Is Your Organization Ready to Take the Leap Towards Customer Care?
Since the dawn of commerce, humans have marketed and sold items to one another and provided pre- or post-sale service. Today sales, marketing and service disciplines are sciences in their own right. Companies have invested vast resources in establishing separate business entities that engage the customer in either a sales, marketing or service activity. Marketing budgets run into many millions of dollars while thousands of agents staff 24-7 contact centers to service customers.
However, these siloes of organizational structure are often where the customer’s needs are most ignored. Customers don’t care about organizational structure or who is responsible for the marketing, sales, or service silo. Their only interest is in engaging the organization at the time that they choose through the channel they prefer in order to get the result they want.
From a customer’s perspective, sales, marketing, and service silos are merged into one interaction channel, but these organizational silos should also be merged from the organization’s perspective. Each time they market to a customer, they are, in fact, also selling. Each time they sell a product or service, they are also marketing. Each time they service a customer, they are also marketing and selling. Organizations that look at the customer through an integrated marketing + sales + service lens are going to create consistent customer experiences. Those that do this successfully and sustainably are working through an integrated Customer Care Framework. In this paper, Johan Jacobs lays out an omni-channel architecture for best-in-class customer care. He explains the role of relationship management (CRM), and describes how 13 care channels including call centers, web chat, video, and virtual assistants can come together to create the right strategy for your organization.
