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Create a Customer-Centric Account Strategy

Sure, customers share behaviors, preferences, traits. They have similar opportunities and face similar challenges. But no two customers are the same. Each has its own unique set of needs and business models that share their expectations of working with suppliers and vendors. Consequently, you cannot exceed each customer’s expectations if you treat all customers the same.

CRMI’s CEMDNA Playbook Strategy includes four approaches designed to help you understand the needs of each major type of customer. This will allow you to create a CEM strategy designed to success with each customer type. The process is meant to leave nothing to chance in your interactions, regardless of which touchpoints you use to connect with customers.

Segment the customer base: Determine which are your key accounts, your strategic accounts, and your marginal accounts. Key accounts typically comprise 20% of a customer base, but deliver 80% of revenue. These are accounts you’ll want to retain, which means ensuring that you consistently exceed their expectations. Strategic accounts are priorities, as well. They may be brand names or are in new markets you want to develop. Retaining these customers requires delivering a high level of service and support.

Marginal customers deliver limited value. They aren’t strategic, but do provide a revenue stream. Don’t overinvest in service and support for these customers; instead, consider self-service options. And if they’re unprofitable, you may be better off without them.

Segment key account contacts: Key accounts are a company’s “bread and butter,” so it’s worth taking the time to understand the players within each key account. Determine who, within each key account, is a decision maker, recommender, and influencer. This is vital because each will have different needs, goals, and expectations. Knowing this information will help dictate the appropriate level of service and support to correctly and consistently meet those expectations.

Build 360-degree alignment: Compare your perception of the customer experience against customers’ actual experiences. Survey and interview customers and customer-facing staff on their perceptions and experiences. (It’s best to hire an independent third party to obtain “unvarnished” feedback.) Combine the results with existing surveys to see where there are gaps in service delivery versus expectations. This will help you evaluated where you fall on the CEM maturity scale.

Create action alerts: Customer interactions and customer feedback often reveal unexpected revenue opportunities or unforeseen issues. Responding as quickly and efficiently as possible is essential to exceeding customer expectations in these situations. Being proactive—for example, using CRMI’s Action AlertsSM—can help get to resolution faster. Action Alerts include a full description of the situation and a predetermined escalation procedure, which allows an employee to act on the alert as quickly as possible.

Partner for profit: This methodology is designed to encourage key accounts to think of you as a value-added partner. The objective is to establish an ongoing, proactive relationship with your most profitable customers by consistently communicating the value of the products and services you provide. This approach typically results in retaining and growing key accounts and generating new business referrals. The goal of this approach is to help your customers get the most from your products and services.

 

Download our Account Management Strategy Infographic

 

Account Management is one of 12 elements that comprise the CEMDNA Playbook Strategy.

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12 Technologies That Support CEM

The foundation of a customer-centric culture is a structured, measurable customer experience management (CEM) strategy. Companies can support and enhancing those strategies with enabling technologies. There are 12 types of technology that can play a key role is managing, interpreting, and improving various aspects of the customer experience.

Work Force Optimization
We all know it takes engaged employees to deliver consistently superior customer experiences. Take the omni-channel approach to employee-customer engagement by tapping into phone, email, online chat, social media and other methods of direct customer interaction. Based on the appeal of video games, mobile apps and streaming content, gamification has also proven to be effective in engaging employees for greater performance. The key is to balance the needs of agents and customers to optimize productivity and CX.

Field Service Management
Although an increasing amount of customer service is done remotely and/or online, there is still a considerable amount of direct customer service performed in the field, either at customer locations or a company’s own field service centers. Starting with initial contact with the customer, where field service incidents are created, it’s important to provide tools to both support the resolution and to allow customers to stay informed/provide feedback and ultimately be satisfied with the outcome.

Help Desk Management
Help desks generally are internal operations that assist employees and business partners to manage their various IT assets. Start by hiring and training good employees who are inspired to provide exceptional support. Have a well-defined Service Level Agreement (SLA) in order to provide optimal, first-level support service to all departments. Make it a priority to develop a helpful culture where issues are tracked end-to-end and nothing slips through the cracks.

Knowledge Management—Self-Service—Remote Support
These three CX technologies are inter-related. Knowledge Management (KM) sets the framework and strategy for an organization’s culture and processes that management uses to install enabling KM technology that fits with its corporate politics. Self-service portals offer authorized users an omni-channel approach to getting the information they want to solve their questions and operational issues. And of course, remote service and support typically are functions of KM and self-service.

EFM—Business Intelligence—CX Certification
These three CX technologies are also inter-related. EFM systems handle customer data collection and analysis based on that data. Business intelligence tools dig deeper to perform more advanced discovery, apply predictive analysis to help define future customer behavior and/or business impacts, and provide extensive enterprise reporting. CX certification training is gaining more importance as organizations recognize the need to be certified in the principles and tactics of effective CX training to best leverage the EFM and BI outcomes.

