Customer Relationship Management

The sad part is that I have already started getting the same vibes. Leveraging social media for your CRM initiatives makes sense but don't treat it in the same manner as other channels. If we observe,introduction of a channel as a customer touch point has always been governed by the following reasons: uniqueness, growing usage by customer and the proposed benefits it brings for the organization.

However in long term, the channel loses the exclusivity it used to enjoy during the adoption days. Customers who were very comfortable while using the channel do not feel the same. I think one of the reasons is in the way enterprise start leveraging these channels. In the initial phase, the service channel is adopted as a differentiator and aims for moving some of its volumes on existing channels to the new channel thus providing cost efficiency and also a new customer touch point. Even as the new channel becomes a business as usual, no different strategies are charted out for it. A customer moves away from the enterprise channel for below reasons:

a. Unsolicited communications - customer don't feel the urge to respond to so many mailers. Be it e-mail solicitation or phone call - it is all the same from customer perspective.

b. No improvement in response times - when a channel is introduced, enterprise puts a lot of effort in closing issues quickly on this channel since even the customer is also hooked on the channel because of popularity. But as the channel usage matures, customer experiences the same old story of response delays and waiting times. Enterprises really need to ensure that social media adoption doesn't go down the same path.

c. Too much automation - Yes, it's understandable that as volumes on a channel will grow, automation is inevitable. However, at the same time, one needs to look at the channel characteristics and customer usage patterns to understand the extent of automation that is warranted.

Therefore, as a customer of different organizations across verticals, I will be satisfied if they are able to acknowledge my posts on social media and engage me accordingly, but will be delighted if enterprises

a. Don't start spamming with every second offer to my social media accounts. We already have to bear unsolicited calls and emails (why do we need to go to a stage of do not call/do not subscribe registration)?

b. Don't send system generated response or if it has to be, please make sure it is real intelligent in the way it interacts. I see Social media as a virtual extension of my physical activities. So humanizing of aspects covering more than one sense (listen, talk, share, read) is what makes this channel unique. I expect organizations to understand and leverage this uniqueness

Hence in my view, social media is one more opportunity for organizations to improve on their past mistakes. Grab it :). May be for each channel, there has to be a check list of Do's/Don'ts that should be followed by the organizations. What do you think?

Posted by Nishith Gupta at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

During the course of my work on mobility solutions, I have come across a number of thoughts regarding the applicability of tablet devices in an enterprise. In this post, I would like to present my take on this topic.

Currently, almost 90% of tablets are being used for personal computing purposes. They provide a more fun and interesting way of interacting with the computer. They fill the niche between a PC and a smartphone and provide convergent digital capabilities.  People are making extensive usage of apps on tablets for personal productivity and entertainment purposes.

Per leading analyst reports, by 2015, approx 30% of tablet adaption is expected to come via Enterprises. Several of our clients have expressed an interest in mobile enabling some of their key workforce via tablets. Most of these organizations already have a mobile enabled Sales or Field Service workforce typically using a standard, enterprise approved device.

Some of the reasons that we heard for the interests in tablets were -

1) Field force is pushing IT to support tablets as these are cool devices.

2) Many field users have personal tablets and they would also like to use these for work purposes.

3) CXO's/Sr. Executives are fascinated by the exciting user experience offered by Tablets in terms of the refreshing look and feel of apps, touch interface etc (a significant change from the routine look and feel and keyboard based user experience in PCs/Laptops). They want to use the tablets during the interactions with customers and want to view metrics and reports on these devices.

It seems that the push for incorporating tablets in the enterprise is 'outside-in' ie coming from the employees Vs most other enterprise apps and devices that need to pushed to the workforce 'inside-out'.

There are also some concerning aspects that we identified during our interactions with enterprises -

1) Most enterprises don't seem to have a clear financial business case regarding how the introduction of tablets would further benefit their already mobilized workforce.

2) They also do not have a clear strategy for tablet adoption.

3) Enterprise provided tablets are an additional expense as most enterprises already provide smartphones or other devices to their mobile workforce. So enterprises want to pilot tablets for a niche set of users.

4) A 'Bring Your Own Device' scenario that is desired by the employees leads to complexities in managing these devices which was a serious concern for the IT departments.

So while the users themselves are excited about the devices, there may be some resistance from various departments within the enterprise like IT till they become ready to manage the related complexities.

 In terms of industry verticals where tablets are most relevant, my observations are as below

1) Retail - We have seen interest from high end retailers to provide 'In-store guided sales' type solutions to their store reps. They are also exploring usage of tablets to setup self-help kiosks or mobile point-of-sales solutions to provide maximum convenience to customers.

