Customer Relationship Management

Loyalty programs are very common today and are run by almost all leading brands. With growing competition and more and more choices becoming available to the customer, the importance of loyalty initiatives has increased many folds.The realization that it is more crucial and cost effective to retain an old customer than acquiring new ones, is coming steady and fast on incorporates.

 Many incentives like loyalty cards, rewards cards, points cards, advantage cards, club cards and holiday trips are being offered and a lot of emphasis is placed on rewarding the loyal customers. These loyalty programs are to be carefully planned and closely monitored. Their performance is an important indication of the performance of the brand as a whole in terms of product, service and customer satisfaction.

Customers today can be broadly classified into two categories. The first kind of customer is averse to change and is less experimental in nature. Winning the loyalty of these customers is very important. Acquiring them would be difficult but they turn out to be the ones who sustain a long relationship with the brand. They are less likely to be easily dissuaded or carried away by new brands coming into the market. They only expect consistent product quality, good after sales service and proper reddressal of grievances. Loyalty programs do not necessarily modify their behaviour to a great extent. 

The other set of users have a wide range of options to choose from and would continue to go for the brand in future only if they get additional benefits out of the purchase. Such customers do not share an emotional bond with the brand and a small slip on the part of the brand can make them switch loyalties. Here the brand has to be extra cautious in handling such sensitive customers. Another important factor is the word of mouth that would be spread by these customers when they feel betrayed or cheated by a brand. These customers are very sensitive when it comes to price and any additional economic gains that can be garnered in the deal. 

Instead of just following the trend of loyalty programs, it becomes important to understand the customer and his/her preferences. Loyalty programs might do no good when it comes to customers who get easily carried away. There might be situations where a company ends up spending a huge amount on loyalty initiatives and very less is achieved out of the initiatives. Like all marketing tools, anything and everything might not hold good for all kinds of products and brands. And this extends to kinds of customers as well. 

Loyalty programs and all initiatives to retain customers would be effective only if it is ensured that the product offerings and associated services are as per customer expectations and meet his needs. 

In both the types of customers, I feel that the outcome of the results of the loyalty program might not be as useful as it seems compared to the costs incurred on these programs. 

The thing that should strictly be kept in mind is that no scheme and no additional programs would be effective if the product's quality deteriorates or it doesn't  meet the expectations of the evolving customer needs. Only innovation and better product quality would remain the fundamental and underlying means for being an effective market player in long run.

Posted by Anshul Tiwari at 4:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

by Nishith Gupta

I had been thinking a lot lately about how CRM systems could use external  feeds and how different CRM vendors would leverage it in the near future. As I was looking up on various features provided by social networking sites, I came across a recent acquisition news - 'Attensity Buys Biz360 for Social Media Monitoring'. This justifies my belief that in the time to come CRM product vendors would either plug-in the external data as an inbuilt enhancements or would try to integrate it with players like Biz360.

Companies now have at their disposal a plethora of external sources of data owing to the increased reach of networking sites, external forums on the virtual world. They are now putting efforts into getting this data plugged into their systems. This data can help to companies to know what is the public is saying about them, and a deeper analysis on this data can actually lead them to identify new target segments, retention strategies and other CRM activities.

Having said that, I feel there are many features within these websites that can take the customer engagement to a higher level. But, at the same time the extent to which these should be leveraged is a point to ponder upon.

Let me start by highlighting certain features that could be used as regular feeds into the CRM systems:

1. Official Group pages : An official group/community can be used as a one stop portal to connect with all prospects/fans/customers. These pages provide a forum-like platform using which members can discuss and communicate on news/events related to the group.
2. Quiz : This feature can be used for periodic feedbacks and user reviews. Many networking sites like Facebook have additional paid options to customize quiz features. There are also plug-ins available from specialized vendors like Survey Gizmo for well known networking sites.
3. Poll of the Day : Upfront this looks like a random feature. But, it also attracts many responses at one go. Hence, this can be effectively used as a subset data pool for a larger base.
4. Sub Groups/Pages : This again is one of the latest features that has been added in varied networking sites like Linked in. This feature could be used to connect with different target bases and hence can be better utilized for data capture when compared to a generic group page.

