The Hazards of CRM Overload

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

All roads lead to Rome', a saying coined in the 1100 AD, is based on the road system of the Roman Empire. Today it's an idiom meaning that 'There are different routes to the same goal.' 

Though there may be many routes, there are few that can be traversed with the expectation of success within the constraints of time and cost.

CRM Overload

At the beginning of caller-agent interactions, it's essential that agents visualize the best routes to resolution, e.g. customer satisfaction, acquisition, or retention. 

A caller's concerns and expectations define the ideal Customer Journey.

It's not uncommon for a caller's journey to unravel, become mired down, or never reach a desired result.

As services and products become more feature rich and complex, an agent's job becomes more navigational, and the caller experience suffers.

Sifting through a customer's profile, interaction history, current marketing offers, product specs and recent updates to all the above, can seriously derail and sour caller-agent interactions.

Derailed interactions result in confused callers, an unsatisfactory customer experience, and ultimately...loss of credibility and opportunity.

The solution to this increasingly common dilemma is to establish waypoints, or transactional markers, that agents use to locate their progress on the Journey Map.

The Intelligent Journey

Calls have structure as well as content. When interactions succeed, their structure may not be apparent. When they fail, the absence of structure is usually painfully obvious.  

Sales, retention, customer satisfaction, and profitability depend on how well agents navigate to needed resources, and how well they navigate through interactions to satisfactory solutions and experiences.

Call Intelligence

We study voice interactions to optimize the effectiveness of transactional structures, techniques, and tactics. Call recordings are our 'feedstock'. They are an invaluable, under-utilized repository of marketing, customer experience, and sales performance intelligence. 

We use proprietary tools to uncover the current effectors of sales, churn, customer experience, and corporate reputation . We help our clients answer questions that directly impact the cost, efficiency, and outcomes of their interactions with prospects and customers.