The transition from traditional Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to Customer Experience Management is underway, and we are in the middle of it. To attract and retain customers, enterprises today not only need to manage their customers’ experience, but also do so in a proactive manner. To put this in another way: while it is essential for enterprises to be quick, nimble and agile to their customers’ needs, for true differentiation with competitors they need to anticipate and be proactive about their customers’ needs.
I often think that the lines between technology and business are blurring. Earlier, technology was one of the enablers for business. Increasingly it appears that technology might be the primary way to do business in the future. For example, the current business need of proactive customer care can be truly realized (only) through a technology implementation. The easiest way to understand this is through a use case. Let’s take an example in the retail banking sector. The disclaimer here: this example is for illustrative purposes only.
Jane, a customer of xBank, is concerned about a possible erroneous transaction of a small value on her monthly credit card statement. She calls up the call center and logs a complaint with the agent regarding her credit card. For some reasons, there are delays in the investigation process at the back-end. In the absence of any information, she follows up repeatedly but is unable to get a resolution from xBank. Even though the transaction value is not very high, Jane’s overall experience is poor and she is annoyed at her bank’s apathy to her problem. She then begins to use another credit card that she has, and stops using her xBank card. After some weeks her problem does get resolved, but by then she has already made up her mind to return the xBank card.
What could xBank have done differently? Here’s an example of a technology solution that could have addressed the scenario above.
When Jane calls the call center and the agent logs a complaint, a Dispute Case gets created in a Case Management application. The case management application looks up Jane’s data and creates a customer profile for her. The application assigns the dispute to the right investigation agent and also ensures that the dispute is passed from one agent to another, and from one system to another by tracking and monitoring the dispute at every stage. The application also sends out periodic automated notifications to Jane about the status of the investigation. The application also has a “feed” on the transaction volumes on Jane’s card. In the current scenario, in case Jane stops using her xBank card and starts using another one, the feed indicates a drop in transaction volumes. The application has a rule configured in an inference engine that correlates Jane’s unresolved dispute with the drop in transaction volumes, and infers that there is a possibility Jane might have stopped using her xBank card and is at risk of attrition in the near future. An alert is sent to a customer care agent with Jane’s profile, information about the current dispute under investigation, and a recommendation to initiate proactive customer care. This could include a call back, assurances that the dispute will be resolved, and possibly a special offer in terms of redemption points for resuming usage of the xBank card.
A technology implementation of this type in today’s world is not rocket science, there are a few organizations who have already implemented such solutions as early adopters. The interesting part will be to see how quickly the rest of the enterprises catch up. With customer churn and attrition on the rise, moving from reactive to proactive customer care would be inevitable for most organizations over the next few years. This, in turn, would be one of the building blocks for next generation Customer Experience Management solutions.
Shantanu is a former Happiest Mind and this content was created and published during his tenure.