Certainly, many have already identified these features and are using them as tools to connect with their target groups. But, the next challenge is how CRM systems will use this platform as a two-way communication tool. In my next few blog posts I shall highlight features from specific networking sites and their possible integration with a generic CRM system. Do let me know your thoughts!

About the Author

Nishith Gupta is an Associate Consultant with Enterprise Solutions. He has worked on developing custom built CRM applications for a leading telecommunications provider with focus on customer retention & campaign management. Nishith will blog on Customer Retention, Social CRM, Campaign Management.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 3:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

by Karthik Andhiyur Nagarajan

Though mobile phones sales declined worldwide due to the recession, the market share of smart phones has grown constantly and is expected to account for a major chunk of the mobile market in the next five years.

Does this have anything to do with CRM? Yes of course, these smart phones are simply sweeping off customers with incredible connections between the digital and the real world.

As the iPhone Ad goes...
What is great about the iPhone...?
If you wanna check for snow condition in the mountains there is an App for that...
If you wanna check how many calories you have taken for your lunch...there is an App for that...
If you wanna check exactly where you have parked your car...there is an app for that
There is an app for just about anything....

The delivery of customer care itself should be re-thought as these new devices have opened up a gamut of new channels of service. In the traditional CRM care functionality, there are three areas of support where these smart phones would play a major role - field personnel support, remote technical support and end customer care.

Field Personnel Support:  In the retail channel for instance, there is always a need for a smart device for the field person who would be interacting with the POS contact. The field personnel should have access to functionality which would provide customer information on the mobile device. The smart phone will also provide essential details of the retailer such as products and SKU (stock keeping unit) ordered. Also it would store the order details and historic information of the transactions in the past. These applications can be easily integrated to the underlying supply chain management system. The use of smart phones will minimize the investment on the mobile devices which would be integrated to field support software.

Technical Support: The key lies in effectively merging traditional CRM care functionality with specific mobile device management functionality, thereby extending smart phone support to the heart of the call center operations. In doing so, call center agents would be empowered to have a unified view of the services provided to the customer. Further the agents would have real-time device diagnostic information which would help them provide better solutions to the customer's technical problems.

End Customer Support: The CRM chains are already getting integrated to smart phones. It is like developing specific functionalities for the end customer's needs giving rise to nearly endless possibilities. For instance, it is like having an application installed on the smart phone for service assurance (integrated to the trouble ticketing system) of the broad band connection the customer is using. Or a simpler application, having a separate application for the customer to order pizza and book a plane ticket in his preferred airlines.

The Social Touch: There are so many day to day tasks which as civilized human being we are bound to do. These smart phones have been conceptualized and built to touch the user in his day to day work through the social touch, rather than data centric transactions. Natural user interfaces are taking the front seat for the actual customer relationship management. The multitude of services provided through Twitter, Facebook, etc. are already getting closer to the user through these smart phones.

As smart phones are bridging the gaps between the digital and real worlds and opening new avenues of service delivery, CRM providers should embrace mobile CRM integration with main stream enterprise applications. Siebel Wireless enabled interface is one such application foreseen to integrate Siebel's underlying CRM functionality to mobile phones.  In the days to come, smart phone integration would be a key area to look forward to.

"During the next Digital Decade, technology will make our lives richer, more connected, more productive and more fulfilling in profound and exciting ways"... Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates -  keynote address to the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nev. Jan. 6, 2008

About the Author

Karthik is a Consultant with Enterprise Solutions. He has worked on Amdocs CRM implementations for various major telecom companies, and is currently working on a project for a European telecom major. Karthik will blog on CRM trends, marketing and telecom.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 8:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Very often, we call up a service help desk with service issues or other related problems and complaints. Each call to the service help desk incurs some cost to the company, in terms of network, bandwidth, time, availability or infrastructure.

