Welcome back and I hope you all had a lovely Christmas. The party is over and it’s back to business.
Over the past few weeks I have discussed the key concepts of an effective customer engagement strategy including some of the common issues encountered by companies when implementing a CRM strategy. Successful organisations have one thing in common; they have adopted a customer centric approach across the organisation.
When asked in a recent Forbes article, “What business is Virgin in? “, Richard Branson replied “The Experience Business” (Forbes, September 2013). Branson lives and breathes customer service and firmly believes in being visible with both customers and employees through face to face and social media interaction.
Through the launch of the Clubcard, Tesco transformed its business by leveraging customer insight, to create a mutually profitable relationship with 15 million customers. According to Tesco CEO, Sir Terry Leahy the supermarket chain continues to enhance the program with a data-driven approach to CRM across in-store, direct, digital, and mobile to engage customers. (Tesco Case Study, 2011)
It seems unsuccessful organisations have a number of things in common and while the chosen CRM system may get the blame, the often used excuse, “It’s not you, it’s me” can be well and truly adopted here. In the following article Gene Marks offers some interesting insights and asks:
“So is your CRM system terrible? Or is it you?” (Marks, Forbes 2013).
11 Terrible CRM Systems For Your Company
References
Gallo, C (2013), Seven Customer Service Lessons I Learned In One Day from Richard Branson, Forbes, 5/09/2013
Case Study: Tesco, YouTube, October 10th 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hv4eEifsE08
Marks, G. (2013), 11 Terrible CRM Systems For Your Company, Forbes, 7/01/2013
http://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2013/07/01/11-terrible-crm-systems-for-your-company/
Customer Engagement through e-CRM 