software to the workflow of your business. Can more modules or additional features be added later or as your company grows, or are you buying a system that will force you to work in a way that perhaps you don’t find the most efficient?
Is the package flexible enough and do you have a relationship with the developers who you can rely on to make the required changes? To me this is the most important decision of all…otherwise I still have some Rolodex cards left over.
Mike Holman, sales director, Computech; mikeh@computech-it.co.uk
Do
you leave your customers stranded on islands?
MUCH effort has gone into making the call centre the main contact point for customers over the past 10 years. And, during this same period, the use of self-service has increased rapidly.
Yet in a lot of companies these channels remain individual islands.
Many people, particularly younger people, have a strong preference for self service and will only reach out to the call centre after they have exhausted their efforts to address a problem or need on their own. Others primarily rely on call centres.
However, that doesn't reflect the true picture.
The growing complexity of product offerings, service plans and end user options forces customers to bounce between channels — often during a single transaction. With the rise of bundled service offerings and new smart devices, communications providers, for example, have witnessed the ascent of another critical customer channel — the retail outlet.
Customers looking for a new smart phone may begin online, only to visit the local shop to make their final choice. Are they able to pick up where they left off, or start over? Does the provider know who they are, the relationship with the company, and their preferences, or are they treated as a “new” customer — regardless of how long they have been a customer?
The answer to is to create an overall strategy across customer channels and to acknowledge that people will invariably interact with you in many ways.
At the core of this is the need for a single view of the customer, regardless of which channel/s used. Business processes must be the same across channels to create a consistent customer experience. And when it comes to after sales service, the same needs exist — consistent processes, insight into the interaction history across all touchpoints, and a true understanding of the customer relationship, value and preferences.
Doing all of this places the “customer” at the centre of the business. And isn’t that where they should be after all?
Scott Kolman, director, Amdocs; scott.kolman@amdocs.com
Know
what they want before they do
RECENT research by Forrester says that, across 12 industries examined, good customer service is more important than low prices, even in today’s economic climate.
It means that — rather than relying on slashing costs — businesses need to go back to basics to provide personalised customer service in response to customer’s individual needs
Whilst CRM has been used since the 1990s, it is no longer sufficient. CRM technologies focus on information and process aggregation and, while these do improve the overall customer experience, they are also part of the problem.
CRM improves the customer experience in the exact same way for every customer ignoring individual customer needs and desires. In short, when dealing with customers the one-size-fits-all strategy is no longer effective. Businesses must go back to basics by offering a unique experience tailored to the individual.
Customer analytics now needs to be sophisticated enough to predict and react on an individual basis. CEM (customer experience management) allows companies to anticipate customer needs and act accordingly, so each customer is treated appropriately and uniquely depending on the nature of the conversation.
CEM makes it possible it is possible for everything known about and said by the customer in current and previous interactions, including changes in mood, to be taken into account. Based on this, next best actions (NBA) can then be recommended to the call centre agent in real time, allowing for a personal experience every time.
It’s also worth noting that CEM ensures that customer offers and propositions, while tailored specifically for that customer, are also designed to support the business goals of the company — an attractive prospect in today’s tough market.
Aly Moore, marketing director, EMEA, Chordiant Software; aly.moore@chordiant.com
You
only get one chance to make a first impression
COMPANIES that invest in how they communicate with their customers now — with consumers more careful about how and where they spend their money — will be first to reap the benefits as the economic recovery begins
Although 80pc of all interactions are still by phone, businesses face a continued proliferation of channels of communication.
Human interaction can provide a tailored, personal approach. It’s essential to not only operate a general multi-channel strategy, but also make the most of the phone channel itself through voice, video, SMS, Instant Messaging (IM), USSD and mobile Web.
By offering consumers every possible method of interaction through their phones, companies can tailor contact to each customer’s individual preference. Not only will this improve customer retention rates, but also increase the chances of a successful up-sell or cross sell.
Although personalisation such as this can help retain and acquire customers, keeping costs down is a priority.
Phone-based self-service can reduce costs, but many archaic systems create a frustrating experience for customers. Personalised phone self-service technology can significantly increase customer satisfaction. Features such as context-sensitive menus offer options based on the products and services individual customers have actually purchased. In addition to improving customer satisfaction, this dramatically reduces the number of calls put through to incorrect call centres, ensuring all contact time with agents is of maximum benefit to the business.
Customers also enjoy being addressed in a voice that suits them, be it male or female, young or old, formal or informal. This can further improve customer satisfaction by allowing customers to select individual personas to interact with when they make inbound calls. Customers will readily engage with a phone self-service portal when it treats them as individuals.
