A Practical Way Forward

· Complete opportunity assessment (value driver assessment)
· Research customer attitudes and needs
· Understand the customer experience expected (by segment and channel) and to be delivered
· Design specific customer experience propositions for segments and channels
· Design and develop new customer centric sales and service processes
· Develop customer centric sales and service targets
· Complete business case
· Test and refine customer experience propositions with channel staff
· Design new customer centric performance metrics (sales and service effectiveness, process efficiency)
· Provide training for culture change agents in stores and / or contact centres
· Provide training for new customer centric sales and service processes
· Develop and implement pilot implementation for new channels
· Monitor, evaluate and refine
· Roll-out

Performance measures

The different basis for remuneration and reward is a key driver of CRM success in channels. This is a cornerstone of any initiative to change behaviour towards a more customer centric approach focussed on building valuable customer relationships rather than volume based sales.

Skills and experience

There are often CRM skills gaps in channels as a result of the new process infrastructure and focus on sales and service to drive value in retail locations. The critical change in stores is the move away from “order taking” to playing a key role in establishing long term relationships with customers.

Process Integration

CRM requires fully integrated marketing, sales and service processes. The key need is to create a business infrastructure supporting two way flow of information. Firstly, for delivering campaign contact details, customer information and recommended actions to sales and service agents in the channels. Secondly for feeding back the results of sales or service actions.

Poor alignment of CRM and channel goals

CRM goals are often focussed on generating incremental value though cross selling and retention, whereas channel goals are typically focussed on new contract sales.

This issue is frequently polarised in the mobile telco market in Europe where stores for example, have been dedicated to signing new customers and selling contracts. A notable departure from this in the UK is Orange, which has recently launched a major advertising campaign designed to exploit the stores as a location to educate customers about the features and services they have access to. Their research indicates that 80% of customers use only 10% of the capability of their mobile telco service.

Common Issues - Executive commitment to CRM

Often a significant issue in delivering fully operational CRM in a multi-channel environment. There is often an expectation that all the benefits of a CRM programme can be obtained purely from investment in technology and marketing processes.

A two way flow of information between the centre and channels is also of fundamental importance in helping to ensure that customers are effectively managed face to face or by phone. Sales or service staff must know whom they are dealing with, what communications have been sent to the customer, which actions are thought to be most appropriate, and perhaps which level of service the customer is entitled to. In summary they need to understand the customer experience that they are expected to deliver. With this understanding, and very clear value objectives, even for a specific customer, they can play their full role in maximising the financial benefits from CRM.
This need to balance sales, service and customer impact is key in delivering really efficient and effective CRM. We can think of these as high level levers that can be pulled in order to align the business appropriately to the customer value opportunity.

CRM - overview

Organisational Development and Culture Change for CRM

Customer Relationship Management is a multi-disciplinary approach to business with the specific objective of maximising the value of customer relationships to the organisation. It often involves managing a complex, and sometimes conflicting, set of priorities where the needs of customers, members of staff and the company itself have to be balanced.

In the last few years practitioners in CRM have recognised that while technology and data are key components, it is essential that the organisational development issues are addressed if the full potential value of CRM is to be realised. A key element of this is the need for a new customer centric culture, processes and measurement in the channels. In the mobile telco industry this effectively means own brand stores, third party agents and contact centres. It’s easy to illustrate this. There is little or no point in creating excellent direct marketing campaigns to drive in-store traffic, or generating next best actions, if the customer experience in the store or contact centre is inappropriate or of a poor standard.

George

to pass is my dream

I know that deadline for assignment is over... but because of many troubles in my "company life" (what has been working in my private life too) I am going do it now. So let's start. Today I am going to post something about Customer Relationship Management. George