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1) Do bad customer experiences cause people to switch brands? In a 2011 research project conducted by CX application vendor RightNow, 89% of consumers said that yes, a bad experience has spurred them to switch brands. But in the brand-new study of business-executive perceptions that’s the subject of this column, only 49% of the surveyed executives said yes.  QUESTION: What steps do you need to take to close this dangerous perception gap? 2) While 97% of executives say CX is critical to the success of their company, and 91% say they’re committed to making their company a CX leader, only 20% would rate their own CX initiatives as “advanced,” with a dedicated CX leader in place, initial projects pushed to the optimization phase, and the overall project extended to new channels and groups . QUESTION: What are the obstacles preventing you from aligning your actions with your words? If you say it’s a “budget” issue, aren’t you really talking about strategic priorities rather than line items? 3) Most companies have a clear and direct understanding of the looming CX challenge and the powerful interaction of social media. The study found that the top two drivers for CX initiatives are (a) rising expectations from customers (59%),  and (b) the impact of social media on customers’ ability to broadcast good and bad experiences (37%). Now, even if you’re able to somehow rationalize those findings, here’s one that not even the most-accommodating executive can dismiss:

4) Being a CX laggard can cost those companies many tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue: executives estimated that the lack of positive, consistent, and brand-relevant customer experience can cause them to lose out on a staggering 20% in annual revenue.

Worse yet, all that money’s likely to wind up in the pockets of your competitors!

Modern business applications produce ever more relevant and actionable information for decision makers, but in many cases the data sources are fragmented and inconsistent. Despite tremendous advancements at the application layer, nearly all IT initiatives succeed or fail based on the quality and consistency of the underlying data.

CIOs are responsible for making information available to their businesses in a consistent and timely basis, but in most organizations, information management is seen as a delegated set of tasks and is not the CIO’s top priority.

“Key initiatives such as master data management, data virtualization, data quality, data integration and data governance are employed by just a fraction of organizations that should be mastering the science of information management,”

The reality of the inbox is that people subscribe to a lot more stuff than they are committed to reading. As a result, they sift through the advertising and marketing noise to find the gems--the messages they connect with and that add value to their lives.

From your initial sign up process to the content and frequency of your messaging, your most important job is showing your audience that you respect the privilege of being invited into their inbox.

These are few of the benefits of implementing a good quality CRM All of your clients’ information is stored in one place, it’s easy to update and share with the whole team. Updates by colleagues should be saved immediately. Every member of your team will be able to see the exact point when your business last communicated with a client, and what the nature of that communication was. CRMs can give you instant metrics on various aspects of your business automatically.  Reports can be generated. These can also be used to forecast and plan for the future. You will be able to see the complete history of your company’s interaction with a client. Calendars and diaries can be integrated, relating important events or tasks with the relevant client.  Suitable times can be suggested to contact customers and set reminders.

Finding one system that will fit your needs in one package may not be possible, so be aware that you may need to customise it to fit into your company. There are infinite possibilities here so don’t get too carried away as costs will rise accordingly.

Ensure that the CRM works on mobile devices and can be accessed remotely. Employees aren’t necessarily sat at their desks when it needs to be used or updated. Real-time updates are necessary for ensuring that clients aren’t contacted twice with the exact same follow up.