Spring is in the air, and, as buds are appearing on trees, and flowers are bursting from the earth, what better time to consider how best to grow relationships with our customers. Despite the name, customer relationship management (CRM) systems aren’t usually purchased for building long-term relationships with customers. In fact, while CRM and customer service technology apparently share a common focus on the customer, at many companies the CRM system and the customer service infrastructure are not integrated and, therefore, are unable to work together to grow long-term customer relationships. The gap between these two critical customer information systems squanders dozens of cross-sell and up-sell opportunities every day, not to mention innumerable chances to build deeper ties with customers. But, advances in CRM systems and tighter integration of the CRM system with the customer service infrastructure are making it easier to avoid these problems.

 

The potential for problems exist within many companies because there is no single organization that is responsible for the customer experience. Sales, marketing, and customer service all share responsibility. Often, each develops systems in isolation to address specific customer interactions within their control. For example, CRM systems are often implemented purely to automate the sales process or otherwise improve the efficiency of the sales team. While a CRM system may be in place, customers may still have few self-service options and the customer service organization may suffer from minimal IT investment and have little or no access to sales data. In my experience, this is especially true in small-to-medium sized companies in emerging markets, where investments in revenue growth are easier to justify than customer experience improvements.

 

When companies silo their sales and customer service data, the efficiency of handling customer inquiries suffers, and, as a result, organizations are unable to deliver “white glove” service to their customers. Not only are sales opportunities lost, but, at best, customers feel detached from the organization, and in many cases the relationship takes a turn for the worse as customer frustration builds and causes the relationship to be severed altogether.

 

With these issues in clear sight, there is a major push underway to blend CRM systems with service and support systems. This trend reflects a growing interest within corporations to improve the total customer experience. As products have become commodities and consumers have become more aware of product alternatives and prices thanks to the Web, companies have realized that the customer experience is one area, perhaps the only area, where companies can create long-term competitive advantage. In fact, according to Gartner (News - Alert), over the past three years loyalty, customer satisfaction, and retention have become the main objectives for CRM initiatives — surpassing cost reductions and revenue enhancement.

 

For companies wanting to get the most out of their CRM investment, extending a sales-oriented CRM deployment to the support organization may not be as difficult as you think. Recently, there has been more emphasis from CRM companies on service and support, resulting in a number of add-on products and modules to leverage the data in the CRM system to improve agent productivity and the customer experience. CRM companies generally offer a specific module for support and service organizations that provide customer self-service options, scheduling modules for sales and service personnel, inbound and outbound telephony solutions, communication solutions for e-mail and other channels, and more. For example, Salesforce.com (News - Alert), a leader in on-demand CRM, offers a specialized service and support module, and, through its unique AppExchange application directory, Salesforce.com offers more than 60 applications from its ecosystem that enable service and support groups to integrate telephony with the CRM, improve agent productivity, conduct surveys, etc. In fact, today’s CRM systems may include advanced search tools, case management, account management, offer management, analytics solutions, and other service/support-oriented solutions that can improve the operation of a call center and help populate information from the customer service group into a single data repository.

 

If you are setting out to improve the customer experience by integrating your CRM system with your service and support infrastructure, the place to start is by adding two key cogs.

 

First, deploy an application or module that allows your agents and your self-service IVRs to populate customer information directly into your CRM. This will ensure that vital customer information is captured, not discarded. Information on customer issues or sales questions can not only be used to improve customer service processes but can also be leveraged by your sales group to drive additional revenue with those customers. Consider a customer service group that fields a complaint from a key customer. Word of the situation and its ultimate resolution should be fed back to the CRM system in real-time so that the appropriate sales managers know how to adjust their approach with the customer.

 

Second, implement a CTI application that can leverage the information in your CRM system to optimally route calls and to prepare your agents to handle inbound inquiries by putting the information from the CRM system at the fingertips of your service/support agents as they field calls, e-mail, and other communications from your customer base.

 

With just this basic configuration, companies would be able to improve the customer experience with such capabilities as:

 

Clearly these capabilities address some of the more common customer complaints — why doesn’t the agent have my information and why don’t they remember my last call — that have been aggravating customers for many years. Now that spring has officially sprung, take the time to do some house cleaning of your own and eliminate these issues once and for all. With the advances in CRM technology, the seeds of customer loyalty can be brought to full bloom with a few basic improvements to the customer experience.