Big Data—Text Analytics—Speech Analytics
Clearly these CX technologies are joined at the hip. Big data is a way of aggregating and examining the huge amount of CX/CEM data collected to uncover both obvious and obscure patterns and inter-relationships. With text mining and analytics technology, you can analyze text data from the web, social media, comment fields, books and other text-based sources to uncover insights you hadn’t noticed before. Speech analytics has a similar intent as text analytics, but it works with unstructured spoken words to determine frequency of comments and sentiment to measure positive, neutral and negative remarks.

Sales Force Automation
SFA was the application that essentially launched CRM decades ago. The idea is to build a database of every meaningful detail about customer purchases, demographics, and needs and wants so the organization can pinpoint what products and services a given customer may purchase in the future. SFA addresses the various tactical functions that affect CX execution.

Marketing—Social Media Automation
A natural extension of CRM and SFA, marketing and social media automation incorporates everything you need to know about your leads and customers in one place. Since social media channels have such an impact on marketing and customer relationships, it just makes sense to consider them together.

Innovative Inscription—Omni-channel—Intelligent Visual Communications
Customers expect omni-channel experiences through multi-channel engagement with vendors and suppliers. This is part of the evolution in customer buying behavior that has changed the landscape of traditional customer engagement. Understanding which customer experiences and touchpoints are driving the best results can be a challenge. Omni-channel platforms capture the importance of using multi-channel marketing to effectively reach, engage and convert your customers. Trial and error is typically a necessary approach to finding the right channel mix for each type of customer.

Online Community Forum Management
Online communities exist everywhere today, from general purpose channels like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to specialized communities we all know, such as CustomerThink, CCNG and CRMxhange. But managing these forums effectively is a matter of governance.

  1. Agree on your forum governance model. How involved do you want to be in managing your forum?
  2. Agree on intervention protocols. What kind of comments, questions and issues are going to prompt a facilitator intervention?
  3. Determine intervention procedures. What are your approval processes for releasing intervention content?
  4. Determine intervention responsibilities. Who is your primary facilitator/site manager?
  5. Ensure proper training for facilitator/site manager. Can someone with extensive customer service experience handle the site? Do they need specialist media training?
  6. Ensure community members know rules of engagement. Make sure the moderation rules are appropriate for your forum.

Professional Services Automation
Most organizations either have their own professional services team, use resources from a vendor/supplier, or bring in a specialized third party. Examples of PSA applications:

    • MSP/IT Services: Control IT Business
    • System Integrators: Provide Comprehensive Support
    • Software Companies: Gain Visibility Between Development and Support
    • Cloud Services: Manage, Monitor and Bill
    • Point of Sale Resellers (POS): Evolve to Retail IT

 

IVR/ACD Automation
We’re all familiar with these systems. They’re the anchors of contact center operations and some of the oldest examples of CRM technology. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) allows a computer to interact with humans using voice commands or tones from a telephone keypad. Technically, IVR lets the caller enter an “ID” or account code, then provides access to a database. This is where the “interactive” part comes in. For example, bank credit unions often have “phone bank” systems that allow you to conduct transactions. Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) systems answer incoming calls and allow the caller to choose a menu, group of extensions or singular extension to which the call is routed. Contact centers use ACDs to organize incoming calls into queues of callers waiting to speak with an operator or service person.

 

CX Technologies is one of 12 elements that comprise the CEMDNA Playbook Strategy.

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CRMI Honors 37 Companies for Delivering ‘World-Class’ Customer Service; 2 Cited for Certification in Employee Training

CRMI Honors 37 Companies for Delivering ‘World-Class’ Customer Service; 2 Cited for Certification in Employee Training

Recipients of a CRMI 2016 NorthFace ScoreBoard Award℠ consistently exceeded customer expectations.  CEMPRO–certified customer relationship training recipients also recognized.

NORTH BILLERICA, Mass.; March 16, 2017 – Customer Relationship Management Institute LLC (CRMI), specialists in driving companies’ revenues and profits by implementing Customer Experience Management (CEM) strategies that increase customer and employee satisfaction, announced today that 37 companies have qualified to receive its NorthFace ScoreBoard ℠ for 2016. CRMI also recognized two organizations for meeting the rigorous employee customer relationship training requirements needed for CEMPRO℠ certification.

Now in its 17th year, the NorthFace ScoreBoard (NFSB) award is presented annually to companies who, as rated solely by their own customers, achieved excellence in customer satisfaction and loyalty during the prior calendar year.
The Certified CEM Professional (CEMPRO) program was established in 2010 to provide best-in-class training curricula for organizations who want to ensure that their customer-facing groups have mastered the skills needed to deliver consistently exceptional

“The NorthFace ScoreBoard Award recognizes organizations who not only offer exemplary customer service, but who also center their existence on a deep commitment to exceeding customer expectations,” said John Alexander Maraganis, president & CEO of CRMI. “In 2016, more than 290 projects, many international in scope, were audited from 80 companies based in the U.S. and abroad. The majority of companies are repeat recipients, which shows that, despite the changing economy, implementing a CEM strategy is a reliable, proven way to achieve business success.”

