Browse Research

Rethinking CRM: Provide Customers the Information They Care about in a Seamless Fashion
Customers Don’t Want to Be Managed; They Do Want Good Experiences and Outcomes
By Patricia B. Seybold, August 21, 2008

NETTING IT OUT

Expand your thinking about customer relationship management to embrace customer experience management and customer-managed relationships. Customers don’t want you to manage their relationships; they do want you to manage their end-to-end experiences with your brand.

What’s the right CRM strategy?

1. Streamline customers’ activities across interaction touchpoints, distribution channels, and functional or product silos to make it easy for customers to do business with you and easy for customers to reach their goals.

2. Maintain and link customers’ information across silos, touchpoints, and distribution channels so that customers can access a comprehensive picture of their transactions and interactions with you and the products and services they’ve purchased and are using.

3. Give customers easy self-service access to the information you have about their accounts, transactions, and interactions with you and your partners.

4. If they opt in to personalized service, make relevant offers to customers based on their context, transactions, and interactions and give them easy opportunities to correct any misinformation or assumptions you are making about their interests or needs.

5. Start by providing customer-critical information and tools to your prospects and customers. Then provide that same information, along with additional value-added services, to the associates and partners who serve those customers.

Where’s the biggest bang for the buck in CRM? Our vote goes to cross-channel customer service. You’ll reduce your costs to serve, you’ll gain valuable customer insights, you’ll improve customer experience, and you’ll increase revenues and profitability.

Make sure to include your customers’ ROI in your ROI calculations. Measure how much time, aggravation, and money you’re saving your customers and prospects as you streamline their access to the information they need in order to manage their relationships with you and your business partners.

This report is an Updated Classic. An earlier version of the report was published on April 1, 2004.

All CRM Implementations Should Be Cross-Channel

© 2008 Patricia Seybold Group, Inc.

Illustration 1. Customers’ experiences with your brand and the way they identify with your company’s and/or your product’s brand is based on trust. That trust in your brand is either strengthened or eroded based on the experiences that prospects and customers have as they interact across channels: on the phone or the Web, in the store, through your distribution partners, and so on. If you waste customers’ time or make it hard for them to make buying decisions, it adversely impacts the customers’ experiences and your brand image.

This report continues...

(Back to top)