Effective customer management is the key to success in the current economic climate, reveals CCL
The relationship – or ‘value exchange’ - between the business and the customer is the key to organisations emerging from the current economic crisis stronger and more successful believes Simon Rustom, managing director of the customer and change management company Customer Consulting Ltd (CCL).
CCL's experience in recent months of helping organisations -
drawn from a number of sectors of the economy - to be increasingly
successful in the current harsh economic climate indicates that one
of the keys to success is effective and efficient customer
management. Moreover, argues Rustom, growing customer value is the
way to combat increasing global competition.
Since customer management embraces the whole organisation;
requires a view that transcends organisational boundaries; needs
'top down' leadership and culture change, and is a long term
commitment, CCL recommends that customer management be seen - and
treated - as a 'main board' issue.
"In addition," Rustom said, "customer management strategy delivers
against core shareholder value objectives: to build market share;
increase profitability; grow revenue, and improve operating costs.
That confirms that it is a main board issue and the concern of
CEOs, FDs, CIOs and so on.
"Work with our clients across a range of sectors has shown that
putting in place an effective customer management strategy is an
extremely high value activity," he continued.
"In many circumstances the return on investment (ROI) can be tens
or even hundreds of millions of pounds. With several CCL clients,
the business cases showed returns amounting to over £100m.
"An unprecedented shift of power to the customer means that, to
remain competitive, companies need to optimise value from a range
of interrelated 'customer management' disciplines: customer
insight, value propositions, customer service, customer experience,
relationship management, channel integration and so on," Rustom
explained.
"There is now evidence that neither piecemeal nor technology-led
approaches to this issue have delivered value," he continued. "To
be successful requires strategic, organisational and operational
elements to be aligned within a long term plan - and those
operational elements comprise people and process as well as
technology.
"Customer management maps out how core targets, as well as the
brand promise and value propositions, will be delivered," said
Rustom.
"It is all about improving the customer interfaces and internal
processes that lead to increased performance. It paves the way for
cross-functional and cross-business cooperation and
integration.
"It provides a powerful context to carry out development from the
customer's point of view and it articulates the required
infrastructure, capabilities and culture needed to deliver all of
these things."
Rustom believes that many current customer management programmes
fail because of inadequate customer strategy; adopting a piecemeal
or un-sustained project approach; placing too great an emphasis on
technology; inadequate implementation skills, and lack of
flexibility, alignment and leadership.
Consequently, Rustom advocates a three step approach to customer
management: 'fixing the basics' and defining strategy; embedding
best practice, and then growing customers' lifetime value to the
organisation, enhancing brand value, matching investment with
potential in marketing, sales and customer service while also
reducing marketing, sales and operational costs.
CCL is currently implementing this three step approach to customer
management in a number of organisations - with excellent and
encouraging results so far.
For further details of this approach, contact Kathy Duxbury at CCL
on +44 (0) 1908 441012 or email
[email protected]
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