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In early April, I purchased a wireless modem and service from one of the
largest service providers in the country. I was writing an article about
this modem for one of this magazine's sister publications, and desperately
needed the service to be activated immediately. I was so anxious to get my
service up and running that I vowed not to leave the office until the
modem was working properly.
As the clock was heading past 10:00 p.m., I decided that if I took the
role of the squeaky wheel, I might get some grease. I called the service
provider's customer service department, at which point I was prompted to
enter the telephone number about which I was calling. Once entered, I was
somewhat comforted by a series of recorded voices asking me to be patient
as the call volume was unusually high. "Sure," I thought to
myself, "many people call tech support a few hours before
midnight."
Finally, my patience paid off as an enthusiastic agent greeted me and
requested the telephone number about which I was calling -- the same
telephone number I had just entered 20 minutes earlier.
My first thought was, "What? You just asked me to enter that
number! Can't you see what I entered?" Graciousness prevailed,
however, and I proceeded to repeat the number, realizing my bedtime was
fast approaching and that honey always attracts more flies than vinegar.
So I recited the phone number and waited. Seconds after I uttered the
final digit, the agent responded with, "I'm sorry, Mr. Tehrani, this
is a business number you are calling about. You'll have to call the
business office to ask about this."
I asked why I wasn't informed of this when I had punched in my number
over 20 minutes before. It was at this point I realized I was fighting a
losing battle and the attitude and knowledge of the agent was not likely
to improve. I retreated, jotting down the business number as I secretly
wished less-than-nice thoughts about this ubiquitous phone company.
My service was turned on eventually, but I had a few more incidents
with the modem, so I had to spend many hours on the phone, holding for the
right tech support agent to help me with various technical problems.
Finally, when I had another technical question, I decided I would send
an e-mail to the company in question so I wouldn't have to suffer through
frustrating CRM-challenged phone systems. Immediately, I received an
automated response promising a return e-mail message in 24 hours to answer
my question. I smiled in response, feeling I had finally beaten the
system. Unfortunately, my smile had greatly dimmed four days later when I
received an e-mail message informing me that the only way to get an answer
to my question was to call the same business phone number I had jotted
down a week earlier during my less-than-fruitful telephone experience. I
immediately sent off a return e-mail message inquiring why the company
couldn't forward my original e-mail communication to the tech support
department. This inquiry revealed that the company's technical support
department does not yet have e-mail capabilities, but they're working on
it.
This is the company that provides me with a cellular modem, allowing me
access to unlimited Internet content and e-mail capabilities around most
of North America and parts of Canada, and its tech support department
doesn't have e-mail access? Hello?
And The Darwin CRM Award Goes To...
This situation reminded me of the creation of the "Darwin CRM
Awards," which I announced in March of 2000. These awards were
designed to recognize the companies that just don't understand CRM and
perhaps never will.
I awarded my first-ever Darwin CRM Award to Sprint last year. Lo and
behold, it deserves a second-annual award for its continued lack of
attention to customer service. I tried to establish a list on our Web site
of other CRM offenders, and even asked for your contributions. I received
lots of great suggestions, but in every case, readers were reluctant to
allow me to publish their stories for a variety of reasons.
Lest you think I have something against Sprint, nothing could be
further from the truth. Almost every cell phone at TMC, my home telephone,
my cell phone and now my cellular modem all use Sprint service because it
provides a good value. Unfortunately, its customer service has a long way
to go. I would surmise that its major competitors are no better.
Interview With An Expert
I do hate to harp on negatives, though. I consider myself a realist, so
whenever I am forced to write an inherently negative piece, I like to
balance it with something positive. In this case, I connected with eshare
communications (www.eshare.com), a
company that has been preaching better customer service and providing
solutions in this space for well over a decade. I asked them to help
answer some CRM questions as a way of helping all of us improve our
customer relationships.
I asked Loyd Olson, chief marketing officer for eshare, about the past,
present and future of CRM and its customer-facing cousin, customer
interaction management (CIM).
RT: What has been the biggest challenge in the last year in
developing solutions for improving CRM?
LO: Creating solutions that are quick and easy-to-implement.
Companies can't afford to have the customer-facing aspect of their CRM
solution become another huge implementation project. Most companies are
struggling with implementation of complex CRM solutions and are having
difficulties adopting additional systems (i.e., CIM solutions) until they
complete the implementation of their core CRM system. As a result, the
challenge is not developing useful software systems to improve CRM
systems...it's providing the expert services combined with an
easy-to-implement software solution. The solution must be turnkey and must
enable a CRM system to have a customer-facing component without creating
another unsynchronized customer contact channel. Most large companies have
more than five customer-contact channels that are not synchronized and
they cannot afford to add another.
RT: How do you see these solutions evolving over the next two
years or so? What trends are showing up that need to be addressed?
