You
Need Your Customers More Than They Need You
Every
customer interaction offers the opportunity to improve the customer
relationship, or invite a customer to shop their next purchase elsewhere. Customer
Experience Management is a return to the focus on serving and retaining
customers—while better integrating that mission with culture, processes and technology.
The CX technology movement is in rapid transition and may provide the conduit
between strategy and delivery. While obvious, it bears repeating that
implementing technology without accompanying strategy is a recipe for a
troubled implementation (at best) or an implementation failure. But with that
caveat, several CRM software vendors are stepping up to deliver the missing
link—that ability to make customer data actionable and deliver it at the time
and location of customer interaction with the goal of meeting customer
expectations and achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. But sometimes
it's helpful to take a step back and be reminded of the reason for business.
And in the simple but powerful words of Peter F. Drucker, "the purpose of
business is to create and keep a customer." Everything else is secondary
(at best), and designed to support mission #1.And it's this mission to acquire
and retain customers that is putting new found focus on the business strategy
of Customer Experience Management (CXM).
To better accommodate the
multiple challenges that make business complex, CXM is evolving to make serving
customers less of a standalone objective and more of a mission tightly integrated
with corporate culture, business processes and supporting technology.
The
Business Problem Is Accelerating
Products are becoming more
quickly copied making product superiority a diminishing advantage. Technology
innovation is depreciating at a faster pace. Brand recognition and value may be
suddenly compromised by a single angry customer whose voice is dramatically
magnified online. New and constantly expanding social channels give start-ups
and small competitors messaging and marketing reach previously only available
to large companies.
Further, customers are more
informed, connected and demanding. Customers now have on-demand access to a
supplier's customers and can quickly interpret how those customers view their
supplier's support and services. This information becomes part of a new
prospect's purchase criterion, determining which supplier to purchase from and
even whether to pay a premium for exceptional support.
Delivering superior products and
services remains paramount, but businesses must recognize that this objective
will be increasingly challenged and therefore the importance of retaining
existing customers will grow ever more important. Consistently meeting or
exceeding customer expectations may be the last sustainable competitive
advantage not easily and quickly replicated by competitors.
A
Shift toward CX Technology
At a time when business is
becoming considerably more complex and competitive, existing customer
acquisition and retention strategies supported by current systems are too often
not working.
CRM software systems have
responded well to capturing customer profile data (such as company demographics
and individual contacts) and transaction history. New social CRM tools are
complimenting CRM systems to include unstructured and social data that reside
in externally managed sources.
There remains an open challenge
though in interpreting and staging the data so that it may be immediately
actionable and injected at the point of customer interaction. Delivering
customer intelligence and content at the exact point in time of customer
engagement in order to benefit the customer experience is a difficult process
that remains elusive for most businesses.
Think about the business
scenarios. While the list of customer interaction points is unbounded, here are
some common Point of Customer (PoC) engagement examples:
·
For the
customer looking to make a purchase on an e-commerce site,
does the website apply purchase history and known customer preferences to make
a smart suggestion, next-best-offer, or cross-sell or up-sell promotion that is
both relevant and personalized?
·
For the
customer placing an order on the telephone, is the agent or
order entry clerk able to answer product questions or otherwise respond within
seconds with the right information to result in a transaction?
·
For the
customer seeking help on a social network—perhaps even the
vendors own Facebook page—does the supplier hear the request and do they
retrieve, route, respond and resolve the customer's request in a reasonable
timeframe?
·
For the
customer who incurs a product defect, is the call center agent able
to immediately validate the product purchase, determine if the product is under
warranty, issue a Return Merchandize Authorization (RMA) and initiate a
replacement order – in less than a few minutes and without multiple transfers?
·
For a
customer support incident not immediately resolved, is the
customer permitted to continue the dialogue with cross-channel support options?
Not to be confused with multi-channel support. For reference, multi-channel
delivers a consistent experience on each channel, where cross-channel support
permits customers to begin their engagement on one channel and then use
different channels to continue or conclude their issue.
·
For the mobile customer
seeking sales or support access, does the supplier's online system support
their mobile device form factor, permit the customer to use video from their
smartphone and allow the customer to schedule a call back time?
·
Does the self-service portal
dynamically deliver content that is most relevant to the customer's business
and support problem, and permit the customer to instantly switch from self-service
to chat or a live agent call?
·
For the
customer receiving a marketing promotion from his supplier, is
that offer highly targeted to his company's explicit (demographics) profile and
implicit (behaviours) history with the supplier?
·
For the
customer engaged in a sales cycle with a supplier, is the
information given by the customer regarding his situation, buy criteria and
purchase process shared among the supplier side sales team and does that sales
team apply the buyer's objectives and buy cycle process to their sales side
process (or do they ignore the buyer's purchase process and simply inject their
traditional sales pattern)?
Each of these customer
interaction points can benefit from technology. In fact, for organizations of
even mild scale technology is a requirement. However, to satisfy this need most
customers are turning to specialized, often best of breed technologies
positioned between their customer systems of record (generally CRM software)
and point of customer engagement. It's a workable scenario, but comes with the
complexities of managing even more systems and further contributes to disparate
data silos.
