Customer Relationship Management

by Vinod Nag

A “dispute” in the context of credit cards pertains to questioning the validity of a card transaction. Most dispute complaints begin in a similar fashion - the card holder communicates with the card issuer bank through one of the channels – telephone, e-mails, direct mail (posts) etc. The customer service representative will then collect the necessary details and determines how this enquiry has to be dealt with.

Continue reading "Self Service for Cards Dispute Resolution – A means to increase profit margins and customer satisfaction" »

Posted by guest at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We have seen the tremendous rise in internet usage in the recent past. Even with such fast growth, internet penetration is only about 25% of the world population with a large scope for further growth. Also, commerce over the internet is growing due to increased transaction security and ease of operation. Companies should take advantage of this online channel for trade to increase customer satisfaction and reduce cost of operations through a self service facility. But in order to take the full advantage of online channel, companies should conduct a detailed study of the various factors involved before embarking on their online strategy.

Continue reading "Improve Customer Experience through a well planned Online Self Service Strategy" »

Posted by Suhas Kanade at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Any product or service company would initially like to sell their products or services to acquire customers and in the long run, the focus would be to increase the revenues. While the company in the long run would aim at building a strong revenue base, the representative at the Point to Sale is bound by daily, weekly, and monthly sales targets.  So where does that take things?

Continue reading "Relationship Management in Sales" »

Posted by Sripathy Srinivasan at 07:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

by Anshul Tiwari

We are living in an age where there is not only an abundance of information but also a massive flow of this information at an unprecedented rate. In this highly competitive and information rich world, the consumer is more aware than ever before. Steps have been taken both by the governments and NGOs in different countries to ensure that the consumer does not get exploited. A number of consumer awareness programs and campaigns have been taken up in earnest and every effort is made to make people aware of their rights and responsibilities.

Continue reading "Customer Complaints and the Role of CRM" »

Posted by guest at 09:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sometimes I really wonder what matters most to the customer; is it cost of a product/service or the actual service element associated with it?

Consider this scenario – you go to a shop; you see that nobody is there to serve you; you wait for a few seconds/minutes and then call for someone. When someone appears,  you ask for something and you do not get a proper response. Instead, the person just ignores you and goes to another customer just like that or with a curt response.

Or look at this scenario – you go to a shop and shopkeeper is on phone. The other sales men are busy and don’t make it a priority to serve you as a customer. You ask for something and even after waiting patiently you don’t get any response/service from anyone.

Continue reading "Mantra for Growing Business" »

Posted by Suhas Pralhad Moharir at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently called customer service of a leading telephone company for updating my billing address. I was surprised to receive response that I will need to go to the nearest office of the telephone company and fill out a change of address form. At another instance, I called the same company to change my call plan. Again, the agent expressed his/her inability to help me out, I was asked to submit another application – and, I was also required to provide my photographs and various other documentation, which I had already submitted when I enrolled with the company.

Continue reading "More power to the call center agent" »

Posted by Arun George at 03:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The most important element of CRM is “Relationship”, and surprisingly, it takes the backseat too often. Is it not important that we invest time in our customers, we partner with them in times of need and we lend a helping hand to them in changing dynamics ?

Continue reading "Relationship in the context of CRM" »

Posted by Ravi Agarwal at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The year 2009 has been quite an eventful one, and would be remembered for a long time for the action packed days..we’ve seen it all the … Government bailouts, companies being bought or dissolved, CEOs getting sacked etc etc..inthe middle of it this there has been something that has seen a tremendous growth - A beast called Social Media, digital consumer today has fuelled the engines of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other similar portals so much so that if you were to look at the following stats you would agree there is that there is something that is happening around us that neither the end customer nor the companies around can afford to ignore.

Continue reading "Social Media ... an eventful year for Digital Consumers" »

Posted by Rituparn Prem Dixit at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

by Vinod Nag

Stock market investment is always a challenge for anyone, regardless of whether a person is an expert in finance or wants to make an entry into the stock market but does not have any clue about how it works. It is not easy to play a blind game with the market and win. However, to play a wise game, it is important to understand how a company is performing, how are its scrip placed, is it over valued, what is the current market trend, how is this industry sector doing, are there any external influence like change in government rules, market corrections so on and so forth.

Continue reading "Is Predictive Analytics the key to better outcomes and improved customer experience in the stock market?" »

Posted by guest at 08:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Though CRM is mostly equated with technology and how software applications can be used to increase customer profitability in sales, service and marketing operations, there is no denying the fact that strong personal relationships can far outweigh any competition from super efficient CRM systems and processes.

That is true even more so in today’s world where we expect less and less from corporations which hide behind Interactive Voice Response Systems, Policy Disclaimers and Terms of Agreement and carefully scripted support calls where even the most enthusiastic agent is probably appraised on how quickly he or she can get you off the call (Did you hear the sigh as well when you actually replied ‘yes’ to the question, ‘Is there anything else I can help you with?’).

Continue reading "CRM @ Personal Touch" »

Posted by Anand Bharadwaj at 05:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

In this post and in a few forthcoming ones I intend to dwell upon key factors that builds a loyal customer base.