LO: Over the next two years, the primary emphasis of CRM
implementations will turn away from internally focusing on customer data
and will turn toward initiatives that reach out to nurture customers and
prospects. The success of a company's CRM solution will depend on the
effectiveness of its customer-facing strategy. A strong customer-facing
CRM strategy will help companies turn each interaction with a customer or
prospect into a sales opportunity and a memorable experience. In terms of
trends, the customer-facing/customer interaction aspect of CRM will be the
number one concern or area of emphasis. Linking CRM systems closer into
the supply chain via ERP systems will become a priority in order to
continue to provide efficiencies from the CRM implementation and provide
customers with real-time information from the back-office applications.
RT: How can companies looking to simplify and streamline CRM
processes accomplish this task? What are the benefits of doing so?
LO: Companies must move their focus away from internal CRM to an
external projection of CRM that will better benefit the customer.
Organizations need to spend more time on integrating the front office with
the back office. Everyone in the company must have access to real-time
information about customers so they don't bungle dealing with customers
and prospects and risk losing them altogether. Companies will benefit in
the back office by reducing customer support costs caused by unhappy
customers who don't pay their bills, thus increasing DSO (days sales
outstanding) and product returns. Happy customers feel valued and will
remain customers, thus reducing the cost of attracting new customers.
RT: What is a tightening economy going to mean to
business-to-consumer companies and their customers in terms of their CRM
systems?
LO: As the economy tightens, the need for a successfully
implemented CRM system with strong customer benefit components will become
critical, as businesses must earn and retain customers by providing
superior customer service without increasing the cost of human resources.
The tightening economy pushes the b-to-c companies to become more
efficient in managing their customer acquisition activities and their
contact with both new and existing customers. This segment will need to
focus on business analytics to target the profitable potential of existing
customers and then focus on a CIM solution that allows them to handle the
contact and engagement of those customers in the most cost-effective way
possible. The combination of strong analytics with multichannel CIM
campaign services creates an economic solution package for b-to-c
companies to manage profitable customer contacts.
RT: Judging by many media reports, and in light of the "dot
com bust," you would think the future of e-commerce is shaky, yet the
numbers don't back this up...e-commerce continues to grow, both in the
U.S. and abroad. Do you think e-commerce is going to be different than it
has been in the last several years?
LO: Regardless of what the dot com companies do, e-commerce is
here to stay and will continue to grow until it becomes the preferred
method of doing business. The e-commerce "revolution" and the
true value it brought to business has passed the critical mass point in
terms of acceptance in the brick-and-mortar environment. Web-enabling
companies are now seeing that the new methods and ideas pushed by the dot
coms, such as efficient customer contact via multichannel solutions, are
now in development and deployment within the traditional economy
companies. Therefore, the e-commerce revenues are growing to meet this
broadbase demand even though the new market dot coms are falling off the
radar screen.
RT: Can you offer insight into the single most common question
addressed to the editors of Customer Inter@ction Solutions, which
is, "How the heck do I manage all the e-mail I get, and what is all
that e-mail doing for me? How can it be used to my advantage?"
LO: Achieving effective and efficient e-mail management is
quickly becoming the largest problem faced by customer service, sales and
support organizations today. The only means of managing the volume and
complexity involves an end-to-end message management strategy with a
strong e-mail management system capable of automatically analyzing the
incoming e-mail and identifying the content as well as the type of
customer sending the e-mail, automatically responding with the correct
information to e-mail messages to which the e-mail analysis tool has
responded with a "high confidence." The solution should handle
upwards of 20 percent of the incoming e-mail without human intervention
based on current technology and appropriate focus on training and tuning
the system to the specific needs of a company and its customers. If the
solution is not able to automatically respond, then based on the analysis,
it should route the e-mail to the company representative with the most
appropriate skills to answer the question or concern as well as providing
a suggested answer to assist that representative in answering the query.
The solution must then provide an efficient and usable interface (e.g.,
intuitive with easy access to commonly used information for responding to
issues) for the company representative so he or she can minimize the time
spent responding to the question or concern. Creating an e-mail management
initiative should be one of the top three initiatives of any business
selling products or services over the Internet. E-mail is the most widely
accepted discipline on the Web today, and e-mail volume is growing
exponentially each year. The companies with systems that respond in
minutes or seconds versus hours or weeks will win. E-mail automation is
much like e-commerce: it is not an option, and early adopters of e-mail
automation will be the winners.
What Will Happen To Old-Fashioned Customer Service?
I really hate when I am repeatedly presented with poor customer service
levels. It's bad enough when it happens in a booming economy, but I am
really fearful of what will happen to good old-fashioned customer service
as the economy slows. It is up to all of us to become less tolerant of
atrocious service and complain loudly when we are treated poorly. If
companies fail to improve their service levels in this economy, where
every sale is precious, they are genuinely clueless. How should you react?
Threaten to take away your business. Today, the technology exists to
provide service levels that are beyond incredible. The only thing keeping
today's corporations from implementing this technology is the lack of
desire to treat their customers the way they deserve to be treated.
Sincerely,
Rich Tehrani
Group Publisher
Group Editor-in-Chief
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To The May 2001 Table Of Contents ]
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