CRM - June 2008 - (Page S5)

Sponsored Content June 2008 5 CONTINUOUS CUSTOMER DIALOGUES Strategies for Growth and Loyalty in Multi-channel Customer-Oriented Organizations You read about customer-centric growth strategies and hear about them everyday. Articles, websites, industry presentations and speeches are all filled with content and business intelligence that address the challenges and opportunities which lie ahead of you. You’ve seen numerous case studies of best practice, enterprising companies from around the world and you’re amazed at how they’re increasingly developing and implementing their own successful strategies. Based on deepening relationships with customers which emphasize long-term satisfaction over short-term sales conversions, new ground continues to be broken everyday. KEYS TO SUCCESS With these strategies, the key indicator of success is customer lifetime value, a measurement of the customer’s value over the life of the relationship. Other key metrics include share of wallet, products per customer, average revenue per user (ARPU), loyalty, retention, and on-boarding conversion rates. The challenges of implementing a customer-centric strategy can be addressed along two dimensions: do you have the right insight into the customer and do you have the ability to respond to the needs and interests of the customer based on that insight? An organizational self-assessment will identify the key challenges and opportunities for any organization: (1) Customer-specific offers. Rather than pushing products, does your organization have enough insight about the customer to create offers based on the individual needs of those specific customers at the moment of interaction? (2) Consistent customer experience. Does your company provide a consistent experience for each customer-initiated contact across multi-channel touchpoints, defined as the web, call center, kiosk, or retail outlet? Does your company take advantage of this opportunity to understand the geographic, demographic, and psychographic characteristics of customers and build trust and strengthen their emotional ties to the company? Leading customer-oriented companies see every customer interaction as an opportunity to retain a valued customer, increase revenue, build loyalty, or strengthen a brand. These enterprises look to customer relationship management solutions to help them connect with customers, anticipate their needs, and deliver the products and services they want when they want them. The need for customer insight and responsiveness to that insight is the foundation and driving rationale for the emerging CRM concept of continuous customer dialogue through multi-channel touchpoints. Maintaining a continuous dialogue with customers is the key to a customer-centric growth strategy. Customers have choice. In order to win their loyalty, the company must win their trust. Delivering a consistently positive experience to the customer through an ongoing, multichannel dialogue enhances value for both parties over the lifetime of the relationship. At the end of the work day, it’s all about your customers, your research, your product development, your marketing efforts, and the investment you’ve made in your operations—all of which come down to capturing the customer at the point of interaction. You want more customers to buy more products so it’s important to make them feel comfortable doing business with you. It’s also important to find a way to keep your channels highly productive and focused and to have the ability to interact with each customer at the most opportune time to increase your share of wallet, products per customer, ARPU, cross-sell, and up-sell, while stimulating the emotions for loyalty and retention. ABOUT INFOR Infor delivers business-specific software to enterprising organizations. With experience built in, Infor’s solutions enable businesses of all sizes to be more enterprising and adapt to the rapid changes of a global marketplace. With more than 70,000 customers, Infor is changing what businesses expect from an enterprise software provider. Designed to provide unparalleled customer experience across multiple business units and channels, Infor CRM Epiphany integrates customer information from multiple enterprise systems into a single view. Infor CRM Epiphany drives innovation, competitive advantage and increased profitability by focusing on the customer experience to increase the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and sales success. For additional information, visit http://www.infor.com/solutions/crm/ http://www.infor.com/solutions/crm/ http://www.infor.com/solutions/crm/

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - June 2008

CRM - June 2008 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Making Mashup Masterpieces Trouble in the Air CRM on Twitter Is SaaS Ready for Its Contact Center Close-up? CRM: In the Public Interest Required Reading Lollipop Loyalty Best Practices Series: CRM & eCommerce eGain NetSuite Infor Longwood Software Vovici The Second Coming of 2.0 Believe the Hype About Hosted Contact Centers All Talk So Hot It’s Cool Linksys Gets Shaken, a Community Is Stirred The Risky Risk Business Awana Hears a SaaS Sermon Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - June 2008

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