Of late, marketers are looking at customer lifecycle management (CLM) or customer relationship management across the different stages of the marketing lifecycle, with renewed interest. The double-whammy of increased competition and a tough business environment force businesses to use all their aces to attract and retain customers, and in this context, more and more marketers are seeing the virtues of CLM. The reasons are simple. Effective customer lifecycle management enables powerful customer interaction, and this in turn directly contributes to the bottom-line, read our latest article on designing and delivering customer journeys - 7 steps to delight.
Marketers nevertheless face a tough time trying to keep abreast with the emerging trends related to customer relationship management across the different stages in the lifecycle. The only constant in today’s world is change. This holds true for all aspects of business, and customer lifecycle management is no different.
Here are FIVE Key Trends in 2014 that would help marketers in rolling out their CLM strategies.
1. Driving Customer Relationship Management through Deep Analytics
The aim of any business function is to maximize revenue and margin, and customer relationship management is no different. Thanks to the big data boom, more and more marketers are looking to analyze in-depth the behaviors and needs that characterize their most valuable customers, and identify the best ways of reaching them. This trend has already caught on, and in 2014 would become the norm. The pre-requisite is the need to capture customer knowledge at every interaction, accurately. That customers want to be known for, and to be recognized, for past purchases makes this task all the more important
- Marketers will need solutions that integrate massive amounts of disparate and new data quickly, and also cutting-edge tools that would help them cull relevant insights from the data, to get a 360-degree view of customers.
2. Optimizing loyalty programs
It costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. In the age of hyper-competition, marketers are increasingly trying to retain their existing customers. Also, in the age where social media supersedes all other marketing efforts, marketers also seek to convert customers into brand advocates, who can offer credible reports through the social media. The way to realize such goals is loyalty programs.
- Marketers now seek to innovate and offer new loyalty programs distinct from the much-hackneyed special promotional offers and discounts. They will approach the task by sharing value with the customers, and thereby make them a stakeholder of the process.
3. Quantifying Investment
Competitive pressures force a justification in terms of return on investment for every initiative. In customer relationship management, the marketer first estimate the customer lifetime value using available customer insights, and then chalk out an effective lifecycle management strategy based on the perceived value the customer would provide to the enterprise.
- Marketers are now more likely to undertake a cost/benefit analysis rather than apply industry best practices to all and sundry simply because such practices works and are the latest fad.
4. Focus on Culture
Improved customer relationship management requires optimizing customer experience at all points they interact with customers. Marketers are now trying to chalk out effective strategies to further this end, based on a combination of customer expectations and the relative value of each customer segment. That good customer engagement requires robust processes and technology is already known.
- What marketers are slowly but surely discovering now is that culture plays a very important factor as well in offering a unifying experience across different and often diverse touch points. This culture may reflect in the website as the customer is able to speak or chat to a customer support executive and get direct answers, rather than search around the website for information. The same culture would reflect in the customer being able to voice a compliant directly to a customer service executive rather than pile up agony pressing buttons for 30 minutes only to be timed out, when calling the complaint helpline.
5. Co-opt Strategic Partners
Outsourcing is here to say, and those willing to tread this route can realistically reap the rich rewards that comes from the tasks being undertaken by professionals qualified in their domain of expertise and who know what they are doing. Outsourcing customer relationship management and related tasks to a strategic partner would allow the company to concentrate on their key business functions, without being distracted by the tremendous amount of time and effort it takes to get this critical function right.
- Marketers will use marketing partners, thus helping the company acquire a valuable and strategic ally who adds strength and punch to the company’s thrust to the marketplace.
If you are looking to develop, implement, and sustain an effective customer lifecycle management model across multiple channels, or seeking answers on how to delight the customer at different stages in the marketing lifecycle, take a look at our Customer Relationship Management service offerings. We leverage our expertise and experience of many years to offer cutting-edge solutions that help you develop and sustain an effective customer lifecycle management model across multiple channels.
