In today’s business world, it is necessary to deliver high-class service with rapid growth rates, profitability and increased customer retention. Organizations, today, are seeking for newer and faster ways to communicate with customers for maintaining consistency across all channels of interaction. In order to enhance customer experience and loyalty, companies need to adapt to customer advocacy. To achieve this, organizations need to focus on factors driving increased customer satisfaction by optimizing cost.
Customer Interaction Management or commonly abbreviated in the industry as CIM helps companies in discovering effective methodologies for interacting with customers by maintaining consistency for enabling continual improvement and transformation across all channels. CIM came into existence after the rampant dependence on customer engagement, profitability and customer experience which predominantly came into the spotlight after the digital transformation. However, there were vestiges of customer relationship and interaction management before this transformation. Customers communicate with companies through different mediums such as email, chat, phone, mobile application, text, social media, etc, and demands effective resolution to their query. Essentially, customer Experience has always been around when it comes to cover all the interactions that an organization is having with the audience but as the companies are moving towards becoming more customer centric, Omni-channel presence is no longer an option but a necessity. Companies from different industries have gradually accepted this transformation at how they serve customers, but a few are still unenthusiastic about the idea.
E-commerce industry is the one where delivery of exceptional customer service matters the most. With the increased use of smart phones and tablets, E-commerce industry has witnessed a huge rise in their business volumes. This trend has been consistent each year but the shopping abandonment has resulted in a huge loss for e-commerce players. The reasons could be a non-responsive website, unexpected shipping costs, and lack of personal assistance when required, or reaching customers at multiple touch-points. E-commerce companies struggle to align their customer interaction and business strategy, but many have failed to do so. With the help of a CIM solution e-commerce companies have the capability of adopting the best practices of customer experience management to create everlasting customer engagements.
E-commerce companies are always at risk when it comes to negative reviews from customers. With the increasing penetration of social media platforms, customers have the power of voicing their opinions. Social media has gained a consistent importance in transforming shopper’s experience – from researching their requirement to engagement throughout the duration of their buying process and even post-purchase feedbacks and reviews. Through contact center software agents have the power to track and reply to the query being raised related to them on social media platforms. It is really surprising to see what a 140 character Tweet could do to a business. Companies are either unaware of such tweets due to lack of monitoring tools or they simply ignore such issues.
CIM software helps in understanding the fundamentals around the contact mechanisms desired by the customers in order to ensure that the management information systems allows the business to retain and expand by modifying operations customized to each customer. The software will integrate all the points of customer interaction into one holistic platform, transforming itself to an Omni-channel communication platform. It is all about using available intelligence for optimizing processes and for configuring the supporting technology in order to deliver a collaborative customer interaction.
CIM leaders have found prominent success in e-commerce segment largely of the need to innovate quickly. It is also believed that contact center software will stay in demand for a longer period as the e-commerce segment needs agility and faster deployment. Successful organizations will be those enabling a customer interaction management platform for full collaboration across all business units to provide a seamless, end-to-end customer experience. Today, organizations are seeking to develop a more collaborative approach to customer interaction. This can only be possible by effectively implementing a collaborative strategy, where organizations can use the information at their disposal to monitor their customers behaviors and ensure that the channels being offered caters to both the consumer and organization’s needs. If effectively implemented, a CIM solution can be a company’s front line of defense in resolving customer complaints and queries.
How CIM Solutions can help E-commerce and Startups
- History of Customer Interaction: Customer Interaction History provides applications with a common framework for capturing and accessing all “interaction” data associated with customer contacts. It acts as a central repository and provides a consistent framework for tracking all automated or agent-based customer interactions. It revolutionizes the customer experience and enhances customer loyalty, thereby improving the profitability of the organization.
- Common Platform for Multiple Channels: CIM solution helps in real-time integration of enterprise communication services such as instant messaging, presence information, voice, mobility features, audio, web, call control and speech recognition. Companies can interact with customers through different channels via single platform. Every interaction gets updated in the system on real-time basis, providing agents the opportunity to quickly resolve or address customer requests.
- Omni-channel: Omni-channel experience reflects the way customers actually behave. A customer may begin an interaction online, but then switch to the contact centre, before finally visiting a branch. Because the customer does not think in terms of channels, they expect every touch point in the organization to be aware of the activity they have carried out, even if they have not completed the interaction.
- Customer Analytics: Using reporting and analytics helps in providing the right market analysis for developing a clear understanding of the customer behavior, needs and expectations. CIM software will also help in capturing customer speech and text interactions. This helps companies to derive operational data to forecast resources required and understanding channel performance.
With the up rise of customer engagement and interaction management, there are many CIM providers in the industry that are capable to streamline customer communications promising a “friction-free” online economy. Ameyo is one such technology that proudly reigns its dominance in the Indian e-commerce industry with Flipkart, Jabong, Myntra, BabyOye, Healthkart, etc by transforming itself into a customer engagement hub striving to counter customer service challenges of various industries in the light of Omni-channel engagement.
About The Author :
Mr. Bishal Kumar is Founder and CEO, Ameyo. Ameyo is the market leader in Omni channel Customer Experience (CX) and Contact Center Technology in cloud and on-premise. Ameyo help brands of all sizes make exemplary customer experience and is designed to add value to businesses and pave way for structured growth. Ameyo is dominant in E-commerce, logistics and cab rental market in India.
Ameyo’s customers are benefited with dedicated 24/7 support and award winning product suites based on innovative methodologies.
(Disclaimer: This is a guest article contributed by the above mentioned author on Techstory. Techstory is not responsible or liable for any information mentioned in the article. PC: Ameyo)
