CRM & E-Commerce

3.1 CRM evolution

Many of today s major trends can’t ignore the web phenomenon and the drive of ecommerce.
This vast opportunity, mostly as yet unrevealed, manifests itself as a significant aspect of almost all other major trends. The concept of Customer Relationship Management with its three fundamental pillars of Marketing, Sales, and Service clearly requires a commerce strategy, which is now expanded to include web commerce, i.e. ecommerce. Industry analysts are uniform in claiming that e-commerce and CRM are complementary initiatives and will bring faster ROI. However, statistics show that enterprises are slow in merging these initiatives, causing uncoordinated error-prone efforts that result in wasted time and dissatisfied customers. It is actually quite astonishing that “... the majority of companies are implementing the most critical customer contact vehicle of all – ecommerce – independent of key customer relationship initiatives.” Giga Information Group, CRM Plus E-commerce Equals Faster ROI, 8/99. In an article published September ’99 titled Realizing the Virtual Customer, MetaGroup explained that “...G2000 organizations implementing both customer relationship management (CRM) and e-commerce (EC) initiatives often mistakenly treat these initiatives separately.... It will also be increasingly important to coordinate the purchasing (and processes) of both CRM and EC capabilities to provide a panoramic customer view to the enterprise. Bottom Line: Organizations must treat the e-channel and EC as part of overall CRM strategy to avoid channel conflict and optimize the return on customer relationship (ROCR).”

Responding to the need to combine e-commerce and CRM initiatives, many of the traditional CRM vendors are currently working on expanding their CRM offering to the web. CRM has been around in one form or another
for a long time. It is the emphasis that is being put on an integrated CRM business strategy that encompasses all customer touch points and particularly the web, that is requiring significant modifications to the old time CRM
offerings. Many of the traditional CRM players are currently playing catch-up as the rules of the game have changed.

3.2 Integration & consistency is essential
Approaching e-commerce and CRM in an uncoordinated fashion can create a frustrated unsatisfied customer. The enterprise business must operate in concert coordinating the back-office systems with the front-office and ecommerce strategies. See figure 4 for an integrated CRM solution. Customers want to be treated with the same high quality, independent of their channel of interaction. Whether they access the enterprise via the phone, the web, or e-mail the customer expects a quick professional response. The product and company information must be accurate and consistent. There is nothing more distressing than getting conflicting answers to the same question from different representatives of the perceived source of authority.

In addition to annoying the customer, the enterprise itself suffers from unnecessary overhead and missed opportunities. Duplicate tasks and bottlenecks are often a consequence of independent uncoordinated efforts within the enterprise. Take for example the following missed opportunity: A potential customer enters the web site and doesn’t spend the required amount of time on the “right” pages and doesn’t cooperate with filling in personal details other than a name. Consequently, the prospect is not flagged as having a high potential value. This prospect is therefore not sought after and is lost. But in this hypothetical situation, it so happens that the prospect is an existing Gold customer, who simply isn’t particularly web savvy, and therefore made a “bad” impression when analyzed by the lead capture system. It also turns out that this prospect actually was interested in a significant purchase. The information about the prospect’s interests, buying habits and loyalty (until that point) to the enterprise exists, but in a “different” database handled by “different” people in the Customer Service department. The loss to this particular enterprise by having independent CRM and e-commerce initiatives is quite unfortunate.

Consistency when addressing the customer across all media is important in several domains.

a. Customer data

Customer data including financial and demographic information must be kept up-to- date.
The information should be easily available to anyone within the enterprise who might have customer contact. It is important that relevant outstanding issues with the customer also be clearly flagged. A customer shouldn’t have to repeat a story or supply an answer previously given to another representative.

b. Business rules

Business rules are often dispersed within the organization causing inconsistent, uncoordinated business decisions. Traditionally, business rule engines are attached to each of the CRM components such as the Sales Automation or Call Center systems. They frequently function correctly but unfortunately independently of the larger enterprise picture.

c. Company and product information

Both company and product information must be kept up-to-date and consistent throughout the enterprise. It is inconceivable that the web site will offer a product that customer service knows nothing about, or that a price quote given by a sales person contradicts a special offer advertised on the web. Company information such as that advertised in press releases should be easily available to all that potentially interact with a customer.