Some customer relationship management (CRM) systems track customer interactions, some analyse buying patterns and product preferences, and some manage inbound e-mails. All of these capabilities are important, but on their own they are not enough to optimise a corporation`s relationships with customers and prospects.
The proliferation of Internet technologies has increased security threats to CRM applications.
Garth Wittles, district manager, Verity
According to a Gartner CRM report, what is missing from many enterprise strategies is a way of dramatically increasing people`s effectiveness in their interaction with customers. For inside sales and customer service, it is the phone call gone awry. For the Web site, voice response unit, Web phone and kiosk, it is the abandoned interaction. Without a remedy for this situation, without a more effective customer interaction, customer satisfaction, and therefore - enterprise profits - are placed at risk.
Enterprises need knowledge-enabled CRM systems to yield greater understanding, greater value and greater customer relationships. They need solutions that enable them to locate, connect and leverage both customer and company information for a competitive advantage.
The ability to quickly find and deliver the most accurate answers to pressing questions from customers and prospects reduces increased escalations. Of equal value is the kind of functionality that allows users to serve themselves by locating FAQs, technical support information, and other valuable product documentation online.
A three-tier foundation of discovery, automatic classification and powerful recommendation capabilities is key here. This foundation enables existing CRM applications to generate an indisputable return on investment by empowering customer service representatives, enhancing customer self-service, increasing loyalty, improving sales and reducing costs. Some of the key components of this architecture include:
* Advanced discovery tools to enhance understanding, thereby equipping customer support and sales representatives with the knowledge they require to anticipate and meet the needs and wants of their customers. Tools such as full-text, category drill-down, parametric selection, federated search, relational taxonomies and natural language search improve the customer self-service experience by making structured, semi-structured and unstructured information from internal and external sources searchable with a single query.
* Powerful retrieval features which return correct results by conceptually interpreting the one- and two-word queries that most customer service representatives, sales personnel and customers use.
* Flexible federated search returns which merge and rank results from multiple information sources. For example, a help desk pharmacist could submit one query for "penicillin allergies" and receive results from the company`s intranet, a pharmaceutical company database, a consumer health Web site and numerous other external information sources. Duplicate results are automatically eliminated, and the list can be sorted for relevancy or re-ranked by source and category. Federated search provides maximum value and superior service by enabling the help desk pharmacist to harness all of the knowledge sources at their disposal to accurately answer her customer`s question on penicillin allergies.
* Personalised, streamlined navigation that organises, locates and delivers personalised information to users based on their role, interests and access rights. On a customer support self-help portal, this means intelligently organised categories that include only those documents and files relating to the products a customer has purchased. This streamlines the customer support process by providing customers access to precisely the information they need and want - helping them resolve product issues easily, and on their own time.
* Parametric selection capabilities which deliver focused results by allowing users to select specific items from drop-down lists, and then perform a full-text search within several pre-determined fields from a single, intuitive interface. Users can leverage structured, semi-structured and unstructured information from a knowledge base - saving time as they are guided to the information they need from across the enterprise.
* Relational taxonomies, a technology that combines concepts from relational databases, category drill-down, and parametric selection with a simple interface, allows users quickly to narrow down on data in the way that makes the most sense to them. By combining multiple taxonomies in one interface, users are provided with numerous navigation options; what may be intuitive for one customer may not be for another.
* An enterprise answer knowledge base to respond to your customers` pressing questions. Your company has answers - inside the call records, contracts, product documentation and technical notes spread throughout the enterprise.
The challenge, for many vendors, is aggregating the various data and pieces of information into one point of access where customers can use their own language to find the right answers to their important questions.
Another major concern for business is enterprise security and the ability to ensure that customers` sensitive information remains secure. The proliferation of Internet technologies has increased security threats to CRM applications. For enterprises, the unauthorised access of mission-critical information can lead to the loss of intellectual property, competitive advantage and ultimately the customers who have had their privacy betrayed.
Companies are taking this threat seriously. Recent surveys by Forrester Research reveal that 31% of all corporations consider privacy concerns as one of the biggest challenges to implementing a CRM system. A scalable, granular and flexible security architecture is fundamental to any CRM system, as this is what makes it possible to share and exchange mission-critical information freely in real-time within and beyond the enterprise.
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