Everyone’s heard the old saying about customer service. On average, those who’ve enjoyed a good experience will tell one person, while those who’ve had a bad experience tell ten.

 

In B2C industries, companies live by this mantra. They regard customer experience as a competitive differentiator, and regularly cite its importance in decision-making and strategy. At Avanade we’re seeing a growing demand for CRM implementations with customer experience stated as their number one focus.

 

Traditional avenues such as contact centres are now paying close attention to customer experience. Contact centre solutions are now being developed with a customer-centric approach, letting contact agents concentrate on providing good service, not having to navigate slow and unresponsive multiple legacy systems and CRM systems.

 

And modern channels are jumping in. In an age where consumers can take to any one of numerous channels to voice pleasure or displeasure, social CRM, along with mobile CRM, are now very much the darlings of the customer relationship management world.

 

Thanks to the ability to engage with customers anywhere, and at any time, the mobility channel is already the channel we may use to respond to consumer’s complaints, but it is also becoming the future landscape of customer experience for self-service customer support.

 

As media platforms increase in breadth, customer service “pluralism” will continue to flourish. Targeted  and customised customer experience is set to become more and more important and this relies on a 360° customer view – it’s all about knowing your customer to better address them. Mapping customer service with sales and marketing activities is where CRM comes in and makes the difference to customer experience.