Customer Relationship Management: April 2009 Archives

« March 2009 | Main | May 2009 »

April 24, 2009

Challenging The 'Customer Experience' Limit

Continuing from where I left off on Customer Experience, I came across another very interesting and powerful concept that set me thinking. This concept was shared by an industry executive in the manufacturing sector recently, when an employee mentioned that some customers are too demanding and that caused a lot of frustration. The concept actually was to "Set goals for your customer, higher than the goals the customer sets for you".

Though this was made in a totally different context, I tried breaking it down using some technology-enabled, next-generation processes. I chose a B2C setting for this small experiment as it simplifies things for me, for a start! Here are some initial thoughts...For the "Sell"...

1. How do I excel in needs assessment for my customer? Using historical intelligence and predictive models (after accounting for the outliers), I will be able to identify a product or service fit for the customer. As I enhance my predictive models, I will be able to beat my customer's imagination on the right fitment.

2. How do I make the customer onboarding smoother and quicker? Maybe, once the customer shares his Facebook and Linkedin ids, I have a completely ready sign-up form for review (minus the social security information ofcourse!). I also create a network with my customer in the process.

3. How do I realize my customer's propensity to attrite, before my customer knows? Predictive models, again.

4. How do I give superior pricing value, beyond what the customer expects? Use technology to arrive at innovative pricing models. (e..: I track the customer's usage pattern. e.g: Since they utilized lesser cable hours than what they paid for, I use a predictive model and offer a PPV freebie)

5. How do I exceed my customer's expectation on the extent of credit offered? That's a catch question, skip it and move on!

For the "Serve"...

1. How do I give my customer the right telephony experience? I kick off the IVR menu and language based on the customer's demographics and history.

2. How do I make the customer interaction experience amazing? I have come across companies that claim 98% first call resolution through sophisticated internal knowledge systems. Unless back-office lead times are involved, this is very much achievable using rich UI KM tools and real-time professional networking tools.

3. How do I know my customer better than he thinks I know him? A 360 view of customer portfolio, performance and also information from their Facebook and Linkedin updated on my screen...

Even if I approach 'Customer Experience' this unconventionally, the following technology levers stand out according to me. 360 view, Predictive Models, Social CRM, Rich UI, Real-time decision making tools. I haven't yet come across an organization that has mastered all these levers at the same time but one that starts thinking in that direction will win!

Posted by Badrinath Srinivasan at 9:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 17, 2009

Do you know what your customers want?

I was recently reviewing a paper written by my colleagues (Mitul Kumar and Nishant Awasthi) on Market Basket Analysis where they have explored the possibility of doing Market Basket Analysis using a standard Business Intelligence apps like Oracle BI, Business Objects, Cognos etc. (This paper will be presented in Oracle Applications User Group (OAUG) Conference to be held in Orlando in May this year.) They have taken an easy to implement model of Association Analysis and tried to answer the fundamental question that haunts every marketer: “Do I know what my customers want?”

They have talked about Market Basket Analysis (MBA) which is a technique based on customers’ purchasing habits. It uses the point-of-sale data to provide insights around the following:

Types of products that customers usually tend to buy together
Time period when sales for the associated products go up
Sequence of purchase of associated products
Time period between associated products’ purchase

MBA/ Association analysis helps in identifying up-sell and cross-sell opportunities to grow existing customers which is becoming the norm as the organizations struggle to achieve sustainable and profitable growth in a recessionary economy.

There are some pertinent questions that will come to your mind when you look at Market Basket Analysis as an association analysis technique and the utility of its results.

I know my customers and already have a lot of attributes in my CRM system on which I segment my customers. Why should I be interested in Market Basket Analysis (Association Analysis)?
How is Market Basket Analysis concept relevant to my industry? Isn’t it applicable only for Retail/ FMCG organizations?
Isn’t Market Basket Analysis a back-end job done by mathematics and statistics whiz kids using sophisticated data mining tools?

