The markets for KM and SRM solutions are still emerging, and it is difficult to predict how large or how quickly they will grow, if at all. Some companies have found that the productivity of customer service personnel initially drops while CSRs are becoming accustomed to using the software.
Self-service can cause conflicts, since it contributes to a general shift of control and resources away from the call center. Also, exposing some information can be risky. For example, logging complaints into the system and then displaying them on the customer portal can cause some users to regard giving out sensitive information as “hanging themselves." Resistance to the software by customer service personnel and inadequate development and maintenance of the system's knowledge resources, business rules, and other configurations have in some cases made it even more difficult to attract new customers and retain old ones.
Competition in the fragmented SRM marketplace is rapidly evolving and intense, and one should expect competition to further intensify in the future as current competitors expand their product offerings and as new competitors enter the market. One should also expect that competition will increase as a result of industry consolidation, which comes from the need for newer models of customer service, in which a single vendor provides solutions for both internal and external service, technical support, and search.
In general, it makes economic sense for companies to pursue an SRM strategy, since in the all-too-common scenario of using disparate KM, CRM, and search applications, despite all of the resources at hand, the customer is hardly ever provided with any resolution, except to take a look at the competitive offering (in disgust). Conversely, the scenarios in which an SRM approach is taken should enable the contact center agent to satisfy the customer's needs and increase the economic value of that customer to the organization.
By using advanced KM technologies, users can create a cross-channel approach to help automate service resolution in the enterprise, so that all of the valuable information in all of those disparate systems is tied together in one common knowledge platform, which is then made available to the agents, customers, and the enterprise. Indeed, it should not matter if a customer query comes in at the call center or at the help desk, or via e-mail, phone, or the web site, since the correct answer to the query should be accurate and consistent across all channels, and it should reflect the outcome that the selling company desires.
However, while the potential for self-service and SRM to reduce costs and improve service quality is indisputable, it is an extremely complex model to deliver, since self-service capabilities usually require multiple layers of technology across each service channel. Companies do best when implementing it in a step-wise fashion, starting with something as simple as providing answers to FAQs, and moving up to allowing customers to execute complex transactions (like changing preferences for a service) on their own.
Standardizing on a set of packaged CRM applications helps when integrating self-service and SRM across channels. Yet most companies will still need to buy best-of-breed "e-service" products to provide live chat, e-mail response management, customer search, and other key features needed for self-service over the Web. User companies must be prepared to make a reasonable investment in their transaction architecture in order to facilitate self-service and to handle the higher volume of interactions with customers.
Self-service can cause conflicts, since it contributes to a general shift of control and resources away from the call center. Also, exposing some information can be risky. For example, logging complaints into the system and then displaying them on the customer portal can cause some users to regard giving out sensitive information as “hanging themselves." Resistance to the software by customer service personnel and inadequate development and maintenance of the system's knowledge resources, business rules, and other configurations have in some cases made it even more difficult to attract new customers and retain old ones.
Competition in the fragmented SRM marketplace is rapidly evolving and intense, and one should expect competition to further intensify in the future as current competitors expand their product offerings and as new competitors enter the market. One should also expect that competition will increase as a result of industry consolidation, which comes from the need for newer models of customer service, in which a single vendor provides solutions for both internal and external service, technical support, and search.
In general, it makes economic sense for companies to pursue an SRM strategy, since in the all-too-common scenario of using disparate KM, CRM, and search applications, despite all of the resources at hand, the customer is hardly ever provided with any resolution, except to take a look at the competitive offering (in disgust). Conversely, the scenarios in which an SRM approach is taken should enable the contact center agent to satisfy the customer's needs and increase the economic value of that customer to the organization.
By using advanced KM technologies, users can create a cross-channel approach to help automate service resolution in the enterprise, so that all of the valuable information in all of those disparate systems is tied together in one common knowledge platform, which is then made available to the agents, customers, and the enterprise. Indeed, it should not matter if a customer query comes in at the call center or at the help desk, or via e-mail, phone, or the web site, since the correct answer to the query should be accurate and consistent across all channels, and it should reflect the outcome that the selling company desires.
However, while the potential for self-service and SRM to reduce costs and improve service quality is indisputable, it is an extremely complex model to deliver, since self-service capabilities usually require multiple layers of technology across each service channel. Companies do best when implementing it in a step-wise fashion, starting with something as simple as providing answers to FAQs, and moving up to allowing customers to execute complex transactions (like changing preferences for a service) on their own.
Standardizing on a set of packaged CRM applications helps when integrating self-service and SRM across channels. Yet most companies will still need to buy best-of-breed "e-service" products to provide live chat, e-mail response management, customer search, and other key features needed for self-service over the Web. User companies must be prepared to make a reasonable investment in their transaction architecture in order to facilitate self-service and to handle the higher volume of interactions with customers.
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