Results

Many companies are jumping on the bandwagon of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools. The software companies use, whether online or on the desktop, can have a significant (though invisible) impact on how they are perceived by customers. While SaaS options like Salesforce’s services are gaining ground against traditional offerings from Oracle, many companies are demanding customized tools from their software providers. The surprising part of this trend is that the customization is not only coming from internal recommendations, but from customer feedback.

Oracle’s executive magazine, Profit Online, recently featured a case study of business intelligence firm Cognos. Beagle Research Group managing principle Denis Pombriant tells Profit Online, “Where CRM is today is that the forward-thinking companies are taking it upstream one or two levels to the point where - rather than trying to identify which customers are going to leave you - you’re working with customers to identify things that they may want, before they know they want them, so you as the vendor are poised and ready.”

In addition to using feedback from employees on the front lines, such as phone and sales representatives, companies are tapping into customer demands in order to tweak their CRM strategies. One common complaint that all of us have experienced is improper call routing. We ask a question or explain a problem to one person, then get passed to another representative only to retell the entire story, sometimes more than just twice. Oracle’s Siebel CRM 7.8 worked with Cognos to properly and efficiently route customer calls. Says Dave Sheppard, Cognos’ director of worldwide business solutions, “If you’re a French-speaking customer with a Cognos 8 issue, we’re going to find the best analyst by looking at the data we’ve got within Siebel and routing that call automatically…We’ve all been in queues where you get moved from agent to agent, and have to re-desribe your problem to multiple people. That just takes energy and time from a customer point of view.” By making the call routing system invisible to callers, Cognos was able to spend more time solving customers issues.

CRM strategies are also evolving to include real time customer information, usually displayed to phone reps through a dashboard. The old way of doing things means that the first point of contact ends up asking questions and gathering information each and every time a customer calls. Not only is it a waste of time on both ends, but it can frustrate customers who have already been offered a new service or who completed a security questionnaire last time they called. Dashboards can alert frontline employees of steps that need to be completed, surveys that could be administered, and new options to offer callers.

Some companies are getting specific with gathering this kinds of feedback when customers call. Pombriant points out that Web 2.0 strategies built on social networking models are making their way into CRM systems. “Things like social networking technologies and communities of interest. Companies can form online focus groups that are much more powerful and allow vendors to repeatedly ask their customers, ‘Does this meet your needs?’ or ‘Which marketing message resonates with you?’” By engaging customers through targeted messages and questions each time they call, companies can build a solid research foundation for new products and services.

With the slowing economy comes increased competition in many industries. Businesses can stand out by providing a superior experience that takes into account each customer’s individual needs. Top companies in a variety of industries are finding that CRM strategies can be combined with marketing research and analytics to put them ahead of the pack.

Friday, June 20th, 2008 You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

By Haley January Eckels