InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
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November 13, 2000 |
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Interactive CRM
Tools Help Personalize The Customer Experience
Interactive CRM options provide multiple channels for customer interaction
By Charles H. Trepper
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oday's E-business customers demand instant access to companies with which they do business and expect each person they contact to have full knowledge of their account. Fully personalized service has become standard.Traditionally, customer-relationship management has been used to describe the processes and systems that help companies better understand and, hopefully, service their customers. Interactive customer-relationship management brings this application segment into the Internet age.
ICRM is the integration of instant communication, including voice, chat, and messaging with E-mail, fax, and post, within a wide variety of business processes. To a large extent, ICRM has evolved to help customers over the E-commerce hurdles and to bridge the disconnect between the old way of buying and the new way of selling.
Research by many companies has found that effective businesses usually invest in general CRM packages to improve customer care, to build longer-term relationships, to improve user productivity, and to increase integration of sales and customer care. The fundamental goal of ICRM is to instill greater customer loyalty, sales, and satisfaction.
Companies must link ICRM software with back-end systems, resulting in a deeper understanding of customers that helps to identify the most profitable customers, leads to a richer product set, and improves sales opportunities. Customer acquisition and retention in E-business requires rethinking the most basic business relationship: the one between a business and its customers.
ICRM is most effective when companies deploy active strategies to support the whole sales process through acquisition, retention, and development. Online ICRM helps the person-to-person interaction so fundamental to many companies' sales and buying processes.
The real promise of ICRM is that consumers and business customers will get what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. The challenge is to use ICRM to develop strong ties with customers and provide excellent service. To reach this goal, companies must consider some strategic issues:
o Acquiring customers. Studies indicate that a majority of shoppers are looking for more human interaction before they shop online. ICRM lets E-commerce sites interact at the point of sale, turning browsers into buyers and increasing the size of orders. The ICRM tools can detect empty shopping carts and send an alert before the browser leaves the site.
o End-to-end customer care. Superior customer care means tracking a customer's order from the sale through delivery, including customer satisfaction follow-up. This is a difficult task. ICRM packages make it easier by providing an interactive "personal touch" at each stage. This personalized attention shows up in specialized sales suggestions, delivery notification, and built-in satisfaction surveys.
o Providing ongoing value to retain customers. Catering to individual needs and making sure to deliver what customers want and how they want it, via interactive means, is critical for success in today's super-fast, hypercompetitive market. Retention programs coupled with ICRM let companies use the power of interactive Web technologies to serve customers better, faster, and more economically than competitors can.
o Personalization. Creating a customer profile and using customer feedback for new or improved products and services is key to E-business success in an increasingly competitive environment. Keeping customers happy means meeting their evolving needs. ICRM products provide information that aims product assortment, pricing strategies, promotions, and loyalty campaigns at the individual customer.
o Making sense of customer data. ICRM tools must provide details of each interaction, purchase decision, question, and support need. These messages feed the databases that empower the customer-service representatives and drive the business marketing and sales programs that depend on knowing how price, promotion, and assortment influence customers.
Managing these strategic issues with ICRM implementation lets businesses leverage customer relationships in new ways. It also puts new demands on understanding the customer as well as the internal organization. The benefits of identifying and targeting the best customers, managing promotions, and generating new sales are clear.
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