ICMI's Customer Management Insight - December 2007 - (Page 35) TECHNOLOGY MIKE BETZER MIKE DE LA CRUZ Vice President of CRM Strategy, Oracle Today, companies are managing more channels than ever — phone, email, chat, Web, blogs, wikis and more. Not only are customers using these channels to reach and interact with companies, they’re also increasingly talking to each other about likes, dislikes, product tips and tricks, and more. As a result, we’re seeing increased interest in business intelligence tools that provide historical and real-time insight into customer profiles, behaviors and interactions. Real-time decisioning offers particular value by dynamically analyzing data from multiple systems, and making a recommendation for how to serve the customer. Business intelligence tools used in combination with CRM systems offer many of our customers the actionable insight they need to adapt to a changing demand and a competitive marketplace. GREG GIANFORTE Vice President of CRM Product Management, SAP It’s about the 360-degree view of the customer. Historically, companies have had to operate without a picture of the end-to-end process and the total customer experience. So our clients value integration of CRM with the rest of their applications. They want CRM to encompass end-to-end business processes that start and end with the customer experience. Through end-to-end processes and integration with back-end systems, companies can harness the efforts of their entire organization to know every facet of their customer, leverage that insight to serve them efficiently, and make better business decisions. It’s [also] about getting the right data to the right point at the right time. Historically the marketing department might bombard call center agents with customer research and a menu of offers. Many of our customers want to simplify the process for the call center agent while making them more effective. To help, SAP CRM offers a decision engine that responds to what is happening during a customer interaction in real time to provide more relevant offers. This engine learns over time and makes the call center much more effective. Finally, it’s about sharing the information with one’s business network of suppliers, customers and partners to create competitive advantage. Companies are unlocking new market opportunities by combining Founder and CEO, RightNow Technologies The strength of a company’s brand and its bottom-line business performance depend on how well it understands and responds to customers. Our clients have made customer feedback an integral component of every customer interaction and many have implemented real-time response and escalation mechanisms that enable fast action based on the feedback. We are seeing clients use our feedback solution to capture feedback at the “moment of truth” via email surveys immediately following an interaction. Our most proactive clients act on that feedback quickly and make it accessible to everyone who needs it by including the feedback in the common customer record used by all front-line employees. AL FALCIONE Director of Product Marketing, Salesforce.com [A] trend we have observed is that customers demand a fast time to value and will not tolerate 18-month implementation cycles that used to be the norm for software companies. One of the reasons on-demand has grown so quickly is because it is fast and easy to implement. Customers don’t have to go through the procurement process for servers, databases, backup systems, and install all those CD-ROMs. Salesforce.com customers implement their CRM solutions in an average of 15 days for a small or midsize business and 35 days for a large enterprise. icmi’s insight M Certifiable CRM As you prepare for the new year, you may be thinking about how you can improve your company’s communication with customers, and build skills that enable you to grow in your career. Through CIAC certification, you can achieve both. To view details about CIAC certification, click here. A key component of earning CIAC certification, whether you supervise day-to-day customer care operations, or you’re responsible for customer care in an executive role, is translating CRM concepts to practice. ICMI offers training on a number of essential disciplines in customer care, including an online study course on CRM. This is one of several online courses that ICMI designed specifically to help you prepare for CIAC certification. For more information, click here. www.icmi.com | DECEMBER 2007 35 http://Salesforce.com http://www.incoming.com/Certification/FAQs.aspx?SelectedNode=Certification http://Salesforce.com http://www.incoming.com/WebModules/Products/SeminarDetail.aspx?ProductId=269 http://www.icmi.com
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