How to be a Customer-Centric Organization

In a previous post, we shared that organizations today need to live and breathe customer-centric values, where Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, and IT collaborate to give customers the best, most seamless experience. Today’s customers have endless options, which means they will not hesitate to move on to a competitor after suffering through a bad experience with a company. Creating a seamless and exceptional experience is the only way to build truly loyal customers who can grow into brand advocates.

At ConvergeOne, WAVES is our proprietary Methodology that guides each and every one of our collaboration engagements. WAVES is an acronym, with each letter representing a specific phase of the methodology. Each phase provides a specific contribution to the final outcome, which is a recommended solution that is tailored to the customer’s business and technology needs. The WAVES phases, which must be executed in order, are:

What is a Connector? By definition, it is “a thing that links two or more things together.” In the telecommunications sector, that can mean a multitude of things. For the purposes of this blog post, I will be talking about ConvergeOne Advanced Services (C1AS) and the benefits of integrating Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms with Telephony platforms.

Do you have omnichannel projects that just aren’t moving along as fast as you think they should? What are the hurdles getting in your way? I’ve yet to find a scenario where it’s the technology that’s slowing things down. Don’t get me wrong, omnichannel isn’t easy. It’s a very different approach to customer contact than traditional call centers or even multichannel contact centers. Omnichannel is all about customizing the journey of the person (or thing) trying to interact with your business. First we need to understand what the customer journey actually looks like. This is often a lot harder than it sounds. Most people in a company know their little piece of the customer journey, but very few can articulate the details of the full, beginning-to-end journey. This often requires a lot of exploration, business-level interviews, multi-disciplinary teams, and documentation.

Who owns the customer relationship in your company or organization: Marketing, Customer Service, or IT? Fifteen years ago, the answer was clear: Customer Service, period. Over time, the answer has become murkier. Once customers began researching a product or service prior to purchase—a phenomenon Google coined the “Zero Moment of Truth”—a shift occurred. Marketing began to lay claim to the customer relationship. This was due, in large part, to the bevy of channels available to customers—such as browsers, apps, and social media—prior to communicating with a company. Fast forward to the present day and customers are empowered with even more resources to answer their own questions and conduct their own due diligence before contacting a company.

We live in the era of the Internet of Things (IoT); with a Wi-Fi connection and a smart phone, the possibilities are endless. Connectivity is now so integral to our daily lives that we often take it for granted. In fact, an Internet Trends report shows that nearly 90% of U.S. adults use the Internet. It is important to design support solutions that align with the way your customers work and live. However, even in our wired world, human interaction still plays a critical role and you can leverage technology to give your customers the best of both worlds.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a hot topic right now. Unfortunately, when a topic is hot, I find that many people throw around the term without really having a good understanding of its details. That’s where our teams within ConvergeOne kick into gear, working to understand those details. As we researched AI, one particularly relevant use case became obvious: chatbots. In fact, Gartner calls chatbots the current face of AI and predicts that by 2020, more than 50% of large enterprises will use product chatbots. Let’s dive into the details of AI within the context of chat.

In part one and part two of this blog series, we explored the reasons why customer experience and the role of the Chief Marketing Officer are evolving, and how you can respond to those changes. We'll now into the future of CX and marketing.

Marketing continues to be about brand and demand generation; however, data and changes in the way customers interact with companies have provoked a complete transformation of the function. Customers used to speak with salespeople or the contact center about product details and offerings, but all of this information is now available online. Customers are more resourceful and self-reliant than ever before. They are educated and oftentimes are simply seeking validation of their choices.

Today, almost all contact centers use some type of call automation to lower costs, mostly in the form of an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. This has not been terribly effective in automating much, and when it attempts to automate workflows, it often is at the cost of customer satisfaction. Most contact centers are stuck in an old paradigm for automation, but new tools are maturing. Approaches are available now that can dramatically improve your bottom line, while raising your customer loyalty and satisfaction.

In part one of this blog series, we explored the reasons why customer experience and the role of the Chief Marketing Officer are evolving. We'll now explore how you can respond to these changes.

Information: it's key to improving both the customer experience and marketing efforts. While the customer seemingly holds the advantage with access to information, companies are hyper-engaged in the process of monitoring, researching, and responding. The ability to leverage data enables marketing to get ahead of opportunities. The vast amount of data available today enables companies to understand and communicate with their customers more precisely and in more ways than ever before.