8CIOReview | | JULY 2023IN MY OPINIONBy Marco Ottaviani, Head of CRM and Customer Activation, MSC CruisesTHE 5 MOST KNOWN SECRETS TO Generate Value with CRMThe CRM may assume different meaning in different companies, and often is identified with software names, or organization areas like the customer service or the loyalty program.But the CRM is the way the company may generate value from a relation with a customer reducing the costs to serve, increasing the customer spending, enhancing product experience (with all the positive impacts on the medium-term value).As the universe, also the CRM has its own atomic constituent that is the definition of the Customer identity. A real CRM is built around this atomic definition with a role of Master for these data. Seems obvious, but in the systems integration kingdomit is a challenge costing additional effort and money to the company to have the CRM integrated with any other system that manage directly or indirectly operations with the customer, and more as master for the customer identity information.The below 5 secretes are applicable from a condition you have such a CRM...you did the basics...otherwise you will find more in another article I'm going to write on this specific topic.Probably I have written a too long introduction, let's start:1) Identify Customer Needs That Are Specific To Each Customer Journey PhaseThis is by far the most strategic aspect, to be done once every 3-5 year. First step is to do qualitative interviews with your Customer, not with who in the company think to know the customer. It is critical. The journey phases need to come from a point of view that only the customer can give. A possible approach it is to carry out some qualitative deep interview with a selection of customer segmented by persona, to after validating the information with a quantitative survey. The expected result is to split the customer journey knowing for every step what are the specific customer needs and expectations they have when interacting with the company. This picture includes also the kind of information are exchanged and systems involved.With a good representation of the customer journey phases/steps, needs and expectations, you will have all is needed to think the possible business objectives (leveraging the customer needs). And once such a framework including business objectives is ready, arrives the key and final moment to create value identifying the use cases list. The use cases are business idea that can answer the business objectives leveraging on the customer needs and expectations. A use case it is a building block of the CRM vision to be implemented. The effort is to cover with building blocks the entire journey.
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