A new technology approach is now
on the horizon. Forward looking CRM
software vendors such as Oracle, SAP ,
Microsoft and Pega are introducing or expanding CRM
systems to achieve CXM objectives. Oracle is clearly leading the CX technology
push with its Oracle CX software
and other vendors are advancing their core applications beyond data capture and
information reporting to actually deliver knowledge and content at the point of
customer interaction and in a way that meets customer expectations. CXM is
positioned to be the next break-out sector in the CRM industry.
What
Makes Oracle CX Different?
While several CRM software
vendors are praising the virtues of Customer Experience and by association
suggesting that their CRM software products are delivering CX value for their
customers, the reality is that most are riding a new wave with an unchanged
product. Oracle's play is different. Since January 2011, the company has been
developing and acquiring a suite of focused applications that collectively
deliver something new to directly impact the customer experience at various
touch points.
Consider the origins and results
of the newly formed Oracle CX software portfolio:
·
The
January 2011 acquisition of ATG now serves as Oracle's e-commerce-selling based
experiences, to deliver interaction such as predictive offers.
·
The June
2011 acquisition of Fatwire Software (now WebCenter Sites) compliments
e-commerce experiences but more so stands as Oracle's tool for delivering
dynamic website content and marketing-based experiences.
·
The
December 2011 acquisition of Endeca provides Oracle the other half of its
complete commerce solution. And by bundling ATG's product catalog functionality
with Endecas search capabilities, merchandisers have more tools to make
products more accessible more easily.
·
The July
2011 acquisition of the InQuira contact center and knowledge management
solution provides Oracle with a strong knowledge management suite, integrated
with natural language processing, self-service support, online customer forums
and agent-assisted CRM, to deliver content and knowledge at customer interactions
through various channels.
·
The
January 2012 acquisition of RightNow Technologies delivers Oracle's service
based experiences. The RightNow acquisition was key in acquiring strong
functionality to collaborate with customers, with tools such as the Cloud
Monitor and online communities (Support Community and Innovation Community). In
fact, RightNow Technologies was the first large CRM software vendor to eschew
the virtues of CXM—years before competitors and their acquisition by Oracle.
·
The
announcement to acquire Vitrue in May 2012 followed by the announcement to
acquire Collective Intellect two weeks later, collectively delivers Oracle's
social based experiences.
·
The
latest Acquisition of Eloqua, The marketing campaign excellence tool is another
milestone of Oracle CXM commitment.
These best of breed acquisitions,
along with organic development to Oracle Siebel CRM, Oracle Fusion CRM, Oracle
WebCenter, Oracle Knowledge Management and the Oracle Social Network have
resulted in a portfolio that empowers new opportunities and is unmatched in the
competitive landscape. This is clearly not a case where oracle is wrapping a
new banner on an old or existing solution.
Oracle
CX Product Positioning
What we hear from Anthony Lye, Senior VP Oracle CXM he
advised that customers were buying apps and putting them between their CRM
software and their customer interactions—in effect using these apps to extract
and deliver CRM data at the exact time and location where it can be used to
influence a customer interaction.Anthony noted that companies are
struggling with making CRM data actionable at the many customer experience
touch points and thinking beyond CRM in order to achieve the last mile of
customer interaction delivery. And rather than continue to use a collection of
3rd party products and bespoke development, Oracle aims to offer a portfolio of
integrated, best of breed solutions to help customers achieve what may be the
only sustainable differentiation they have left.
Oracle CX is less about being the
successor to CRM and more about addressing a business opportunity using
technology that supplements CRM. In fact where CRM ends and CXM starts is that
intersection between company and customer—that point of engagement where
suppliers actually leverage the data from their CRM system to personalize
interactions, reward customers for their loyalty and advocacy, and deliver a
customer experience that delights customers.The CX software tools will
compliment and extend existing IT investments (in both Oracle and non-Oracle
environments) with best of breed products that provide incremental automation
and value. Oracle CX looks to be the banner for a collection of tools that may
be acquired individually or in small suites.
·
Oracle
Cloud CxM video briefing
Oracle Fusion Tap Mobility Solution
Next
Steps for Oracle CX
Oracle is leading the market in
this category. While the upside of leading a burgeoning market is obvious, the
downside is that many other CRM and enterprise software vendors will clearly
harness the CXM spotlight to create self-serving CX definitions that align
perfectly to their existing CRM software suites.
Competitors who hijack the CX
messaging and redefine this customer strategy (that has yet to cross the chasm)
along their parochial interests will challenge Oracle and frustrate technology
buyers—to the point where it is incumbent upon Oracle to clearly articulate
their solution, its alignment with business strategy and its measurable value. There
is a great opportunity for Oracle to lead this race with the Cloud/Hybrid based
CxM solution.
Wishing everyone a great and
harmonious Year Ahead, Happy New Year 2013
You’re P&C
DC*
