Today is April 5th and as promised I will be talking about Customer Relationship Management /Customer Experience Technology opportunities /1 https://twitter.com/OdeleyeWole/status/1245430465630277633

Disclaimer: Again before I begin, I'm Abit rusty in this area, but I'll try my best to explain the technology opportunities that drive the modern Customer Experience field in the world today /2

Now we need to agree on a few fundamentals:

Firstly, definitions of CRM are continuously evolving as there are new terminologies to describe it. However at the core, CRM practice involves customers, suppliers, partners and employees /3

Secondly, CRM is NOT a technology tool. This is a common misconception people have.

Customer relationship management is by nature a strategy , made up of processes and methodologies. And so any conversation we have on CRM technology must begin with the strategy itself /4

That been said , Customer Relationship Management is a comprehensive set of processes and technologies for managing relationships with potential and current customers, and business partners across marketing, sales and service , regardless of communication channel /5

The goal of any CRM Business practice is to optimize customer and partner satisfaction, revenue and Business efficiency by building the strongest possible relationships at an organisational level. /6

For CRM initiatives to succeed, they must start with a business philosophy that aligns a company's activities around Customer needs. Call it "Customer Centricity".

Only then can a CRM Technology Platform be used as an enabler of this strategy. /7

Now in my opinion, a good CRM strategy:

1) Should be integrated to the business processes throughout an Enterprise
2) must measure, analyze and improve process effectiveness
3) must have coordinated processes and strategies
4) must have single and universal Customer data /8

5) Must be accessible to every personnel involved in a customer's interaction with the organization so as to provide a consistent approach and enhance Customer Experience

6) must have real time customer insight and Analytics /9

Now before you start throwing technology into the mix, you have to correct structure the CRM initiative so that it can be automated in the most effective manner. A best practice is to group them into 3 :

Operational CRM
Analytical CRM
Collaborative CRM

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The goal of operational CRM is to achieve the automation of horizontally integrated business processes including Customer touchpoints , ERP, and SCM. While ERP forms back-office automation, CRM covers front office.
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Typically Operational CRM comprises of sales automation, call center automation, channel automation, and Enterprise marketing automation. /12

Analytical CRM involves capturing, storing, extracting, processing, analysis and interpretation of Customer data to corporate users. It makes use of data mining tools to analyze transactional and market research data. /13

These tools draw inferences regarding Customer preferences, attitudes and behavior, allowing an organization to differentiate and segment Customers and gain competitive advantage /14

Collaborative CRM on the other hand is the application of collaborative services to facilitate Interactions between the customer and the organization. It's typically involves Portals, Customer Interaction Centers (CIC), and Partner Relationship Management tools. /15

Collaborative CRM helps organizations understand their customers and offer more personalized services ,and enriches information and services available to these Customers thereby increasing Customer satisfaction and loyalty.

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Let's pause here.

Please confirm if all I'm saying is making sense to you?

Now let's talk about how Customer Experience (CX) technology works.

At the basic level, CX Technology involves capturing and integrating all customer data from anywhere in the organization, analysing it, and consolidating it into useful information /17

This results of this information is then distributed to various systems and Customer touchpoints across the Enterprise.

In addition, it offers customers the choice to interact with the organization through their preferred channel of communication consistently /18

If we take a Bank like First Bank, as a customer you can interact through:

SMS Banking (USSD)
Mobile Banking
Internet Banking
Terminals (ATMs)
Or Traditional over-the-counter Banking

Regardless of your choice, you must get a seamless banking experience /19

The seamless banking Experience is achieved by integrating all the Customer touchpoints into collaborative CRM engines. Information gathered here flows into Operational CRM processes for Customer request fulfilment. These processes then flow into digital Banking systems /20

Analytical CRM models constantly analyse the Customer Interactions on those interactions points I mentioned earlier to better tailor relevant banking Products and services to customer preferences /21

Now the CX technology.

A robust CX Platform is expected to address the requirements of Operational, Analytical and Collaboration CRM within the context of an integrated CRM Strategy.

An example of such Platform is the Oracle CX Suite, which I will use as my example /22

The Oracle CX Platform is a unified cloud based (SaaS) CRM solution that provides standardisation required for driving CRM Strategy and processes, based on global best practices.

The Oracle CX Platform has 4 key attributes : /23

1) It is data driven, providing a single view of the customer for more effective engagements

2) it can be personalised for your organization and can be extended.

