A meaningful relationship with the customer ensures not just a happy customer but long-term value for the business — translating into better returns. This relationship paradigm has become starkly apparent in the fiercely competitive world of mobile telephony, where consumers are extremely tech-savvy and demand really high levels of service. Walking away from an unsatisfactory situation is always an option for the customer.

For the operator, there is a very small window of opportunity in this moment to create stickiness, to add a personal touch. Real time resolutions followed by a genuine focus on the customer’s real requirements and suggesting alternatives to fulfil them are at the heart of next-generation customer-centricity initiatives.

Let’s consider a real life scenario. Incensed at poor data download speeds on a brand new data connection, a customer calls up the telecom operator’s help line number. Advanced device detection capability in the customer relationship management (CRM) platform ensures near instant access to information and intelligence from this data. The service agent attending the call is able to quickly understand the root of the problem. It is the customer’s own device — an older feature phone. Handsets of this kind can be a bottleneck in sustaining and maintaining higher speeds of data download. As the agent reels out these details — the make, features, capabilities of the device in use and the need for change — it pleasantly surprises the customer. For the customer, happy at the resolution and inspired by the display of knowledge by the agent, this is the beginning of a meaningful relationship.

Three trends The evolution of CRM will be largely driven by three trends. These are, shared ownership of customer relationships across the organisation; the need to convert dispersed and diverse data into simple, coherent, exact insights that are actionable in real-time; the increasing consumer demand for personalised products and services. The 3 Ps that will largely define customer relationships, therefore, are:

Pervasiveness: What is true in life, is even more so with customer relationships. An individual is more likeable if they listen first and then talk. In the era of 24-hour news cycles and social media, this is hard. Technology can help but only if you let it and it is possible to get lost in reams of big and small insights generated on social media and other platforms. Herein lies the secret to working magic – companies must have a structure in place to ensure that every team is locked in to generate outcomes from such insights.

Too often, the efforts will be concentrated on a particular subset because people responsible for technology are tied to a single business function. Customer-centricity requires every part of the organisation to participate. CRM has started to become more pervasive across enterprises with each employee having a role in establishing and sustaining customer relationships. It has never been more critical to engage employees first so that they reflect your brand vision. Sharing with your employees your vision, your plans and how you are listening to your customers makes them better equipped to support your mission.

Precision: As analytics invade the enterprise, specialists will look for patterns and predictions that are more precise and available in real-time. Advanced analytics will ensure that the enterprise functions as a cohesive entity with intuitive departmental collaboration driven by precise insights drawn from a multitude of data sources/types.

The current tools require users to possess specialised skills to filter, assess and apply data insights. This is changing as the average business user looks for capabilities that are more user-friendly to facilitate organic assistance with day-to-day decision-making. For instance, call centres will be able to automatically route calls to the agent best equipped to handle a customer query by analysing the interaction history of a customer. The call centre agent will also then be sent a script with pertinent details to be able to adequately resolve the expected query. This type of applications will become more mainstream as complex data analytics are embedded into the enterprise and its recommendations are made accessible to daily decision-makers.

Analytics will become more social and collaborative as business users are provided recommendations based on the interaction and decision history of other users.

Personalisation: Personalisation in customer communication is one of the most powerful marketing tools a business can implement to drive brand loyalty and success. According to research, nearly three-quarters of consumers desire personalised products and services, and personalisation is the most influential factor in determining value for money. Personalisation is the future; consumers and clients want it — particularly in case of millennial/post millennial audiences. If applied correctly, this power to personalise can be viewed as a brand asset and help to drive brand value and loyalty. A recent academic research found that companies that have incorporated data and analytics into their operations show productivity rates 5 to 6 per cent higher than those of their peers. The reason is simple: the more information a brand has on its consumer, the better it is able to predict their behaviour; leading to an increased chance of sustained engagement through bespoke product and service offers.

An effective mix of employee engagement and technology will define the future of CRM in organisations. The need of the hour is to aggressively implement a more inclusive, agile approach that allows every employee to be trained and empowered to take decisions that have a direct bearing on a customer’s relationship with the brand. Technology has a critical role to play here as a key enabler of service innovation. The aim is to create real moments of “magic” while delivering quick, efficient and hassle-free service experiences to customers.

Sanjay Dakwale is Vice-President - Customer Service Delivery, Tata Teleservices Ltd

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