The fundamental pillars of customer-centric transformation projects
In its 5th edition of Focus on Sales (1), Salesforce reports that sales forces spend less than 30% of their working time selling, the rest being dedicated to low-value or administrative work. Although indispensable, low-value activities need to be reduced, so that sales forces can focus on their core business: selling.
To achieve this goal, organizations will be seeking to strengthen their relationships with customers, whether through their business processes or through high-performance, adapted tools. We shed light on the subject from a number of angles.
1. Business Process Modelling
The aim of BPM is to increase efficiency, performance and agility in a company’s day-to-day operations. BPM has been widely adopted by organizations and is essential for any company wishing to remain competitive. The company’s activity in all its fields relies on processes that are known and mastered by the various teams.
One of the major benefits of BPM is to identify, model and improve existing business processes, making them more efficient and consistent. Using a process-based approach, the organization will aim to reduce cycle times, reduce errors and make better use of resources. The main challenges are as follow:
Integration of existing processes
Identifying and modeling existing business processes can be challenging, especially in large organizations where processes can be complex and fragmented. Integrating these existing sales processes into a Business Process Modelling (BPM) system can require significant data collection and collaboration efforts between different teams and departments.
Resistance to change and adoption by teams
Implementing changes in sales processes can be met with resistance from teams accustomed to their existing working methods. Communicating the benefits of BPM and involving employees early in the process is essential to ensure buy-in and commitment.
Maintaining consistency and efficiency
Once sales processes have been modeled and improved, it is crucial to maintain their consistency and effectiveness over time. This may require regular monitoring, periodic adjustments and recurrent teams training to ensure that processes are properly monitored and performance objectives met.
2. Sales force automation
It is all about automating tasks and processes involved in sales activities. This includes lead management, contact and opportunity monitoring, quote generation, etc. The main purpose of sales force automation is to improve the productivity of sales teams by reducing the time and effort needed to carry out the activity, as well as the level of supervision required from operational teams. The main challenges are as follows:
Resistance to change
Automation implies the use of clear industrial tools and processes, and therefore a change in operation compared to the existing system. Depending on the level, change can then be radical, and therefore a source of considerable resistance.
Third-party systems integration
Sales processes can involve several systems, and in order to take advantage of automation benefits, it is often necessary to interface them, which is usually complex and costly.
Data quality
To automate a process, the underlying data must be structured and of high quality, otherwise automation will be ineffective or even counter-productive.
3. Working across all channels
Click-to-call, IVR and call centers, WhatsApp channels, customer portals, etc. are all contact channels. While their implementation may be more or less rapid, the ability to converge these different channels into a unified system and to deliver a consistent, seamless experience across all these channels is a major challenge for many companies.
Working across all channels involves not only setting up these different contact channels, but also integrating them with CRM systems and other customer relationship management tools. This enables companies to monitor and manage customer interactions across different channels seamlessly, while delivering a homogenous, personalized customer experience, whatever the customer’s chosen point of contact. The main challenges are as follow:
Customer identification on the contact interface
Depending on the contact interface, the company needs to be able to identify and recognize its customers as they interact across different communication channels. This means being able to combine customer data from various sources and channels to create a unified, holistic view of each customer.
Integration and consistency between channels
Customers need to move from one channel to another without interruption. For example, a customer could initiate a conversation on a customer portal, then switch to a phone call via click-to-call without having to repeat the information already provided.
A major technological investment
Implementing an effective multi-channel strategy requires significant investment in the appropriate technologies, infrastructures and skills, including CRM systems, marketing automation tools, customer engagement platforms and more.
Companies must strive to put the customer at the center of their engagement. A modern CRM, well integrated throughout the organization, can support customers throughout their engagement journey, ensuring a consistent and personalized experience. This means providing front office employees a unified view on customer data, enabling them to maintain quality engagement even in the face of operational disruptions.
4. Use of customer data
Using data: but what for? Asking this question is already part of the answer. Customer data includes a variety of information, such as contact details (name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, company name, key contacts), preferences, purchase history, online behavior, interactions with the company on social media, comments and feedback, complaints, order and billing data…These data are often used to personalize customer interactions, target marketing campaigns, track sales performance and make strategic decisions. Finally, the importance of exploiting these data is twofold:
- For companies, it enables them to manage their business with more or less finesse, depending on their maturity in terms of data exploitation.
- For customers, it offers a relationship that meets their expectations, whether in the pre-sales phase, during the sale or during after-sales service.
Each company has define what it wants to drive its business, and what customer experience it wants to offer, depending on its sector, market and competitors. On this subject, the main challenges are as follows:
Privacy protection and regulatory compliance
The use of customer data to sell more and better, to manage business or to provide a quality customer experience can quickly become a balancing act. Thus, maintaining compliance while guaranteeing data confidentiality and security can lead companies to scale back their ambitions.
Creating value from collected data
Although companies possess vast quantities of customer data, transforming this data into actionable information and added value can be a challenge. It is necessary to think of data collection in terms of positive, measurable business cases for the company, and then develop the analytical capabilities needed to implement them, rather than the other way around.
Nevertheless, in order to guarantee the success of these projects and foster continuous innovation, companies need to invest in an appropriate change management program. Solid and regular team training is also essential to maximize return on investment.
We are convinced that these areas are essential to contribute to the economic resilience of companies in competitive and unstable environments.
IVR : Interactive Voice Response
- BPM : Business Process Modelling
- CRM : Customer Relationship Management
(1) Focus on Sales – 5th edition
