Customer Relationship Management

Field Service: The way ahead – Part 1

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:25:03 +0000

by Shyamalee Pramod Samvatsar

In this era of product commoditization and soaring customer expectations, manufacturing companies are transforming their business model to reduce their dependence on product revenues and cash in on the demand for Services. Based on my experience and reading, I have noted the following trends in customer service:

Social Media – Be Aware or Beware? – Part 2

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:28:54 +0000

by Amrith Rajasekaran

What are companies and corporations doing to enhance their presence on the social sphere? For starters, they create accounts on sites like Twitter, Facebook and mySpace. They use these forms of social media to spread awareness about products and also do a lot of branding and marketing activities through these.

Closing the loop on Marketers’ Holy Grail

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:36:05 +0000

Here is what Mark Killens had to say on my last blog post on functionality coverage in CRM products for Marketing Automation: “CRM systems and marketing are very important sales enablement resources. They both must include tools to manage and report on how marketing is helping and enabling sales and how to keep track of the customer after a sale closes”. Please find the post, the comment and my response here.

I perceive Mark’s comment as referring to one of the long standing challenges for Marketers – how do you attribute the end Sales revenues to the original Marketing efforts? This ability to tie the eventual revenues back to the campaigns, thereby closing the loop, has largely been either impossible or a difficult task to accomplish for Marketers - thus making it a Holy Grail.

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

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:20:27 +0000

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.

Data streaming and MDM

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:30:55 +0000

Data streaming, so what does this mean? What does MDM means for data stream? Good question read on.

Improve Customer Experience through a well planned Online Self Service Strategy

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:44:14 +0000

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.

Could CRM lead to innovation?

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:06:58 +0000

For companies to innovate, it is largely understood that there are two components involved: exploiting existing internal repository of knowledge and secondly, exploring new ideas, some of which can be directly adopted from external sources including customers, suppliers, partners etc. On one hand, managers may experience a cultural inertia on the idea of customer as a collaborator; on other hand, there is also an access issue - how do you make relevant customer feedback flow through the organization?

Is functionality coverage in CRM products today sufficient for Enterprise Marketing?

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 03:19:40 +0000

Some of you might have read the recent blog entry titled “How CRM products can aid Marketing” by fellow Infosys CRM blogger Vamsi Krishna. He ended his entry with the question “are marketers really using these CRM product capabilities to the maximum extent?”

While that certainly is a relevant question to ponder for small scale and stand alone marketing implementations, a deeper look at the needs of large scale Enterprise Marketing departments seems to indicate that functionality coverage in today’s CRM products is not sufficient.

SAP Insider CRM 2010- The New Normal is the “Now” normal

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:48:24 +0000

The New Normal is the “Now” Normal. This was the theme of the key note address at SAP Insider conference currently underway at Orlando, FL (see my previous blog post, SAP CRM 2010 Insider Conference). As the economy is coming out of a major slow down, the organizations are not necessarily changing their cost structures that came under tremendous pressure but expecting to continue at the same levels and do more with less. New investments are being planned but only with an expectation to demonstrate better results on an immediate basis - the ‘now’ normal. SAP’s executives discussed ways how SAP’s suite of products can be leveraged in identifying such targeted investments which will help solve today’s complex business problems, be nimble, effective, profitable and quicker to implement.

Rendering a social experience to your Social CRM strategy

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 05:42:48 +0000

by Satyajit Swain

Each day brings another milestone in the constant evolution of Social Media. Recently, Google launched Google Buzz to give a social experience to its popular mail service and the other day I was going through OneYoungWorld(the world’s first global youth leadership summit ) forum website and was amazed to find that it was inviting registration/selection of delegates not through its own site but through an application hosted on Facebook. The last time I checked OYW’s Facebook campaign had 6619 fans and the One Young World Facebook application had 12,305 active monthly users; these statistics could indicate an emerging trend in the way Social Media can affect us in the coming days.

SAP CRM 2010 Insider Conference

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 08:01:10 +0000

The SAP CRM 2010 Insider conference is being held this year at Orlando from Feb 23 to Feb 26. This is by far the most important event for people following SAP in the CRM space. Customers, Partners, Solution vendors all demonstrate equal excitement to be a part of this annual event. With slight hope of economic recovery I am hoping this year the participation would be even better than what was witnessed last year.

Measuring CRM Effectiveness

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 05:52:23 +0000

Enhancing customer experience is always a challenge. In order to enhance business performance, organizations have to expand their customer base.

Growth happens only when customer relationships with the organization are robust and satisfied. And customer satisfaction can only be increased with effective CRM in an organization.

But how would one measure the effectiveness of CRM for an organization? Below are some criteria that can be applied:

Relationship Management in Sales

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:21:49 +0000

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?

Importance of service based approach

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 19:27:47 +0000

Anyone who has experienced the last fifteen years of generational shift in marketing would have seen every aspect of marketing strategy and varied focused approaches towards selling. We do remember a time when organizations were more ‘product’ focused, launching of products was not all that frequent and retiring cycles were long. Customers didn’t have many options other than sticking on (in fact, the term customer experience was not used very frequently) as there was less competition. Then came the era of competition, where organizations not only thought about acquiring new customers but retaining the customers became a key priority. This was the dawn of a ‘Customer’ focused approach with up-selling, cross-selling, loyalty etc being the new buzz words.

Social Media – Be Aware or Beware? – Part 1

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 11:38:08 +0000

by Amrith Rajasekaran

‘Follow us on Twitter.’ ‘Become a fan on Facebook.’ These are now common messages on sites of so many companies wanting to reach out to their customer bases. The rate at which social networking has grown in the recent past is nothing short of phenomenal. Facebook crossed 250 million users as of July ’09 and Twitter has recorded a growth of over a thousand percent (year on year). What has that essentially done for the CRM space? Well, for starters it has really made the corporate world sit up and take notice of this new phenomenon of social networking.