CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT LOOKS DRAMATICALLY DIFFERENT THAN IT DID FIVE YEARS AGO. WHAT IT WILL LOOK LIKE IN 2020 AND BEYOND IS SURE TO BE DRAMATICALLY DIFFERENT AS WELL.
It’s quite a challenge for CRM to keep up with the rapid rate of change today.
As we enter the Roaring Twenties of the 21st century, communications and media companies must find ways to deploy omnichannel CRM systems that, at their core, address three basic questions:
1. How does one solve for superior customer experiences?
2. What are the key ingredients to deploying holistic customer support?
3. What are the best ways to engage with customers in a complete customer support solution?
Superior Customer Experiences
Companies compete on service and the value that great customer care brings to the competitive marketplace. Having the best customer experience (CX) can be a disruptor. Companies that earn at least $1 billion annually could expect an average return of an additional $700 million within three years of making a CX investment, according to a 2018 study conducted by the Qualtrics XM Institute.
Research in that study found SaaS companies could increase their revenue by $1 billion by investing in CX initiatives. A study by experience management services firm Walker predicted customer experience will overtake product and price as the key brand differentiator by the end of 2020. The Walker survey further found that 86 percent of all buyers will pay more for outstanding CX and 49 percent make impulse purchases after they receive a more personalized CX.
We all know CX is important, but communications and media companies need to know how they can design a CRM specifically for superior CX:
First, all channels that connect the company to the customer must work in unison.
Second, the CRM solution must allow the company to focus as much on current customers as it does on new ones. It can’t solely focus on touchpoints with potential customers; it must integrate similar solutions for current ones. This is especially important, as a Forrester study found acquiring a new customer costs 500 percent more than retaining one you already have.
Holistic Customer Support
CRM today can’t be rigid. It must adapt to each company’s preferred customer journey. Across the company, it’s essential that solutions are designed with customers’ interests in mind for that division.
For example, the sales team needs to have CRM solutions that help them reach potential customers how and when they are most responsive. On the other hand, the customer support team needs a CRM solution that quickly and efficiently solves a current customer’s problem.
To this end, it’s essential that each division or team within a communications and media company maps out the customer journey specific to what they do. The CRM must be customizable to whatever solutions are needed.
Ways to do this include improving touchpoints with the customer, refining and increasing content, expanding your digital footprint, and ultimately embracing automation as much as possible. In fact, a Martech Advisor report predicts that AI in the CRM market alone will be worth almost $73 billion over the next few years.
A Complete Customer Support Solution
In the beginning, CRMs were dedicated almost exclusively to one department — sales. They were designed to streamline the sales process to acquire new customers. Slowly but surely, they evolved to integrate solutions for customer retention, but they didn’t truly take the next leap until recently.
Now, an effective CRM must provide a complete customer support solution: one that covers all channels of contact, integrates all departments in an organization, and focuses more on the customer and less on the worker.
Whether communications and media companies interact with customers by phone or online, the CRM must guide the process and collect data in the meantime. The solution must be more sophisticated than past versions — integrating with email, phone systems, social media channels and voice command technologies. The CRM also must collect data, report analytics and predict customer behavior for marketing, HR and IT departments — not just sales and customer service.
At the end of every year, it’s easy to say that “the world is changing” and “big things are on the horizon,” especially when it comes to technology for communications and media companies. 2020, however, promises to be an outlier, with significant changes coming via emerging technologies that promise to completely disrupt the CX landscape for good.
