Customer Relationship Management – Empower Your Response, Empower Your Customers
by Dustin Biddle, Implementation Consultant – Astute Solutions
There is a common misconception in the world of Consumer Relationship Management (CRM) which has many under the impression that CRM is entirely technology driven. While technology does provide case management, report trending, and social monitoring – three very important components to any solution – technology simply cannot replace the value in custom tailored response. Think about it: consider a time when you had a question, concern or even compliment for a brand which you provided in the small amount of free time you have, and in return, you received a generic response which didn’t fully address your issue. As the consumer, you were likely left with a less than stellar impression of that brand – the very thing brands spend a tremendous amount of money attempting to mitigate through strategic marketing and brand loyalty efforts.
Brand to consumer relationships are the lifeblood of any good business, and companies would do well to consider every available opportunity to provide an immediate and appropriate response. This can prove to be a difficult challenge as it is often the unplanned incident that might not follow your traditional escalation workflows that can have the biggest impact on your relationships positively.
Technology does provide the opportunity for “reason of contact” recognition and auto response solutions. It is here where attention to detail must be given consideration. Does your technology provide your agents the ability to quickly analyze, escalate, and if needed interrupt the workflow? When analyzing your current business processes and responses, consider all channels, consumer demographics, and social media outlets. A company can no longer rely on marketing strategies alone to drive brand awareness and safeguard brand reputation, as consumer feedback, particularly in social networks, is now defining our brands as we know them.
Social media can be a brand’s worse nightmare if not monitored, as consumers often use social channels in today’s world to express their opinion first. It is here where the brand can quickly and easily be diminished, and undercut the effectiveness of any marketing campaign. Consider the impact of one such story where an airline company broke a man’s guitar – the passenger attempted to seek resolution and was fed one generic response after another. He then proceeded to create a music video on YouTube to share his less than stellar experience with the world, and the response video caught fire on the internet and went viral. The brand’s reputation took a serious hit as the story became more and more popular, causing the company’s stock price to fall in total 10% costing stakeholders an estimated 180 million in value as reported by The Times newspaper.
Despite this new reality, companies are not powerless to such scenarios and there’s no need to panic at the thought of not completely understanding the social web and its impact on all consumer channels. Consider this a cautionary tale as you analyze just how automated your workflows and responses are. While it is virtually impossible and unpractical to take pause on every situation, we can empower our responses by understanding our consumers, often achieved through monitoring. An empowered response lets the consumer know that you care and can leave them with a lasting impression; one which they might tweet, blog or post about for the entire social web to see.
When considering your business CRM solution you must consider the situation, response, and relationship that you hold with the consumer. You must understand that while you may not be able to control the situations themselves, you can control your response. It is in response that you can turn a bad situation into an inadvertent brand loyalty campaign, and we see examples of this every day. When consumers have had a positive experience, they are highly likely to promote your brand in the social space among their networks, therefore employing word of mouth marketing on your behalf.
While it’s true that technology enables Customer Relationship Management, it is equally critical to consider our approach to responses. And as we’ve now crossed the chasm into the world of social influence, it’s time to re-consider how we tailor our technology and business practices to monitor, react diligently, and respond accordingly. By empowering our responses, we empower the business to consumer relationship.
Dustin Biddle is an Implementation Consultant at Astute Solutions. He has a passion for creative workflow design and process optimization focusing on toolset definition and business to consumer relationship management. Find him on twitter here: @dbidy4