2) Financial Services -  We have seen interest from Banking customers to provide tablet based CRM apps to their relationship managers/private bankers. Many bankers are using tablets extensively during their client meetings to capture notes, make presentations and improve the overall experience for their High Net Worth customers.  

3) Pharma and Healthcare - From Doctors, healthcare professionals to Pharma and Medical devices sales professionals, tablets are becoming popular across the spectrum of users in this industry. While doctors and healthcare professionals use tablets to improve their productivity, reduce paperwork and keep themselves updated with the latest happenings in their field, the sales professionals can leverage the rich features of tablets to make most effective sales pitches in short time span.

4) Transportation and Logistics - Tablets are relevant for the field force in the transportation and logistics verticals. There is a huge potential for location based services for the mobile workforce which has primarily been using ruggedized hand-held devices so far.

5) Senior Management/Executives - This is by far the most active consumer segment for tablets. Personal productivity, client connect and viewing business intelligence metrics are some of the key requirements for this community.

The market for tablets is also very dynamic. While Apple iPad is leading the tablet market, Google's Android Honeycomb based tablets, Windows based tablets, RIM PlayBook and others are also focusing on offering Tablets/Apps for the Enterprises.

There is certainly a lot of interest and curiosity amongst enterprises for leveraging tablets in their business scenarios. Most enterprises are willing to experiment and pilot tablets. There are also a number of success stories available on the public media regarding usage of tablets specifically iPads in organizations.

To summarize -  

Are tablets useful in an enterprise?

- Definitely yes.

Will they benefit all categories of employees?

- Mostly no. It may not be of significant benefit to provide tablets to say call center personnel who are typically immobile and may need access to multiple applications and need higher computing power.

Are they likely to replace PC's or Laptops anytime soon?

-Maybe not. But they will offer capabilities that will poach a significant share of the PC/Laptop market in the future

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Posted by Shyamalee Samvatsar at 6:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

A real-world data quality based MDM implementation presents some unique challenges that need to be addressed to ensure a successful implementation.

From my experience, the following challenges merit a thought during the design stage of the project itself to ensure that there are no unpleasant surprises in the latter stages of the project.

1. A Data Quality implementation by itself doesn't ensure the quality of the data can be improved. One of the huge misconceptions regarding a data quality implementation is that final data set will be a highly improved version when subjected to an entire suite of Data Quality solutions- Data Profiling, Standardization, Matching and Enrichment.

While implementing these solutions to enhance the data, the cardinal rule about data still prevails- "Junk in means Junk Out". Transactional systems are plagued with the problem of incomplete, missing or bad data. As an example mandatory fields may have junk values (like all zeroes, special characters etc) that have no correlation with the actual data but have been written merely to save the record in question. A Data Quality implementation cannot solve such  problems of inherently 'bad' data, a problem which merits a different solution.

In this regard, any data quality implementation must have a data remediation project in parallel. This is to ensure that the benefits of a data quality based MDM implementation can be fully realized.

The challenge in this regard will be the fact any data remediation project will most certainly be led by a different team (predominantly business led team). Building synergies between the MDM implementation team and the data remediation team helps to nip the problem at the bud. One of the golden rule, is to prevent data issues, upstream in the process, so that data remediation is minimal in the later part of the data life-cycle chain.

2. Parameters used to flag duplicates need to reflect the ground reality. In theory the parameters like Names, SSN, TIN and address fields are the important fields on the basis of which duplicates can be identified. These parameters may not be enough. It may be possible that duplicates flagged on the basis of these parameters may not be duplicates in the eyes of the business. Business may insist to keep two seemingly duplicate records as separate records since its makes business sense (e.g. the Account is large enough to merit more than one relationship manager, each of whom may wish to keep a record in this account in the transaction system to track opportunities etc.). In such a case, it is the responsibility of the MDM practitioner to educate the business that such a distinction can be maintained in a CRM application, however doing so in an MDM application is against the cardinal principles of master data management.

All such scenarios must be identified in the design stage itself as far as possible.

3. Data Quality project cannot be implemented in isolation. Several data quality features like cleansing, merging and enrichment have the potential to create chaos in the downstream systems if they are not geared up to meet these changes.

4. It is difficult to articulate completely the results of a Data Quality implementation particularly for data matching on large volumes of data. Also data matching rules cannot be flawlessly written during the design stage without the actual "feel" of the data. This presents a risk to the success of entire implementation. It is therefore prudent to factor in at least three full data loads so that the matching rules can be tweaked to best cater to the business requirements.

A successful data quality implementation will include customer specific solutions to above challenges. Without this any data quality initiative is unlikely to be as successful as it was initially perceived to be.

Posted by Gautam Prabhakar Begde at 1:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)