3) it is interconnected, and allows 3rd party applications exchange data with your CRM

4) it is secure /24

Furthermore, the Oracle CX Platform supports all of the Interactions and digital experiences throughout the Customer journey, regardless of if your strategy is Cross-channel marketing, Omni-channel engagement or Social engagement. /25

From a general standpoint, the Oracle CX Platform has the following features:

1) Cross-Channel Marketing
2) Content Optimisation
3) Targeted Offerings
4) 360 Customer Profile
5) Self-service
6) Mobile Service Integration
7) External Integration
8) Digital Engagement /26

9) Adaptive Intelligence
10) Omni-channel Engagement
11) Data visualization and Analytics
12) Customer feedback
13) Social Monitoring and Engagement

Let me quickly explain what each does in light of CRM Strategy /27

Cross channel marketing allows organizations to reach their customers over any channel or device , be that a social website, email, or mobile text message for example. This is a Collaborative CRM feature. /28

Content Optimisation allows you to know what content and messaging to display to prospective customers that will be more likely to engage them and convert them. This is predominantly an Operational CRM feature /29

Personalised and targeted offerings allows organisations leverage their customer data to identify and help target customers as well as making personalised offers. This is also an Operational CRM feature /29

360 Customer Profile allows organizations to consolidate and cleanse their customer data from multiple touchpoints to achieve a single view of the customer. This is an Operational CRM feature /30

Self Service provides options to increase efficiencies and increase Customer satisfaction. Self Service options on portals, apps and ATMs are examples. This is a Collaborative CRM feature /31

Mobile service Integration allows you to leverage PaaS to extend your CX Platform capabilities by providing a mobile framework as a cloud service that can be integrated into your CRM tool.

If you recall on Friday, I explained Cloud Platform Technology (PaaS).This is it's use /32

Digital Engagement allows organizations to interact with Customers based on location, behavior and other triggers real-time. This is how platforms like AliExpress know what you are looking at on Instagram and recommend items to buy from their adverts. This is Analytical CRM /33

Adaptive Intelligence utilizes artificial sweeteners to provide real-time offers and recommendations actions based on data about the Customer, the circumstance and historical outcomes. This is an Analytical CRM feature too /34

Omni-channel Engagement allows you manage your customer interactions across different channels and provide consistent service regardless of if it's email, text, Twitter, Facebook or phone. This is a Collaborative CRM feature /35

Data visualization and Analytics allows organizations to understand their customers better and visualize trends and patterns, using the insight generated to hopefully improve their services. This is an Analytical CRM feature. /36

Customer feedback allows organisations to capture and analyse Customer feedback easily. This is an Operational CRM feature. /37

Finally, Social Monitoring and Engagement allows organizations monitor Social media, blogs and the internet to know what people are saying about their company and take action. It allows them manage social issues before they get out of control. This is Operational CRM /39

Asides Oracle, other vendors who provide CX Technology include Salesforce, and Microsoft, /40

Now if you're a Customer Service specialist, Marketing, Sales or an IT Applications expert, the CX Technology offers two broad career opportunities :

1) CX Functional Experts
2) CX Technical Architects

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CX Functional Experts are people who have Industry knowledge in the design of CRM strategies and the recommend CX tools to organisations. They don't necessarily have to have the technical skills to deploy these CX platform, but they can advise organizations on how to use them /42

They can either be CRM generalists or CRM specialists in a specific domain like Sales , Marketing, Service or Social /43

CX Technical Architects have the advanced skill sets to deploy one or more CRM tools to automate the CRM processes of an organization. They are typically not involved the the design of the CRM Strategy. At most they advised on best practices. But they are largely technical /44

Oracle offers a number of courses for CX Experts regardless of if you want to be a CX Functional Experts or CX Technical Architect. These trainings are grouped by CX Pillars i.e Marketing, Sales ,Service.

The other CX vendors I mentioned earlier also offer similar programs /45

Before I conclude , a recap. Customer Experience technology is one of the 4 fundamental groups of technologies that ensure end to end digital process transformation of an organization. The others being ERP, SCM and Industry specialist technology. /46

Modern CX Platforms like Oracle CX , Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce etc run fully as Cloud Applications technology. If you don't know what cloud Applications are refer to my thread on Thursday. /47

And that brings me to the end of today's session. I hope I covered the areas of Customer Experience technology Opportunities you wanted to learn about. If your have more questions feel free to drop a message.

Do have a great night