In the current economic situation, the following may be the important considerations of organizations, that will drive customer-process improvement pressures:

A unified, complete view of customers across different channels
As competition intensifies, organizations are finding it necessary to shift from a strategy that focuses on product differentiation to one that focuses on enhancing the customer experience. Today’s customers expect a personalized experience – whether it’s through the Web, call center or other customer touchpoints. They want to feel as though companies understand them, and they expect to be treated consistently. A well-orchestrated marketing campaign requires coordination and synchronization across multiple channels. Hence, organizations must unify their customer relationship management (CRM) system across different channels, in order to obtain a complete picture of customer-centric knowledge, and in turn develop marketing campaigns tailored to individual customers’ needs.

In particular, due to the increasing popularity of Web 2.0, the online channel is now a key channel for communicating with customers. Instead of merely collating the numbers of page-viewers, it is essential to capture every interaction a customer has on an enterprise’s Web site, transform it into customer-centric knowledge, and integrate the data with information from other channels, within a predefined customer experience data model. In this way, organizations can obtain a more complete picture of their customers, which provides insight on their true needs, resulting in more relevant campaigns and more cost-effective marketing.

Increasingly vital to swiftly respond to customers’ needs
Swiftly respond to customers’ needs provides a unique and sustained competitive advantage, enabling organizations to rapidly respond to changes in market dynamics. By employing innovative, interactive marketing tactics such as real-time decision making, organizations can realize significant improvements in sales and retention, revenue and profitability, and the overall customer experience.

The real-time analytical approach drives immediate business value for enterprises, and enables them to optimize every customer interaction to improve revenue, growth, and retention. For example, when a call center receives a customer call reporting the loss of a cell phone, real-time analysis should consider the customer’s past behaviors and transactional history, to enable the call center representative to immediately provide the customer with a personalized offer to buy a new cell phone. This suits the customer’s needs, while generating revenue for the organization through cross-selling.

Relevancy of offers to customers
Customers have increasingly high expectations of the experience they have when interacting with an organization. They want to ensure that their needs are addressed, and that they are treated as individuals. They do not want any mass marketing promotions, which they regard as useless.

To meet these expectations, the first priority is to understand the different needs of various customer segments and what is needed to provide a tailored customer experience, through profiling and segmenting customers based on historical behavior, profitability and lifetime value.

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