Clear customer focus and a customer centered/driven  value-chain are hygiene factors  to build loyalty  in today’s cluttered market place. Customer centric processes are not only mandatory in CRM functions like Sales, Marketing and Service/after-sales support but also in the core functions like order processing, manufacturing and product development.

Continue reading "Building a Loyal Customer Base" »

Posted by Khanchana at 04:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Not sure if you all noticed this quite development over the last weekend, Amazon finally after all the regulatory checks was able to close the acquisition of Zappos, this company as we know became a billion dollar company form a shoe store.

Continue reading ""Zappos and the way to ride the Social Marketing wave"" »

Posted by Rituparn Prem Dixit at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Scene-1
A tweet by client9 - @no1insocialmedia | thanks for the demo today. Would love it if the community creation in the tool could latch on to the private cloud.

Scene-2
Our Mike, Matt and John(the CIO) are in a meeting to pore over tomorrow’s sales pitches.
Matt: John, Mike was mentioning about some feedback he received on Twitter today from our client from the coast side, about cloud integration capability.

Scene-3/Act1  John: Yeah, Matt lets put it on our to-do list anyways the product management has a long list.

Scene-3/Act2  John: Great Mikey! Matt, let’s use this feedback and see if we can prioritize this one as client9 has been a good advocate of our business. Lets use this feedback effectively as otherwise we need to request such ones. It also costs you see.

Continue reading "Social Media – Feedback is essential and an important ingredient of SCRM. Use it to benefit" »

Posted by Venkataraman Ramanathan at 04:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A bill sent to a customer from the telecom service provider is a powerful tool of customer communication. Hope you agree to this fact. The 'Power of the Bill' can be unleashed in multiple ways. Mainly, for the operator’s revenue increase by means of cross selling and up selling. Cross selling and up selling can be effectively increased through the bill. The target product segment can vary, and cross selling and up selling strategy would differ based on the product segment- whether it is 3G mobile, Wifi Broadband, WiMax and so on.

Continue reading "Bill and Sell" »

Posted by Sripathy Srinivasan at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I have a theory. In the English language, 'Customer Experience' is possibly the term with the most variety of definitions. I wish to add to this record and hence this blog.

There are two dimensions of Customer Experience that I need to lay emphasis on while defining CEM– firstly, it is measurable and secondly, it isn’t an engine that runs in isolation to generate success. I’ll elaborate on both these dimensions…

Continue reading "Is Customer Experience a lone ranger?" »

Posted by Badrinath Srinivasan at 06:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

With the evolution of Social media on a rapid scale, what with Salesforce now coming out with Service Cloud 2; is it already time to think how much of this can be measured?

In the good old days of CRM and other evolving concepts/strategies the innovation, acceptance, implementation, integration, feedback, service quality etc. took time, effort and a lot of money. Over the years all of these have been dealt with and there are many a ready-made solutions and excellent products made available. We have seen CRM mature over the years. The TCO, ROI, scalability, flexibility and high-performance were critical factors to success and these were taken care of. The measurement per se, of CRM has been lost in this mêlée somewhere though not completely and it came in late. Measuring the CRM success via the Balanced Scorecard model is one way.

Continue reading "Social CRM –Measure it, harness the benefits in tandem – A Balanced Scorecard Interpretation" »

Posted by Venkataraman Ramanathan at 06:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

by Sheetal Sharma

With the customer at the focal point of all business activities, a great amount of business energy is being devoted from a strategic perspective towards satisfying a customer’s needs. The telecommunications arena is no different. In fact, in a stiff market place as that of telecom, the customer truly rules. Innovative strategies, new technologies, products and plans are being developed and evolved constantly – keeping solely the customer in mind.

However, efforts are being made only from the CRM perspective – which is essentially uni-dimensional. The reason being that CRM deals with the ‘what the company thinks of the customer’ piece. The significant piece of ‘what the customer thinks of the company’ tends to get overlooked, which results in the jigsaw puzzle of Delighting the Customer never really getting complete!

Continue reading "Making the customer experience" »

Posted by guest at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently came across an interesting post in the ittoolbox blog, where the author has used the word CMR (Customer Managed Relationships). It really set me thinking. All we are doing in most CRM applications is maintaining customer information in various forms (interests/interactions/orders/service requests etc). But not relationships!

Yes, the customer maintains the relationship and he/she is in charge and has the power to churn/chose the product/service provider. As they say, 'The customer is not an idiot. Customer are aware of what products to buy and from whom to buy.

Continue reading "Who is in charge of customer relationships? Not companies, it is customers!" »

Posted by Raja Sekhar Ravi at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Recently I visited a supermarket, after my shopping when I was about to pay my bill, the cashier offered me their membership at nominal joining price and showed me a few benefits for enrolled members. The same incident is repeating at every retail outlet. Every retailer is trying to tie the customer by issuing a membership at a nominal price and showing    them a few benefits. Same is the case with Loyalty programs, instead of building true customer loyalty these loyalty programs are becoming sales campaigns which only aim at increasing revenue from customer. With so many programs and memberships customers are treating these as sales pitches rather than relation enhancement/building programs.  Companies are forgetting the basics of building relationships and are actually trying to tie customer to their outlets through memberships and Loyalty programs. Customers are humans and not mindless creatures to stay still if tied to something.