Effective CRM is now more important than ever. The opportunities for new business are out there, but the interaction has to be right first time. You only get one chance to make a first impression.
Now,
CRM without the headaches
TRADITIONALLY, CRM adoption has been done the hard way — deployed and managed in-house by a company’s own IT department. As well as costing time and money, it’s an inefficient way of accessing new technologies. Fortunately, the convention is now being challenged by cloud computing services that will help you to deploy CRM without the headaches.
CRM can now be adopted with no up-front costs for hardware and software and none of the ongoing management issues.
CRM is delivered as a service to the customer at a fixed monthly fee per user. This provides a predictable basis from which to budget for IT costs and means someone else is responsible for delivering the required service levels.
All you have to do is configure the system to your needs and for smaller organisations there is now an ecosystem of professional services firms to help them do this if they don’t have the required skills in-house.
As call centre strategies become more focused on controlling costs, partly by providing remote working facilities for staff, having a CRM system that can be accessed via the internet is critical to allow employees or contractors to work from home.
Cloud computing makes CRM quick and easy to implement, with a low cost of ownership, quick return on investment and the assurance that you’ll always have the very latest technology.
When they call, make it personal
WE MUST dispose of the notion that the call centre is only a cost centre. It’s the most effective personal interaction with customers and can, of course, dramatically affect the public perception of your company’s service and reliability.
Here are my four top tips:
Make every interaction count Blend service, sales and marketing so that your agents have a complete view of customers, irrespective of the reason they contacted you. It will make each interaction more intelligent and avoid wasted time and frustration with repeated questions.
Use inbound customer requests to drive sales When customers contact you, they are more receptive to cross-selling. Outbound marketing and sales campaigns have very low success rates because they are reaching people at their least interested point. By using inbound requests as a sales opportunity, you can engage customers when the product or service is front of mind.
Use real-time analytics to gain new insight Bringing together service, sales and marketing means your agents can make on-the-spot offers that are specific and personal to individual customers — not the current blanket promotion — and have a far higher acceptance rate.
Deliver a consistent customer experience Consistency is crucial. Every channel —- call centre, web or in person — must deliver a positive customer experience, so each must have access to the same, complete information.
We must revise the view that the main role of technology is to increase call rates through automation. Technologies such as real-time analytics and data mining are enablers to cross-sell and up-sell products and are imperative to drive growth.
You can identify new performance metrics, such as overall products per customer, referral rates, profit per call and cross sell rates. Even in a recession, you can ensure that you never miss an opportunity to satisfy customers and raise profits.
Alex Rodriguez, EMEA marketing manager, Infor CRM Epiphany; alex.rodriguez@infor.com
More
and more, mobiles run your customer’s live
THE credit crunch has been blamed for the failings of businesses all over the world for the past year. It’s all too easy it seems for companies to cut costs and hope for the best. They seem to have overlooked the importance of looking after the customer in a bid to retain them and keep businesses afloat.
This is where CRM comes in to aid your customer services strategy, ensuring that all sales and customer channels are fully exploited
Have in mind that mobiles are increasingly becoming the devices through which people run their lives, so the ability to access these services easily wherever they are must be part of this strategy.
Self-service mobile applications can complement automated and agent-based call centre customer services. They provide consumers with a rich user experience, personalised to each individual, whereby they can instantly manage their services themselves via an intuitive multimedia interface.
Self-service mobile applications make the most of CRM and continually improve customer relationships by providing the feedback such systems need.
As self-service mobile applications are designed to provide individual users with the right content and services, they also enable behavioural tracking for better segmentation and personalisation.
All user actions can be collected and fed into a CRM application for better managing the customer relationship. Based on these results and individual preferences, different content can be driven to users’ mobiles in self-service applications. Tight integration between CRM systems and self-service applications via a mobile technology platform like ours ensures that customers have a positive experience and builds a good relationship with the provider.
At the same time, the mobile consumer experience is enhanced by the self-service applications, targeted incentives and campaigns which make the most of multimedia and graphics and go a long way in encouraging service re-use, stimulating campaign acceptance and strengthening loyalty – all fundamentally important in CRM and subsequently customer retention.
Martin Gossling, vice president, Movidilo; martin.gossling@ydilo.com
Once
you’ve chosen, encourage them to use it
IT’S always a challenge to implement a new CRM package. Employees typically feel uncomfortable with the idea of having to change their routines. Sales people are probably aware that CRM will benefit them, but the challenge is getting them to actually use it.
