enuan

Riporto un post trovato su un blog della Cinese Ogilvy apparso oggi che descrive molto bene la necessità di aggiornare il modello del CRM a cui siamo abituati introducendo nuovi modelli di dialogo interattivo.

Ritrovo in questo articolo una enorme rispondenza con la filosofia

che è alla base del nostro approccio di Marketing, Business e tecnologico, che ha portato alla realizzazione della nostra piattaforma SW MessageCube.

Stefano

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June 26th, 2007

Simple and Digital - Creating Winning Dialogues Online

Chris Reitermann is President of OgilvyOne China. This article first appeared in Chinese in Global Entrepreneur, March 2007

One of the most overrated and overused words in marketing history is CRM. In fact, it is a word that most people try not to use anymore. I remember the days when CRM was praised as a new wonder weapon for many brands and corporations. Buy yourself some ‘CRM’ and your customers will love you, buy more, and be happy forever. Clearly this was a big over-promise, and many companies invested a lot of money in a magic formula–often millions of dollars–that didn’t produce the desired results. This is slightly exaggerated, but the point is that many companies approached “being nice to customers” like something one can buy as a software package.

Instead, CRM is a process, massively aided by technology, that helps corporations focus on improving relationships with customers from the first time a brand has contact with them, to the time when a customer is in fact a good customer and the corporation can keep and grow this relationship. A simple way to take the science out of this is to think about CRM like the process of finding a girlfriend/boyfriend which turns into a wife/husband. In the beginning, as you strive to impress them, you go through a period of courtship until you become a couple, get married, and once you are married you mutually try to grow and foster this relationship. This is CRM.

However, we don’t like to use this C word anymore, and are now back to basics. Digital and the Internet has made building and maintaining relationships easier than ever before. Many brands can now afford dialogues with their customers in ways never imagined, simply because the cost of having this dialogue has dramatically decreased, and the tools available today have made it easy to manage even for very small companies.

Let’s look at a few simple ways to effectively build relationships with customers through digital channels.

At the very beginning of any dialogue with customers, there needs to be a basic platform where this dialogue is managed from–a database that stores customer information. This can be quite simple to start with. The more important point is to dedicate some resources to maintain this database and keep it up to date. A database should be set up around the parameters that you want to build your relationships with. For example, you don’t need a database storing every possible piece of information about your customers, if all you want is to send them a standard email or birthday postcard. Obviously more sophisticated forms of targeting require more complex information about customers and the ability to effectively analyze this data, but for most companies being able to access basic customer data and purchase history is often more than enough to get started.

Let’s assume this is in place, and we start to use digital to communicate with our customers. The most common tactic to build a digital dialogue is email marketing. Email marketing is often cast in a negative light due to spam and privacy issues. This is a basic etiquette decision that should always be considered. However, email marketing can be extremely effective in building relationships and driving a desired customer response. There is a science to email marketing–it can be analyzed and optimized in nearly real time, and the smallest change in content or design, the time the email is sent, or the first word in a subject line can make a substantial difference in the effectiveness of an email campaign. Most companies still believe an email needs less effort than a printed brochure or newsletter. But developing some discipline around how email is used in a company can make a big difference. Email marketing can be extremely effective and can be optimized over time to provide completely targeted content. Techniques like heat mapping, where research cameras follow consumers’ eyes reading an email, allow this to be possible. The output of this is a series of colors superimposed on the email content where different colors highlight the areas of an email that a consumer paid the most attention to. Optimizing the layout of an email based on these results has improved email click-through rates by up to 65%. Today it’s possible to send rich media emails with embedded video or other media files to provide a highly improved customer experience. The key to successful email marketing is certainly to follow the basir rules and optimize campaigns over time.

Another way to improve dialogue with consumers is to provide tools on websites that enable better access to the company, whether it’s through simple applications that help consumers make a decision, or providing a service online. For example, we all love the recommendation function on Amazon, where you are recommended books that others with the same purchase liked, or the ability to compare different car models on a manufacturer’s website and find just the right configuration before even going to the dealership. Now how great would it be if we didn’t only configure our own car online, but also made the appointment for a test drive, then when arriving for that test drive the sales staff already knows who you are and has just the right model prepared for you? The truth is many websites provide great tools to help customers help themselves, but these tools can often be a step further to close the gap between online and the real shopping experience.

In the U.S. many websites have a Call Back button where a customer service representative will immediately call a customer on their phone–a simple way to to make sure consumers are not lost along the way. Now there are emerging online applications with artificial intelligence that can manage a major portion of customer conversations. These engines power email content or instant messages and already have the ability to manage up to 95% of the dialogue. This is not science fiction, but rather a simple application that has answers to most questions stored in a database, and learns over time to answer more questions based on what people ask. When the application or robot doesn’t know the answer it then passes the inquiry to a real person. It’s actually very simple, and for some companies it can manage over 90% of the dialogue before passiong it on to a customer service rep. Since this occurs in real time, most consumers don’t realize they aren’t talking to a real person. Some might argue that companies shouldn’t have their customers talking with machines, but the fact remains that taking care of the most basic questions gives customer service reps more time to focus on the more pressing and challenging issues facing customers. In the end, most customers would prefer talking with a robot over scrolling through endless FAQ sections.

There are still many companies that do not reply properly to inquiries sent through a website. I recently did a simple test and contacted about 20 major companies through their websites. The result? I didn’t get a response from nine, six responded with automated messages saying “we will get back to you shortly–thanks for the inquiry” (of which only one actually did get back to me), and only five of the companies actually replied to my request within a reasonable amount of time, in this case, one week. This demonstrates 75% of companies missing an opportunity that could have been a positive experience for a customer or potential customer. At this point I must praise one IT company in my little survey that responded within 30 minutes with a personal email.

Beyond using these simple tools to establish a dialogue, we now see companies starting to leverage Web 2.0 tools and dynamics. In fact, on the Web today consumers demonstrate daily how relationships are managed from individual to individual. I receive countless invitations from friends and colleagues to join their networks, either on a private level or through MySpace, Facebook or other social networking sites or on more business-focused networks like Open Business Club. It’s a great way to manage relationships with friends or people you want to stay in touch with. Many companies are realizing this as well, and are now creating branded communities around consumer interests related to their brands or business. Successful examples of this are iCoke or Motomusic in China.

To get started, the key is still to think like a consumer and not leave the answer to technology. Technology enables, but the dialogue still needs to be relevant and follow the basic rules of interaction.