Customer Relationship Management

How many times do we actively participate in a survey? Whenever one is requested to complete a survey, we first think about the time it is going to take and try to avoid it, even if we start answering the questions, we have several doubts on the data we can provide, then again based on the very recent experience or mind frame we are in at that point of time, we might not even provide accurate data. So it is not a hyperbole if I say conducting customer surveys is very challenging task for any organization. Even after addressing the challenges, one cannot expect accurate responses from customers since a customer's response depends on his/her frame of mind while responding to the survey. Most of the customers might not respond to the survey. The reasons might be that the customers might be unhappy with the time, channel of the survey and the list doesn't end there...

Now how do we address the issue of customer participation as well as drive customer to give more accurate information? One common way I see is companies offering freebies to make customer participate in the survey. But that doesn't guarantee whole hearted participation of the customer, which further drills down to skewed/in accurate data. Is there any other way to involve the customer in the survey?

What if we conduct a survey in multiple interactions through multiple channels instead of completing a survey in a single interaction, thus making the survey short and sweet at any given instance? Survey response rates will also increase as customers need not spend substantial amounts of time or effort to respond to the survey.  Unlike typical surveys where the survey is done at one go end-to-end, through the "Multiple Interaction Survey (MIS)" approach, customer response is captured in multiple interactions in parts and hence the probability of accuracy of responses is high. But how do we conduct a single survey in multiple interactions? Isn't it a difficult task to capture the customer's response in multiple interactions and collate them without loss of data or any errors?

This challenge can be addressed by leveraging on technology. A CRM application can definitely help in conducting the multiple interaction survey successfully.  A good CRM tool can provide 360 degree view of the customer, which covers customer profile, billing details, interaction history, complaints, visits to outlets, etc. More importantly, the same application is accessed by various customer facing groups at various touch points. By leveraging this apparently minor fact, a new feature can be added to the application so that all the surveys the customer can participate can be listed and the current ongoing survey will appear on the screen. Whenever customer interacts with the company at each touch point the specific questions can be posed to the customer and response can be captured.

Since at each touch point only 3-4 questions are asked based on the type of interaction, and as it doesn't take much time, the customer might be happier to respond thereby increasing customer involvement in the survey. But this model needs a very well designed survey mechanism with most appropriate and relevant questions (for example, questions on monthly bills can be asked during bill payment) to be posed at each interaction, as well as training employees to handle such interactions very smoothly.

So what are your thoughts on this approach for customer surveys handled by humans and enabled by technology?

Posted by Vamsi Krishna at 5:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Many years back books=comics was the situation for me, much before I got to know Mr.Welch, Mr. Tzu, Mr. Sharma (Is the Ferrari up for a re-re-sale?!), Mr Clausewitz and the like. I had Superheroes flying around, and 'The Batman' was one of them. (The Dark Knight is still up for a re-run!). The Joker had just struck and Commissioner Gordon was impatient to launch a fitting response to stop the Joker menace in Gotham. Batman was beside him with the bat signal hovering over the skies of Gotham  - "Patience and Fortitude Commissioner!"

So it is with a business wanting/going/trying to be Social. With so much going in, on and around in the "Social" world, I can only echo Batman - 'Patience and Fortitude, Commissioner'. You have the tools in the market now, you have the analysts to give you the ideas and consult for you, you even have some good business cases out there (18 from Altimeter).You have the Enterprise chain elements so what's stopping you from logging on to the "Chatter"?  Let's build a team, implement the 'best' social tool around and integrate that with, say CRM (Can't leave that space, can I now?) Lo and Behold! We have Social enabled CRM - SCRM. Train the trainer, build your social products, go transparent to the customer - the king has to know everything right?
 
But, is that what going Social is about? How can an organization really benefit by making this enabler work around their business? Should businesses really expose more than what is required to customers by being "Social"? The simple answer is NO! Based on the size and the need of an organization in relation to its competition, here are three Social pillars that I can relate to -

 

 

 Pillar - I
It is important to make the decision to buy or build a social tool. A great internal technical team can collaborate to bring about the best suited Social flavour in terms of a product to enable their customers, improve QoS and help drive revenues. At the same time those organizations choosing to buy a social tool need to have a strong dedicated team supporting the choice, usage, customization and integration of that into their enterprise. Commitment and confidence of the internal stakeholders in the decision to go "Social" is of prime importance.

 

Pillar - II
It is imperative to 'fall' level by level, to align to and not lose sight of the goals of the organization. The Social tool helps the organization strategy to meet the defined end goals  which can be and are not restricted to - deliver value, derive more business, improve the customer experience and help enable the various 'arms' of the organization. Hence, utilizing all the features of a Social tool to be more transparent can only work as a decelerating factor. Every industry and business is unique and a community portal and metrics, twitterati and

metrics etc. need to be carefully chosen to move forward. 

 

Let us look at an example -

 

A pharmaceutical company manufacturing and researching the latest clinical products and trends, will best benefit in enabling an internal community amongst its researchers and scientists for ease of collaboration on the topics of choice. This helps save time and effort. The integration of the "marked" topic threads to mail alerts and a consolidated view will be more useful. The Marketing team might be more interested to interact in real time with customers and keep giving their customers up to date information. In this case, going for one of the vendor offerings will benefit the organization.

 

Pillar - III
Acceptance by internal and external stakeholders. Change has never been sweet and juicy and so would social enablement. Let us look at the Marketing side for an example. The consumer adoption of a product has various stages as illustrated below -

 

 

- which are aptly complemented by the various 'purchasing' stages of  a consumer  -

 

 

The Social enablement is nothing but a service that you offer to your "customers" and they will go through the cycles mentioned above. Hence, it is important to be aware and enforce and instill confidence in the process - internally first and then externally and this is where the Pillars come into Picture. This does come with a caveat and will require investment in trainings, workshops, BPM if needed and to help navigate the department dynamics a top down approach is necessary and inevitable.

Patience and Fortitude are the two Lions which majestically guard and welcome you into the NY Public Library on Fifth Avenue, it is the same set that will help take businesses into the Social era. The acceleration to going Social is inevitable and the balance needs to be struck.
 
What is your POV on this? Have you come across or are you facing issues in Social Enablement in your organization?

What have been the proven methods that are helping you?
 

 

Posted by Venkataraman Ramanathan at 5:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

CDI or Customer Data Integration post M&A is probably the most important integration work considering the new generation trends of customer centric organization. Although with the advent of MDM solutions most organizations are better equipped to handle this CDI beast , however it still imposes its own set of challenges. Actually, organizations may also have different flavor of MDM solutions making this further complicated. Wouldn’t it be a jump start ....

if we would know the challenges well in advance and can plan for it most accurately and effectively?

Here is my whitepaper which explains different scenarios of MDM solutions present in today’s organizations, typical challenges of CDI post M&A and a phased CDI approach - Customer data conversion or migration-> intermediate sync period-> interfaces cut over.
http://www.infosys.com/CRM/idea-center/Documents/customer-data-integration.pdf

Banking domain merger has been explained as example domain; however this can be a blue print for any mergers and acquisitions. Please post your comments so that we can discuss more on this …

Posted by Prabir Majumder at 3:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)