Here are some best practices to make your implementation a success:
Keep it simple CRM products were developed to make businesses and their employees operate more efficiently. If a CRM product requires too much effort to understand and use, employees will resist using it. It’s essential that it fits easily into existing routines.
The tortoise always beats the hare Introduce the software in bite sized chunks to avoid intimidating people. Begin by having them use one feature of the software and gradually build upon that.
Show them what’s in it for them Sometimes, users may view CRM solutions as management-only tools to spy on them; when in fact, the intent is simply to increase sales, and thus their commissions.
Do as they do, but improve upon it Most sales people already use Microsoft Outlook throughout the day. Find out what sales processes they already depend on within that program and then see what can be leveraged into the CRM package.
Motivate through incentives Once the CRM package is fully up and running force and the sales people are trained, create a policy that commissions are only paid for sales if the contact is in the CRM program. After time, employees will view CRM as a means to commissions.
Evaluate Once employees are comfortable and regularly using the software, start monitoring activities within the program, making sure desired results are achieved. Review reports and share feedback with your staff. Both employees and management will have a chance to see the benefits provided by the software and will develop a greater appreciation of it.
James Wong, co-founder and CEO of Avidian Technologies; jamesw@avidian.com
Six
tips to build your business and your customer service
IN ORDER to build our own business while still delivering excellent customer service, we developed our own CRM package, codenamed Decorum. Here’s some advice for other SMEs considering the move to hosted CRM:
Use hosted online CRM systems Almost all business software is now available in some form or another online, ranging from basic free services all the way up to comprehensive paid-for platforms, so they represent a real opportunity to save money while improving service quickly.
Centralise as much information as possible Using technology to bolster customer service is a no-brainer, but it’s only effective if everyone has access to it at the same time. This ensures consistency and reduces waste as everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet.
Listen regularly to your customers and to your staff This is even more important if you intend to rollout a new system or process. Your staff, who will be using the system themselves, will have the insight into what works best; and customers’ experience can highlight what needs attention.
Remember that people are personable The only way to be a truly personable company is to use people. All the technology in the world will count for nothing if your customers cannot speak to a human being when they need to.
Be proactive Don’t wait for feedback to come to you in the form of complaints — keep a check on the service you are giving your clients. As an ISP, we monitor our network 24/7 to ensure that faults are quickly spotted and dealt with. However you do it, make sure you continue to monitor proactively the service to your customers.
Remember where you came from Most small businesses have grown because of good customer service. If this is key to your business, determine exactly which service you’re famous for and focus on it. CRM is just one of the many tools that can help you.
Harry Eastman, operations director, Easynet Connect; heastman@uk.easynet.net
CEM
will help you to deliver on your promise
COMPANIES are having to work hard to maintain their brand promise and create a coherent customer experience, irrespective of the channel that customers choose to use when they make their purchases.
The number of customer experience departments is on the increase and significant budgets are being set aside for CRM software. However, it’s worth remembering that you can best enhance customer experience, loyalty and advocacy by measuring it and then showing customers that their opinions count and that the quality of each interaction is at the top of your agenda.
Research by the Strativity Group corroborates this. It found that 95pc of executives think that customer experience is the next competitive battleground. It will be essential — in order to counteract the “switch culture” — to develop an effective customer strategy that allows you to build long term relationships.
A forward looking CEM programme should invite customers to take part in a programme of continuous improvement, delivering value to them and, therefore, to the business. Loyalty and repeat purchases really do depend on quality of service, speed of response and whether customers feel their opinions, desires and attitudes are taken seriously.
Customer feedback software is increasingly being recognised as invaluable to build a two-way dialogue with customers via multiple channels to create a single view of customer attitude and loyalty.
Successful customer strategies should use customer feedback to:
Measure key attitudinal indicators (KAIs) about how customers “feel” immediately after each interaction to find out what aspects had the biggest impact on their decision to purchase, buy a related service or decide to look elsewhere.
Measure customer satisfaction continuously, proactively seeking feedback when a transaction is completed, if there is a problem or even when it fails, rather than asking for feedback later.
Incorporate automatic alerts into the customer feedback system, seeking out complaints to deliver huge increases in response rates, problem resolution and satisfaction scores.
Offer multiple channels to gather feedback at customers’ convenience — IVR, online, via the call centre, face-to-face, etc. — to create a coherent customer experience regardless of the channel chosen to make a purchase or to provide feedback to build brand awareness.
Show customers that their opinions count and by telling them how their views have changed product selection, pricing and delivery.
Gary Schwartz, senior vice president of marketing, Conformit; gary.schwartz@conformit.com