Customer Experience Management Made Easier: 

Integrate Feedback in CRM 

 

The bulk of companies are beginning to rise to the challenge of formalizing customer experience management. As they do, many are also quickly discovering that measuring customer experience comes with its share of difficulties. For one, customer feedback comes through a larger number of sources than ever before and two, sentiment can be tough to accurately assess even when properly captured.

A recent MarketingProfs blog explains that “...with the ubiquity of social channels and mobile devices, customer behavior is becoming increasingly fragmented, complicated, and hard to track” (February 2014). 

Similarly, Giles House, CMO, CallidusCloud, blogs that customer experience is “the most elusive metric” in B2B (September 2014). 

The simple days of summarizing “customer experience” with the results of marketing’s annual customer satisfaction survey are long gone. True customer experience management is complex to say the least. It requires company-wide representation, strategic planning and processes, and the right mix of technology components.

Which report tracks customer emotion?

Customer experience is different from other business metrics. Counting dollars is simple enough. Counting loyalty is another story. It can change very suddenly and unlike hard numbers, customer feedback leaves room for variance in interpretation. 

To successfully manage customer experience, companies must collect, centralize, and act on customer feedback from numerous sources, along the entire customer journey. They must blend the human aspects of business (customer emotions and reactions needing personal attention) with technology systems to monitor and automate responses whenever possible. 

The technology at the center, experts agree, is CRM. By channeling all customer feedback into CRM, you leverage existing processes and familiarity with the system, and can establish appropriate workflows for feedback requiring one-on-one attention versus input that can receive automated communications. Plus, CRM provides a powerful hub for secure, role-based visibility, direct customer interactions, and flexible reporting across the organization.

How do we integrate feedback into CRM?

To lay the groundwork for solid, long-term customer experience management, choose a solution that meets enterprise requirements for end-to-end, multi-channel feedback management. This solution MUST deeply and easily integrate with your CRM system. It should let you control every aspect of your feedback program, especially how and where data can be mapped into CRM. 

Next, define an outside-in customer journey map and establish key points along the way, at which you’ll ask customers for input via surveys, call scripts, and various web forms. Not all input points, however, will be defined by your organization. You’ll also need intelligent data loading capabilities to integrate feedback from customer-driven points, such as social media, and potentially from other cloud applications into CRM. 

Beyond the basics, be certain that the feedback solution also supports this short list of technical criteria:

• Deployment Power & Flexibility: Since your customers are on-the-go, your feedback mechanisms need to keep pace. Consider new options for reaching customers wherever they are, beyond the standard web and email deployments for surveys. Look for progressive delivery options such sending SMS (text message) surveys, IVR (interactive voice response) surveys, and allowing users to take surveys in “offline mode” — all with responses integrating directly with CRM. This is a surefire way to increase response rates and tap into a broader pool of customers than just your most vocal, usual suspects.

• Device-first Approach: In a multi-screen world, surveys need to adapt to different devices without sacrificing look and feel. Verify that your feedback solution enables advanced branding and design capabilities to reflect your company’s image accurately and consistently across platforms, whether respondents are at their desks or on their mobile phones. They’re more apt to share their opinions if they see a familiar, cleanly presented brand.

• Strategic Insight: Ensure that your feedback solution has built-in, real-time reporting and analysis. This can not be overstated. The end-game is to make sense of feedback and use it to gain insight into the wants and needs of your customers. Text analytics must be part of the equation, as well, so look for an out-of-the-box, text analysis solution integrated with CRM. Remember that the whole point of asking for input is to translate that information into meaningful intelligence to better manage and improve customer experience. 

About Clicktools

Clicktools develops cloud applications that integrate with CRM to help businesses better understand and serve their customers. Since 2001, companies have relied on Clicktools’ flagship offering, SURVE, the premium survey software for business, to integrate customer feedback in CRM. Syncfrog, Clicktools’ low-cost, intelligent data loader, empowers non-technical users to centralize data from multiple cloud applications. Clicktools is owned by Callidus Software Inc. (NASDAQ: CALD), which operates as CallidusCloud^®, the leading provider of sales and marketing effectiveness software.