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  Seven Powerful New Strategies For Increased CRM Profitability
 
The simple, driving concept behind business success is that business is based on finding, keeping and growing customer relationships. But why are so many companies struggling when this principle is so simple?
 
The reason is that communicating with customers is more complex today and customer expectations are still high. New technologies have ushered in communications channels such as the Web, e-mail and PDAs that dramatically alter the dynamics of customer relationships. Through these new channels, customers now define when, where and how you’ll do business. You need to worry about treating them consistently no matter how they contact you and having all their information ready to serve them instantly. Do that and you’ll reap the rewards that grateful and loyal customers can bring your business. But how?
 
To succeed in this changed environment you can turn to some hot and proven technologies that will help you collect and effectively leverage data flowing through all channels and existing in all data silos in your company. These technologies include a foundation that lies on top off all the silos of data and communication channels in your business, multichannel contact centers that blend voice contacts with other communication channels and route contacts to the right resource using predefined business rules and more.
 
Let’s take a look at seven powerful new strategies for turning some hot new technologies to your advantage.
 
Strategy #1: Make Self-Service An Attractive Option
 
Self-service is a significant trend today because of the improved customer satisfaction and profitability gains it offers. It allows customers 24X7 access to your company and their account information.
 
Many companies already use interactive voice response (IVR) systems. With advances in speech-recognition and text-to-speech technology, customers can now get the information they need with simple, intuitive spoken commands. For companies doing business globally, this service also is available in many languages. These advances help to put IVR self-service on the same footing as live service, and shift the workload away from live agents.
 
Another feature of a successful self-service operation is automated access from a mix of channels, including fax, email, Web and phone. This provides customers access to the same professional service through every channel, and ensures that your company ties every self-service transaction to a consistent managed customer relationship.
 
Strategy #2: Conduct Interactions in Real-Time
 
Today’s customers expect instantaneous updating of data and immediate response to inquiries. Businesses face the immense challenge of ensuring that real-time information is properly organized, disseminated and stored. In short, they adapt CRM to handle real-time interactions.
 
Information shared in real-time – customer facing and internal – offers many benefits. Contact centers can now know what customer data resides in order administration and immediately share this across inventory, shipping and vendor notification departments.
 
More accurate, timely data equips your agents to make the best use of every customer contact. It empowers them to suggest complementary products (cross selling) and higher quality items (up selling) based on availability and known preferences.
 
Companies can use real-time information to identify patterns and trends – resulting in real-time updates in manufacturing, distribution and other resource usage. The result is greater efficiency across the enterprise.
 
Strategy #3: Exploit the Value of Voice over IP Today While Preparing for Tomorrow
 
The latest trend companies are preparing to exploit is the inevitable convergence of voice and data onto one network. Putting voice communications over the network is known as voice over IP (VoIP) and it promises significant operational savings.
 
Today, you can easily add VoIP in your contact center or use it for remote sites or representatives so that the minute a customer call is inside your company, your representative gets that call over the company’s network. The customer will not notice anything different because it is on the network within your company only. By adding VoIP to your contact center you reduce certain operational costs associated with two separate networks and you are prepared to support multi-media communications as the demand and utility of such things as video increases. You’ll also be ready when consumers start calling you by clicking on your website instead of from their traditional phone.
 
Strategy #4: Integrate the Web into Your Contacts
 
While voice and the telephone will remain the primary customer contact channel into the near future, the Web is proving to be a powerful channel for increasing your customer base and revenue.
 
One particularly successful tactic to reduce customer frustration is ‘escorted browsing’ where a customer and a live agent view and manipulate the same Web pages at the same time. Other current technologies include, text chat, file transfers, and page markup technology, sometimes called whiteboarding.
 
These collaborative features lead to a reduction in dropped online transactions, an increase in sales, and satisfied, repeat customers.
 
Strategy #5: Keep Your Best Agents on Board
 
Since every CRM strategy incorporates the use of live agents, it is important to look at managing this critical resource. Losing good agents means reduced staff efficiency and customer satisfaction and the challenge of finding new agents.
 
Successful businesses avoid this problem through intelligent workforce management, forecasting workloads based on past history and current use. Today there are Web-based tools that automate scheduling, vacation or overtime requests, and that can indicate which agents are on break or in training. Managers can optimize scheduling and avoid the pitfalls of understaffing and overstaffing.
 
The bottom-line of intelligent workforce management is higher contact center efficiency, happier customers and happier agents.
 
Strategy #6: Integrate Everything
 
Integration means being channel neutral and serving the customer on his terms. In addition to presenting a single face to your customers, proper integration permits enterprise-wide information access that can be managed from a single point.
 
This can be accomplished by adding a foundation that lies on top off all the silos of data and communication channels in your business. Leave the silos alone, but let the platform access what it needs to manage the customer interactions. Open systems based platforms like this exist and they prevent customers from experiencing the problems associated with silos such as representatives or a self-service application not having all the relevant customer history during an interaction. Such a platform lets customers experience consistent service no matter what communication channel they choose --- your business will always recognize them so you can treat them in the same way. This platform should accomplish the “consistency of experience” by blending voice contacts with other communication channels and routing contacts to the right resource using predefined business rules which can be redefine quickly as needs change.
 
When implementing or updating your CRM strategy, look for technology solutions that can integrate all customer touch points, put self-service on an equal footing with live service, and integrate your legacy system while migrating to the latest technologies to protect current and future IT investments.
 
Strategy #7: Make Extraordinary Service Ordinary
 
Technology has captivated your customers. They now expect superior service 24X7 from any channel – the phone, the Web, the cell phone, PDAs and mobile data devices.
 
Plan to make every contact from every channel subject to your CRM strategy. This means intelligently sorting, prioritizing and routing contacts. Don’t fall into the common trap keeping your data locked up in silos that are independent and unconnected. Similarly, don’t rely on either a one-size-fits-all approach or on one that is so agent-dependent that it is unscalable.
 
With effective use of today’s technology, customers can receive the highest level of service that meets their needs, regardless of how they contact you. At the same time, businesses can effectively streamline and manage multichannel customer interactions to reap the benefits of enhanced customer service and profitability.