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There are many definitions of customer relationship available online. Yet, this one seems most fitting: Customer relationship is a business function. Its objective is to retain customers and promote revenue growth. It refers to the organization of exchanges between a company or a brand and its customers. Customers contact the company to purchase a product, subscribe to a service, and request information. The company presents messages aimed at ensuring its sales and customer loyalty.
If an individual has a satisfying experience, they are more likely to become or remain my customer. Conversely, a disappointing customer experience can lead a customer or prospect to turn to the competition.
Calls received by Contact Centers represent a significant cost: between 5 and 10€ per call. This cost is the sum of:
Reducing these costs often means reducing accessibility, thus impacting customer experience. The better option: offer alternative and autonomous solutions to calling.
These alternative solutions, like chatbots, chat, FAQs, or forms, still need to be promoted for their usage. Too often, customers are unaware of their existence and naturally turn to the traditional phone channel. Adopting digital tools over the phone by customers is the digital transformation.
Customer relationship performance directly impacts the company's results. To increase profits, customer service can leverage two levers: increasing the number of customers and aiding in their loyalty.
Providing the right response at the right time to a prospect significantly increases the chances of converting them into a customer. Without a response, a customer will not hesitate to turn to the competition. It is up to customer service to be accessible and provide the right answer from the first contact.
While acquiring new customers is important, retaining them is doubly so: the resources needed for loyalty are less compared to acquisition costs. When the cost of sales decreases, the margin increases.
Customer review platforms, like Trustpilot or Verified Reviews, are now decisive in purchasing decisions. They reflect (more or less accurately) customer satisfaction. They encourage or dissuade potential customers from choosing a company. A customer will turn to a company with good reviews, confident that if a problem arises, the company will be able to help. Ultimately, it's about differentiation.
Which teams are in charge?
Telephony is the most traditional channel. In case of a problem with a product, a contract, a subscription, or a delivery, customers have been accustomed for decades to search for and dial the customer service, after-sales service, or support number. The team handling these calls consists of agents or advisors, with the number expressed in terms of "positions". A 15-position service denotes a team of 15 advisors. Many companies, noticing a high volume of incoming calls, have set up a Customer Relationship Center (CRC) or Contact Center to monitor the activity of these teams, equip them with processes and tools like IVR. Other companies prefer to outsource the management of incoming calls. This is called Outsourcing. CRCs can also handle outbound calls for prospecting or commercial follow-up.
The digital experience is increasingly paramount in Customer Relationship! Customer satisfaction now passes through digital communication means, assured by competent teams! Accessibility increases via responsive websites, social networks, or chatbots. These are tools often implemented by marketing and digital professionals, through which customers can get a response suited to their communication mode. Digital has taken a considerable place in customers' habits. 15-24-year-olds consider WhatsApp as their preferred contact channel. Customer relationship teams are well aware of this and are currently undergoing digital transition. Some have trained their teams in digital. Others have set up a dedicated team. Still, others have entrusted digital customer relationship to the existing Digital or Marketing team. What does this team do? It selects and administers digital contact and resolution channels: Self-care channels: Chatbot, FAQ, customer space, etc. Human resolution digital channels: Chat, Form, Call-back
Often, it's the sales teams that ensure customer relationship. They assist customers in using a product and ensure its proper use. They contribute to loyalty. But these are always sales teams whose mission is to make outbound calls. This can be challenging when there are many incoming calls. These teams mostly work in agencies, themselves organized into networks, as in the banking or real estate sectors. This doesn't prevent a CRC from existing to respond to requests during peak solicitations.
The customer service can either form an in-house team or be outsourced. This is known as outsourcing. Both types of organization have their advantages and disadvantages. Internally, the company retains complete control over interactions with the customer. However, these interactions require expertise, tools, and resources. Often, the teams handling incoming requests have other missions, like sales teams. Through outsourcing, client requests are entrusted to already equipped professionals. Internal employees can then focus on other tasks. There's always a fear of reduced service quality when customer relations are outsourced. A hybrid solution might be: to have simple requests handled by a provider and complex requests internally through an escalation process.
The advisor teams can be specialized or not. Do they respond to all requests or only specific ones? For example, a bank might divide its platform: one side for banking, the other for insurance. A retailer might rely on these agents to respond to all requests: order tracking, refunds, purchase assistance, etc.
Channel specialization often poses a problem. In customer service organization, there are two poles: handling synchronous flows (phone, chat) and asynchronous flows (emails, letters). One requires an almost immediate response, and the other takes too long! Some versatile contact centers handle both flows. Other companies have two services, one for each type of flow.
Like in all areas of a company, it is essential to measure the key performance indicators (KPIs) of customer relations to assess the impact of the service, steer activity, and determine the next organizational developments.
Result-Oriented KPIs
The first type of indicators concerns customer satisfaction. Among these indicators, we find:
Loyalty is one of the main objectives of customer relations. Among the KPIs measuring it, we find :
Revenue is the main objective of customer service as well as the company itself. Therefore, this KPI is shared across the entire organization. Customer relations contribute to the company's efforts by :
Operational KPIs
The volume of incoming requests influences the organization to adopt, tools to equip, and staff to recruit. Among these indicators, we find :
Other indicators measure the operational performance of the service. Among these indicators, we find :
