With the proliferation of the Internet and advancements in touch point technologies, all customer dialogues now have the potential to add value to the total customer relationship through targeted messaging, product up-sell, and loyalty infusion. In fact, every interaction with a customer should be viewed as an opportunity to instill loyalty, learn more about the individual customer, and present the customer with information, products, and services that leverage the information gained from each of these dialogues. However, the complexity of managing customer dialogues across touch points has increased exponentially.
Customers have many more channels over which to transact than ever before.
In fact, it is not at all unusual for a customer to have multiple interactions taking place in parallel over different channels. They may be a subscriber to a daily e-mail newsletter, do their purchases online, and use the inbound call center to handle customer service issues. In addition, many customers who begin a dialogue over one channel may wish to continue that dialogue on a different channel. For example, if a customer is doing research on wireless rate plans on the Web, they may want to change their current plan via live interaction with a customer service representative. Today's eCRM technologies have been very effective at managing interactions at a specific touch point.