One of the cool things about working in Customer Service CRM is that the landscape is always changing-always something to learn and do better. Over the past few years I've become increasingly interested in the phenomenon of social media and the effect it is having on customer relationships and how companies interact with their end-users. Also the effect it is having on being a consultant-there is a real community of great folks out there to work with in the social media space.
Anyway, in addition to our recent point of view around the notion of Social CRM and the need for a cohesive Social CRM strategy, we most recently worked to release some global research on how the latest wave of communications and high tech (CHT) corporate investments in customer service have fallen short in some areas during the downturn in a variety of ways. These two topics complement one another. They are also critical for companies to address as they emerge from the recession and learn to leverage new channels to increase loyalty and ultimately increase revenues.
It's important that companies in the communications and high tech industries consider directing their investments at new levers that enhance the customer experience. These levers include offering social customer relationship management tools, remote services, and flexible scheduling and re-scheduling of a field service professional for customers. Clearly, Social CRM needs to be, and will be, a driver of improved customer service by improving the increasingly important customer experience.
Industry leading companies are investing in customer service, but at the same time customer expectations are rising--in many cases faster than the investments. Some of the industry leaders' investment has focused on reducing their cost to serve. Spending on costing measures matters, but those types of pure cost-reduction initiatives should be tracked separately from investments that have the potential to increase customer satisfaction.
For example, huge investments in revamping interactive voice response (IVR) under the guise of "improving customer satisfaction" often turn out to be projects focused on "call avoidance" as opposed to "first-call resolution." The issue is not that the IVR investment "has no impact," but rather the money is being spent on traditional approaches that today have less impact on customer satisfaction than newer approaches would in social media.
Having a 360 degree view of the customer is great-but do we need it in one SQL record? In some cases a list of records will help; let's get that out there while we try to make it one universal customer record. If we have multiple records on a customer in the same database-yes lets clean that up-but if it is multiple sources with different models then we need a new paradigm. The sad reality is many single customer record projects cost a lot but never finish because the number of data sources grows faster than we can control it. Each new social media channel is another source so this is going to get worse-not better. A few records may be OK-the consolidated one from last year-and the new sources for this year. Next year we consolidate and trim the base-and add new. Repeat. Or get from a social media scanning service-maybe we maintain the core-but the social media footprint comes from a managed service. If we recognize Sisyphus trying to push the boulder up the hill again and again-we can work with him.
Data warehousing or MDM initiatives have their place, but may be relegated to initiatives around improving billers or mailing lists, as opposed to direct impact on customer experience. Today, CHT companies can sometimes get a high percentage of the value and give customer care and sales folks what they need without the huge investments in those traditional approaches. Another shortcut is that there is one vendor which has a creative MDM hybrid approach. They create a composite customer model from the get go with data cleansing optional.
When Communications, Electronics or Manufacturing companies make mistakes with customers today, the customers have numerous avenues to go public; people are chatting on and referring to forums, knowledge management search, plus other social media. This opens the door to companies that want to create a "virtuous loop," where they leverage what customers feel and know back into their call centers. After all, consumers sometimes know more than you do about your own products. So if you study Web FAQ pages, third-party forums and internal staff, you can perhaps do more to impact customer satisfaction. To use an example from DirecTV,-they now monitor DBSTalk officially, one of the prominent 3rd party satellite TV technology forums.
Also needed is a renewed focus on "field service" as a key touch-point with customers, and maybe even cross-sell and up sell opportunities. This is often an under-invested part of business; too many companies treat field service as a third-party 'black box' element of their business. But now you see some companies paying attention to the branding on the clothing of their third-party contractors, and even their professionalism and the way they present themselves. The next step is to further personalize the relationship by training these folks to interact with customers in a way that improves the overall brand image and the customer experience, and thereby loyalty.
Scheduling a "cable guy" to come to a home can significantly impact perception and loyalty. Missing a day of work waiting for the repair person to show up at your house is inconvenient and a widespread problem. Yet the technology exists today for example in Oracle Real Time Scheduling (ORS) to have same-day scheduling or rescheduling over phone or web. We have no technology excuses on this one anymore. These teams can be viewed as more than just technicians, but as a valuable touch-point to customers at the inception of a service or during a problem resolution; it can make or break perception of the company. When is the last time you tweeted about great installation/delivery service?
Thoughts? Feedback as always is welcome.
For a copy of the survey, please visit: www.accenture.com/2010recessionlessons.
Joseph Hughes, Accenture