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CRM White Paper on the Customer Experience Released by Consona
 TMCnet Contributing Editor
Consona, a vendor of customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning software, reportedly has announced the general availability of its white paper titled “The Future of the Customer Experience.”
The paper, written by Tim Hines, vice president of product management for Consona ( News - Alert) CRM, proposes an approach to CRM which company officials say can “manage the demands of today’s large-scale customer service initiatives.”
In October, TMCnet’s Jai C.S. reported that Consona announced it would rebrand its suite of CRM and knowledge management products under the name Consona CRM.
Customer service contacts today are made by an ever-increasing variety of methods including self-service inquiries, e-mail, Web chat, text messaging, and telephone, according to the Consonians, so “it is imperative that companies maximize every customer touch. Beyond merely managing each interaction effectively, all contacts must be viewed as aspects of an ongoing relationship.”
This approach, the paper finds, is “the crux of customer experience management: a total focus on the customer relationship in all its manifestations to reflect one unified company face to the customer.”
The paper discusses the fact that companies continue to seek the best method to maintain an ongoing relationship with their customer base as a means to encourage loyalty and continued business, while customers want high-quality products and services at a reasonable price, and appreciate suppliers who demonstrate an understanding for their needs and treat them as valued business partners.
However, Hines notes, “the best companies, in a measure of customer satisfaction, are the ones that have the least opportunity to interact with the customer because there is less reason for the customer to call – but they also maximize every contact to reinforce the relationship and the customer’s perception of the company.”
The paper concludes that CRM system technologies should then be harnessed to both improve the responsiveness and efficiency of customer service operations and, at the same time, “support product and service improvements to eliminate the need for customer service calls.”
In terms of technology, Hines argues, a truly customer-centric CRM project “requires a central database of customer information that must be accessible from all customer-related applications, such as sales force automation, marketing automation, and knowledge-centric customer service and support … Disparate products can provide some relief, but ultimately create further trials in the form of compatibility snafus and the continual updates and maintenance that software systems require.”
Don’t forget to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users.
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David's articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.
Edited by Michael Dinan
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