The adjacent markets of social software, collaboration, contact center infrastructure, Web customer service, analytics and Web content management are starting to compete with or merge into the CRM customer engagement center software suite market.
The adjacent markets of social software, collaboration, contact center infrastructure, Web customer service, analytics and Web content management are starting to compete with or merge into the CRM customer engagement center software suite market.
CRM needs to make every user more effective every time they engage 1:1 with every customer.
I believe the answer is to re-focus on our 2 main constituents, and build the CRM experience around the following questions.
How can we better understand the needs of each individual customer at the point of engagement?
How do we empower our customer-facing users to engage customers more successfully?
How can we deliver a consistent experience every time we interact with customers?
How can we make every user more effective every time they engage 1:1 with every customer?
Fundamentally, CRM is about enabling businesses to build deeper and longer term customer relationships – that is, enabling businesses to optimize the point of 1:1 customer engagement. Focusing on the point of 1:1 customer engagement departs significantly from the historic focus on business process, forecasting, and internal management of the sales team. It necessitates that CRM software ultimately focus on the real CRM constituents first: the customer and the user.
The software needs to address the needs of the user who interacts with the customer, the needs of the customer who interacts with the business, and the consistency of that interaction.
Let’s drill into each of these in more detail.
Optimize Pre-Call Work -> Drive up agent productivity
Quickly find customer information from CRM system based on inbound info (ANI, email address, etc)
Reduce Unnecessary Talk Time -> Improve customer satisfaction
Find answers quickly, eliminate repetitive questions, reduce wait time
Increase Helpful Talk Time -> Create customer loyalty
Focus on solving customers problems, discover retention/up-sell/cross-sell opportunities
Reduce Wrap-up Time -> Retain qualified agents
Execute after-call processes automatically, reduce time to complete screens
CRM needs to make every user more effective every time they engage 1:1 with every customer.