The prime reasons for a customer contacting a support help desk are:

1. To resolve issue/problems faced by the customer
2. To get additional information.

Nowadays, companies are trying to reduce their costs associated with the customer help desk. Companies want to save every possible minute in a call center and reduce the number of incoming calls to reduce their operating costs, while not compromising on customer satisfaction.

When a customer calls the help desk for an issue, the interaction proceeds through the following stages:
 
1. Customer provides personal details such as Name ID, etc.
2. Customer provides details on the issue.
3. Support person enters customer information in his system to pull out the customer's data.
4. Looking at the data, the agent updates the customer with the solution or the different possible options that are available.
5. Customer accepts and ends the call.

There are a number of self help support solutions provided by companies through eCRM for customers to avoid calls to the call centers and find quicker solutions on their own, but the number of calls to company call centers is increasing. Now how can these calls be avoided if there are alternatives for self help provided on company portals? An analysis of such calls should be made to find ways of providing assistance such that human interaction is entirely avoided and the relevant information is presented to the user.

For example, a customer's issue with the credit card billing would  be related to a particular transaction, date or amount. If a customer calls an agent, the agent would look into databases, past history, analyze the past and current data and pass the information on to the customer with the conclusion; which is important.

The same flexibility should be provided by the portal - the customer should get the information with the complete details, analysis and a conclusion for his queries from the portal in the same way an agent would have helped, if not better. The data can be represented on the UI in such a way that customer himself can understand the data (with some help options on the website as appropriate).

This way, an entire call with the customer help desk can be avoided while providing customer service through an entirely customer driven system. Thus, the entire support function can be automated for different services and categories to the possible extent. Customers can manage their queries themselves using this system, minimizing the number of calls to the call center and reducing the company's operating cost to a great extent.

Posted by Suhas Pralhad Moharir at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

RightNow's announcement in March about their new licensing structure is being lauded as a game changer, but I would like to term it as a step in the right direction. This is a step in the right direction towards the promised land of 'Reaping SaaS benefits'. By offering a Three Year Price Commitment plus Three Year Renewal Price Cap coupled with Annual Termination option, cash credit for SLA breaches and real 'pay-as-you-go' contracts, RightNow has openly challenged the providers of SaaS who engage with customers with multi-year 'lock-in' contracts. The SaaS market as it stands, thrives on some of the key positives of the on demand concept. Quicker time to market, lesser maintenance headache (compared to on-premise software) is enough for most companies to go for a SaaS offering. Given that, the SaaS providers need to differentiate themselves and they do so and compete based on the functionality that they offer. But once the capability of the software S of SaaS starts to even out, the service S of SaaS will be the differentiator.

As Paul Greenberg wrote in his blog: "... companies are still going to be looking for functionality - first and foremost.  Then, after that, all things being equal, the differentiator is the relationship you have with the vendor, which of course, is reflected in the kind of contract you have with them."

So, this kind of a customer commitment is definitely welcome and a step in the right direction. Now the customers can expect the other SaaS providers to follow suit. For RightNow, one can only wait and see if this kind of a strategy is going to backfire with customers having the convenience of moving out. At the same time, there could be more customers signing up to enjoy the advantages of such a contract. One can also expect different pricing models and contracts being unveiled which put customer in the center.

At the peak (or depths) of the downturn NetSuite offered flexible or shorter contracts (hence lesser payment) to its customers who until then were paying for multi year contracts. So one can say, the practice of locking in customers was already being reconsidered until RightNow made it more formal. There could be naysayers to this kind of a contract, arguing that longer term contracts generally have a walk out clause. They also say that there are benefits associated with long term contracts, as the buyer doesn't have to repeat the same decision making process every year, the longer term helps build a relationship with the vendor and buyers have budget certainty. While it might be worthy to analyze these factors as well, in the long run, when changes will need to happen at a much faster rate, shorter contracts and robust SLAs might be the way to go.

Posted by Pradeep Baptist at 8:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)