CRMI methodology measures customer satisfaction and loyalty levels on a 5-point scale (or equivalent) at least four times during the year in such categories as technical support, field service, customer service and account management. The 37 recipients are companies who, based solely on survey responses from their own customers, achieved a 4.0 or above out of a possible 5.0 or equivalent.

“Due to its unique ‘customer-only vote’ criteria, the NorthFace ScoreBoard Award has been viewed from its inception in 2000 as the only objective benchmark for excellence in customer service,” Maraganis said. “CRMI defines ultra customer loyalty as customers who continuously purchase from the same company — even though other choices may offer significantly better pricing – because the company consistently exceeds its customers’ expectations.”

CRMI research indicates that companies that consistently achieve a 4.0 rating or above have reached the “Loyalty Zone.” This means they have succeeded in locking in profitable, long-term customer relationships, and this significantly raises the bar on their competitors.

CRMI will formally present the NFSB and CEMPRO awards to recipients during ceremonies on September 26 at its SCORE Conference 2017, being held at the Seaport Boston Hotel & World Trade Center from November 1-2. Now in its 15th year, SCORE remains the only event in the customer service industry focused on CEM best practices to acquire, retain, grow and win-back customers. SCORE speakers also explain how CEM principles can be applied to customer-facing operations such as contact centers, field service, professional services, help desks and technical support. Hundreds of service, support, sales, marketing and human resources executives from the country’s leading firms attend the conference each year.

 

NFSB 2016 Recipients:

Seventeen-time recipients:
Haemonetics Corporation; Braintree, MA
Kronos Incorporated; Chelmsford, MA

Sixteen-time recipients:
ZOLL Medical Eisan, Chelmsford, MA

Fifteen-time recipients:
Alfa Wassermann, LLC; West Caldwell, NJ

Fourteen-time recipients:
Boston Scientific Corporation; Natick, MA
FLIR Surveillance Systems, Inc.; North Billerica, MA

Thirteen-time recipients:
None

Twelve-time recipients:
KVH Industries, Inc.; Middletown, RI

Eleven-time recipients:
None

Ten-time recipient:
MicroFocus; Newbury, Berkshire, United Kingdom

Nine-time recipient:
None

Eight-time recipient:
ACIST Medical Systems, Inc.; Eden Prairie, MN

Seven-time recipient:
NETSCOUT; Westford, MA

Six-time recipients:
Accuray Incorporated; Sunnyvale, CA
Diagnostica Stago, Inc.; Parsippany, NJ
Masimo Corporation; Irvine, CA
Pitney Bowes, Inc., Worldwide Software Support; Troy, NY
Wolters Kluwer Health Learning Research Practice; Norwood, MA
Wolters Kluwer Health — UpToDate; Waltham, MA

Five-time recipients
CA Technologies; Islandia, NY
ERT; Philadelphia, PA
Mouser Electronics, Inc.; Mansfield, TX
Yaskawa America, Inc.; Waukegan, IL

Four-time recipients:
Avaya Inc; Santa Clara, CA
Illumina, Inc; San Diego, CA
Metalogix Software US, Inc.; Washington, D.C.
Nutanix; San Jose, CA

Three-time recipients:
Alfresco Software Inc.; San Mateo, CA
Service Strategies Corporation; San Diego, CA

Two-time recipients:
Bruker BioSpin Group; Billerica, MA
Citrix Systems, Inc.; Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Deltek; Herndon, VA
Fresenius Kabi USA LLC; Lake Zurich, IL
Haemonetics Plasma; Braintree, MA
Internet & Telephone, Methuen, MA
OpenLink; Uniondale, NY
Wolters Kluwer Health Learning, Research & Practice, Individual Member Care; Hagerstown, MD

First-time recipients:
Helmer Scientific; Noblesville, IN
Rubrik; Palo Alto, CA
Kongsberg Digital; Asker, Norway
Cohesity; Santa Clara, CA

CEMPRO 2016 Recipients:

First-time recipient:
Diagnostica Stago, Inc.; Parsippany, NJ

First-time recipient:
Fresenius Kabi USA LLC; Lake Zurich, IL

 

Note to Editors: City and state denotes either company headquarters or principal location where CEM strategy work was conducted.

 

About CRMI

Since 1999, the Customer Relationship Management Institute LLC (CRMI) is a membership based resource that is intended to be “One-Stop” Shop for “everything CX”. Whether you are new to CX strategies or a vetran practioner, you will join thousands of like-minded professionals eager to share their experiences.

For more information on how to qualify for the NorthFace ScoreBoard Award or to attend SCORE Conference 2017, visit www.CRMIREWARDS.com or call (800) 711-5196 and ask for Diane Rivera.