Monday 14 October 2013

Behavioral Aspect in Customer Relationship Management

In the last blog we have seen the role played by a "Leader" and the quantities that determines an individual as a "leader". Now we are going to see "how to understand and handle a customer based on his or her Behavioral aspect". The core concept of Customer relationship management remains the same in all industries but the approach varies from industry to industry. Let us see how it varies along with behavioral aspect of a customer. Before proceeding let us understand what is the behavioral aspect of a customer? A customer's behavior varies from person to person based on certain parameters like expectations which includes quality of service, time taken for providing a resolution, clarity in providing the information, return on investment etc.., family situation like his personal & official life status, financial status, work pressure, availability of time to understand the information or product etc.., domain  or technical knowledge. The agent has to understand the customer based on some of these parameters and then address his query or problem. But this has been lacking in today's customer support industry as the agents blindly follow the flow of  product information scripts to address the query which has been very well provided in FAQ's & product manual's & it is not much appreciated by a customer. Agent has to initially understand a customer behavior based on his tone, the way he put forwards his query, the pace as which he expects a resolution, his previous experience with their product which can be got only if an organization maintains a structured customer relationship management system in place. Accordingly the agent has to align his flow of conversation with the customer. Let us see examples based on industries
In Luxury hotels we have Front Office Professionals at the reception who has to address various queries on the services provided by their hotel like availability of rooms, laundry services, complimentary services which includes usage of hotel facilities, Breakfasts, transportation services etc to the customers. In this industry these professionals have to address customer's queries spontaneously and make the customer delighted as in hostel industry the growth of the business is based on the percentage of delightful customers. Here also hey have SLA's for corporate customer so expectation of service & professionalism are seem more in today's market trend. Here the customers put forwards his or her queries in varies behavioral aspect but the way Front office professionals handles the query decides the growth of that hotel but also highlights his smartness in handling a customer that add credits to his career growth.
In an IT industry, customer & technical support varies in terms of approach. When a agent provides a technical support he or she should understand the severity of the issues then have to check immediately if there is any work around for that incident. If not should proactively escalate the issues to the backend team along with that should simultaneously address the issue. This requires clarity in understanding the issues, understanding customer's behavior, domain knowledge, SLA (Service Level Agreement), escalation matrix etc. Agent should then document the issues clearly for future references. But the same industry has got Customer support which takes cares of Annual Maintenance contract, modification of Service Level agreement, clarifications on the support services, marketing management to up-sell new product or version etc. So in both support verticals understanding the customer's behavior is important and the approach to support varies as the time management & clarity in addressing a query or issue are important parameters in today's industry.
In the above two industries the concept of customer relationship management remains same but the approach to handle customers of various behavioral aspect has to be clearly understood by the support vertical of an organization. In both technical and customer support there will be variation in the approach of support workflow as each query or issue in both verticals are different. There is no book or research article says a standard approach has to adopted for various customer behavior. They only provide us guidance on how to handle a customer based on their experience. There comes logical approach of handling a customer which tells understand the customer's situation, value their time, think smart rather putting forward unwanted probing questions, proactive way of addressing an issue, clarity in providing information. These doesn't comes just by attending a training or certification but it comes through logical viewing of an issue or query.A same query will be put forwarded by customer in different ways based on experience with your product or service of an industry. If a person recommend a product to his friend and relative are purely based on his experience which is customer relationship management of that company. This customer relationship is continuous as it begin from the meeting the sales team to customer or technical support team. Understand a customer is must before the organization thinks of rolling out their product or service in the market.
Things to be kept in mind
1. Welcome the customer
2. Allow him or her to put their query or issue (No personal questions even if they are a well known customer as we can't judge a customer to be same at every visit)
3. Don't put much of sympathy questions. Customer won't encourage these statement if they are in bad mood.
4. Not to sell a product by making false promise or wrong information. If he or she not clear on the information check and provide the customer.
5. Don't say later versions you might/will get this requested feature. Marketing is a domain to analysis the customer's needs based on the market trend. But today marketing is calling customers again and again to sell their product after which they are left alone in the dense forest when it comes to support.
6.  Customer behavior varies most only after getting the product or service as he or she might not get their requirement but would have been told by marketing executive that you have this feature.
7. Customers today are most proficient in varies domain so try to understand a customer based on his or her situation and provide a appropriate resolution for his problem.

So understanding customer behavior is most important in every move of an organization. Aligning the support vertical is a must in every organization and periodic reviews will assist the organization in having a good relationship with the customer. A organization should have a team who keeps in touch with the customers mainly for corporate customer to give them updates on the value added services but also understand their situation in the market. If a customer is having a downfall and a company tries to up-sell his new product will land the company into problem as they will negative feedback on this team. This is important aspect in every industry. Agents or support professionals should remember the following

1. Personal review which tell about your experience with the customers on day to day basis. 
2. Have a mind set support is nothing but making a customer delighted even if he in bad mood.
3.Think twice before putting forward an information for even a simple query.
4. Request the customer if you them on hold or make them wait while you check for the information.
5. Clarity in speech is must in any industry as it doesn't forms a part of technical or non technical aspect of query.
6. Value customer's time while addressing their issue or query.

