Tip: Use ERP and Business Intelligence to retain your customers

Running a business without consistently adding new customers is like a non performing employee who does not get further increments every year and is satisfied with the current level of salary. Sooner or later, that employee will get fired and the current salary will also become history. Similar fate will happen with the organization which is not focused on adding new customers as it directly implies that all is not well and slowly the existing customer base will also start eroding by moving towards competition. Even the vice versa is true, which means that if you are not able to retain your existing customers by a good margin (I know “good” has different meaning in different industries, but let us not go there) then getting new customers will also become a challenge especially in those industries where references play a major role.

I will focus on usage of ERP and Business Intelligence in retaining your customers instead of ways to get new customers and I am driven by the fact that every organization will do its best to increase the satisfaction level of their customers if they know that customers have this issue and as long as it is not hard hitting their balance-sheet. If, as a customer strategy leader I want to know that what is my on-time delivery rates for customers in Alaska or how much time did my organization took to resolve customer complaints for a digital device product, and my staff is taking its own time to dig this information, then it is high time that I start looking at this aspect now. It is ripe time now (rather you are late) to implement a 360 degrees view of your customers and start not only measuring but also have those measurements available real-time so that quick decisions can be made. Also, this will save the staff time in regularly digging information about customers and utilize that time in some other more value added work. This all can be achieved with the help of you existing ERP and BI system and a dashboard can be designed to show critical metrics for our organization. Most BI systems are very strong to deliver required data at our screens and the need to be configured to maximize the value of all data sources and achieve a better flexibility and customer responsiveness. We must combine strategic actions and new technology to:

• Integrate all your data source systems and bring them into a single dashboard
• Identify the customers that are “at risk” and put a process in place to do this regularly
• Enable customer support infrastructure to drill down to lowest transactional level details
• Proactively inform sales and service managers about potential issues in delivering a product or service
• Provide customer history on regular basis

In addition of helping us in maintaining customer satisfaction, lot of awkward situations can also be avoided by taking above actions. For example, take a case when a sales representative called an existing customer for renewing a soon to be expiring contract and as soon the formalities of renewing the contract were finalized, it was communicated from the credit department that the customer’s account has been sent to an external agency to collect payments due to long delinquency. If a 360 degrees view is available to staff, these mistakes can be avaoided.

Follow a simple rule that if we spend less time in digging information and spend more time in actually resolving the customer issues and even potential issues in near future, we will be more likely to retain/grow our existing customers, bring new customers and finally grow/expand our business.

Stop talking to your customers

The pressure on bottom-line is more than ever and all organizations are focusing on their cost cutting measures by removing non value added activities, services etc. and customer communication is one sensitive area where normally one will not tread for cutting costs. This is purely due to the fact that any small cost reduction in this area is perceived to bring larger reductions in customer satisfaction and rightly so. Customer satisfaction is one of the key business metrics for all organizations and communication with customers on their feedback, issue resolution, further sales opportunities etc. are treated as most important activities regarding this. Now, the time has come to change our approach a little bit – No, I am not saying that importance of customer satisfaction has reduced now – not at all, in fact it is at its highest peak now and will keep on scaling new heights with customers demanding more and more of your mind share. The change that we need to bring is to stop talking to customers for activities that have known resolutions and results.

Best in class companies have already started using intelligent IVRs for customer communication on their regular day-to-day issues and these are becoming popular with customers as they do not have to wait for longer hours for getting responses to their questions and organizations save on cost by utilizing the staff allocated for these activities for other productive work. Also, some businesses have extended their applications to their customers by providing access to their problem database, frequently asked questions and product suggestion options so that they can themselves resolve their issues, get suggestions on product options etc.

The above methods have brought good results so far and both customers and suppliers are not complaining. NVAs like credit disputes, claim processing issues etc. take away lot of staff efficiency and there is a strong need today to automate and streamline your client dispute resolution process and start spending more time listening to them on the REAL issues. Several workflow based solutions are available in market that enable the customers to see the status of their requests/order online on their own and we can save lot of time in doing something else for them.

Spending time with the customers like providing solutions for their business challenges, their growth and expansion plans as well as their business initiatives will make sure that we engage with them as business partners and the same objectives of making them succeed in their ventures and hence a stronger, longer and more fruitful bond between the supplier and customer.

So, stop talking to customer on activities that they will be ahppy handling themselves on the bais of pre-defined workflow/business logic and listen to them as well as work with them on the activities where a true win-win partnership can be built together. Always strive to work together so that you win together.