Over the past two decades, the mantra to manage customer–focused activities has been CRM. The problem is that CRM is largely focused on managing internal activities which have a consequential impact on the customer – marketing, sales customer service. From the customer’s perspective, it is the outcome of interactions that largely impact their perspective of the relationship: Was the call center agent pleasant? Did the agent solve the problem? Does the product work? Do companies keep trying to sell me things I am not interested in? Tough economic conditions and the rise of social media have made companies sit up and become more focused on the customer. As a result CRM is losing its appeal and customer experience management (CEM) is taking its place. CEM is about influencing the outcome of interactions by taking action as the interaction is taking place; prompting the agent's reaction, replacing FAQ’s with virtual agents, making IVR more customer friendly. Our latest research into the adoption of cloud-based systems to support interaction handling shows this is no easy task. Customers now interact through more channels. More people across the enterprise handle interactions and both employees and customer want to interact while they are mobile. These new factors make it difficult to provide consistent information and experiences. A comprehensive voice of the customer (VOC) program is the foundation to achieve these objectives and so we advocate that companies look to implement such a program as soon as possible.
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