CRM Initiatives : Modern Contact Center

CRM Initiatives

Customer Relationship Management initiatives can be broadly categorized into 2 categories; 1) Front-office 2) Back-Office: 

Front Office

The specific technical goals for the user facing layers are: a) Support for Multi-Channel interaction from customer b) Use of innovative technology in contact centers c) Support for  larger customer base, b) More self service, d) Better user experience and user stickiness.

The key elements of the architecture that can achieve these goals are:

1. Unified Communication (supported by IM and Rich Presence) 

• Seamless Collaboration supported by Unified communication

• Work From Anywhere , Virtualization of contact center

• Get the SME or Manager/Supervisor immediately into conference with customer

2. Intelligent IVR 

• Innovative technology which routes the call to best agent based on the call statistics; customer name, type, type of call

• Speech Analytics to sense the customer frustration/delight for appropriate action like escalation.   

3. Analytics Driven Contact Center

• Analysis of the calls, agents, measurement of improvement in call resolution to detect the ideas which are working and which needs improvements.

4. Self Service

• Provide self service portals to drive routine and most common queries of the customer with intuitive help and self-service. 

• Capture the customer habits and behavior on the self service portal to analyze their behavior and trends.

5. Social CRM

• Social interaction and face book communities are driving the customer liking and dislike and setting expectations.

• Provide customer agents with Social Networking tools to interact with customers and form a relationship.

 

Benefits 

 Improved First Call Resolution

 Customer Retention, Extension, Advocacy

 Response time assurance for a business transaction 

 Reduced cost of operations 

BackOffice

In the back office landscape, the key elements are:

1. Information Analysis & Access

Analysis and driving decision based on information analysis is the key to smart and successful interaction with customers

2. Information Aggregation (MDM and KM)

• Information in an enterprise is spread across departments, staff and their systems. 

• Information in an also maintained in documents, PDF, emails, databases, content management systems, Issue systems etc.

• Information is also available in form of different format representing same entities; Customer (CRM) , Lead(Sales), Prospect(Sales), Consumer(CRM) may all be representing multiple facets of same person. 

Unified access to integrated and aggregated information is must for a seamless interaction across departments.

3. Application and Process Integration

Computer systems must emulate the human workflow with seamless collaboration without hindrance of departmental system boundaries. The application must be integrated without any duplication and inconsistency of data.

Market Research --> Planning --> Purchase --> Production --> Sales --> Sales Support 

The entire end-2-end value chain must be integrated with no constraints.

 

Benefits 

 Improved Information Access

 Improved Information Quality

 Integrated Information