Watch out for answers to the above questions in the my next post. Do let me know your comments on this topic.

Posted by Indivar Nayyar at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

April 13, 2009

User adoption - A key yardstick for CRM success

"People" is a crucial element of any organization's IT strategy. Ignore their needs at your peril. Unfortunately in the quest to design the perfect system more importance is placed on the software package that is to be implemented, hardware capabilities required to run the dream package and process modification to achieve better business results rather than on end user inputs and buy-in for the new system.

What many companies forget is that for the successful roll out of any new system they need to have the end user buy-in because if the end user is not happy or comfortable with the way they will be operating in the new scenario then it will directly impact their productivity and hence the success of the new initiative will be compromised. Just like for the want of a horse shoe the battle was lost.

The results thrown up by a CRM survey done by Infosys in the second half of last calendar year show some very interesting points.

75% of Executives who mentioned that their CRM projects were fully adopted by their users said that their projects were within time and budget, 12.5% said that it was neither within time or budget and the balance said that it exceeded budget but was within time.

60% of Executives who mentioned that their CRM projects were partially adopted by end users also said that these projects were neither within time or budget. Only 20% said that it was within time and budget.

Not surprisingly 62.5% of executives who mentioned that their projects were fully adopted by the end users also strongly agreed to the statement that "their senior management considers CRM as a critical element for success giving it a high priority"

So end user adoption is also important to ensure that there are no time and cost overruns in your IT projects. Visionary leaders have understood this and have ensured that for any new system end users need to be taken into confidence right in the begining and their inputs must play a very important role in the design and development of this system.

Posted by Shreedeep Panicker at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 2, 2009

MDM - The Road Ahead

In the future, we can expect to see customer and product data hubs evolve to enterprise information hubs, where operational systems rely on master data provided by an underlying layer, and exchange information through a common enterprise information bus with analytic applications to realize business objectives

The role of technology in enabling business has evolved from merely increasing operational efficiency to enabling transformations and providing critical business information in an up-to-date, accurate fashion. A couple of years ago, customer and product data was managed locally by individual applications and business units, but enterprises recognize the critical role of a centralized repository of customer and product data that is linked to upstream and downstream systems, aggregating data from multiple sources and delivering it to other applications like CRM, Financials, Data Warehouses, and reporting systems. In the future, we can expect to see customer and product data hubs evolve to enterprise information hubs, where operational systems rely on master data provided by an underlying layer, and exchange information through a common enterprise information bus with analytic applications to realize business objectives.

The reality on the ground though belies this rosy picture. Most organizations are at varying levels of realizing their goal of an enterprise-wide master data hub. Even worse, multiple competing efforts of building data hubs is leading to a scenario where the hubs themselves are becoming silos of information. The concept of a hub of hubs is emerging to address the disparate needs of information consumers in different parts of the organization.

A number of disparate disciplines will also need to come together to achieve success in realizing MDM goals. Data governance, data quality management, data modeling, effective security models, data enrichment and standardization play a role in this regard. Thus, it will be paramount to develop expertise and service offerings around these capabilities.

From a vendor perspective, the top tier might be stabilizing at Oracle, IBM, and SAP, but is facing challenges from innovative players like Siperian and Initiate, whose USP of quick and effective implementations is further reinforced in a cost-sensitive environment. In response, IBM has introduced a Foundation Pack approach to MDM Server, and all vendors claim to provide both transaction and registry style hubs. Microsoft’s EDM product, built around their Stratature acquisition is expected to be delivered this year, and Oracle, IBM, and SAP are moving along their announced roadmap, primarily focusing on delivering an integrated information management platform, coupled with data quality and analytical MDM applications like Hyperion DRM, Cognos, and Business Objects.

The state of the MDM economy is strong with most enterprises seeing this as necessary to achieve their business goals, and in many cases, the wave of mergers and acquisitions.

Posted by Aaman Lamba at 5:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)