If these are brought into practice then handling a customer of any behavioral aspect becomes easy in any industry. Only the information changes within industries but the approach to support remains the same. We would understand the main difference between a customer and technical support along with the support provided by contact centers. Accordingly the alignment of support matrix has to made by the organization. Above all organization should compulsorily maintain customer feedback for their future reference accordingly to understanding a customer would be better. In the forthcoming we will also see some of models of customer behavior handling. I value your comments and suggestions regarding this blog.


Saturday 5 October 2013

Importance of Leadership in Customer Relationship Management

In the last blog we have seen the negative influence of Commercialization of a Business which directly or indirectly affects the relationship with customer. Here we are now going to see what is meant by leadership? How a leader plays a vital role in building an effective relationship with customer or supplier? What are the key skills that transforms an individual as a leader? How to identify a leader? These are some questions which are going to explained in brief in this blog.
As we all know Leadership is a quality of an individual that drives the entire team towards the same goal. Unless target is not focused at the initial stage itself the end result will go negative or against the organization. The person who aligns the target of an assignment is known as a Leader. Leader is a person who guides or mentor the team on a project or assignment based on his previous experiences and reference to many research articles. Lets takes an example of a Team Lead of Marketing Department. He would have definitely come across various people, attitudes, sectors etc which are his past experience. Here he should have taken failures as his learning areas and would have made many analysis on to handle customer of those attitude or sector. This is something that has been practiced for years and today it has become a part of Management Curriculum. Based on these analysis a leader mentors or guides the team and learning continues with different projects. Unless the leader is potential enough the success rate of any project or assignment will be less than the expectation. Leader should not only be well versed in domain knowledge but also should have effective management skill set like time management, documentation, communication, presentation, attitude, follow ups, project management, metrics design, clarity in clarifying the queries, escalation matrix management, work break structure, team building and management etc.. are some of the important skill sets.
Time Management, Communication and Documentation plays an important role as every assignment has got a project plan which comes has to be prepared based on the team skill set and availability of the resource. Accordingly the project has to be divided among the team along with the time limit or number of days to complete that part of the project which is termed as Work Break Down structure. Then comes communication unless there is no proper communication on the progress of the assignment there won't be other phases of a project in line like Software testing which is handed over to a different team. Documentation is very important as a team lead he should ensure that the complete documentation of the project is properly maintained to provide report on the project to the management before handing over to the customer. In order to achieve this a leader has to be an effective team builder as he should know the resource he requires with the following skill set along with have to set the metrics for his  team. In customer relationship we have metrics like time to resolve the issue, customer feedback, number of calls addressed are some of the metrics followed in Business Process Organization and many customer support providing organization.Escalation matrix should normally be designed based on the capability of an individual like for support there are L1-L3 support. Team Lead should have the capability to analyze the team domain knowledge and build the escalation matrix. Then the pilot batch should be initiated to see how they support the customer or client with their expertise in that domain. Based on this Team Lead should analyze on the domain they require training. That is what we term as employee satisfaction areas as the employee is provided the training and made sure that he provide better support along with getting additional knowledge.
A detailed report should be made at regular intervals on the team performance and have regular meetings to inform the team member on the areas of their weakness and how to address those areas. That makes the team to have a got relation with the team lead thereby completing the task on time, within expected metrics & quality and above all getting a satisfied customer into their credit. So Team Lead with some of these parameters plays a vital role in building the team and also growing the business of an organization in turn also building a list of satisfied customers.
Team Lead should be identified based on the above discussed potentials. He will be normally evaluated based on the success of the project and his ability to manage the team. Hard work alone doesn't  makes an individual as a Team Lead but how he delivers an assignment in an efficient way. When a assignment is provided to a Team Lead he should have the ability to understand the customer need which in turns should compare with his resource skill set. Accordingly he has to prepare a documentation to HR on resource requirement. Those knowledge are based on his past experiences and proper logical thinking caliber of an individual. It is known to all of us that the "Success of an organization is based on Team work not by individual's effort". Team Lead should have the efficiently to have a good relationship with his team member by having some fun by taking them for a outing, giving them the opportunity to do some MDP or certification programs. Giving them some assignments from research articles to make get them involved in knowing other domains also. Team Lead should be a friend, mentor and not to dominate the team. These are some important aspects about the Leadership quality in an organization that assists in the building the client or customer relationships.