ITM335 E-CRM Assignment I Assignment Code: 2014ITM335B1 Last Date of Submission: 15 th October 2014 Maximum Marks:100 Attempt all the questions. All the questions are compulsory and carry equal marks. Section-A 1 The success of any CRM implementation relies on the seamless integration of three crucial components: the people, process, and technology. Comment. 2 The basis for building effective CRM systems and strategies is to build profitable relationships in the long term that are mutually beneficial and that are fulfill promises as customer experience the product or service offering. Comment on his statement. 3 What are the critical success factors for building successful e-business relationships with customers? 4 List and explain various building blocks of E-CRM. Section-B Case Study: Getting closer to the customer One of India s oldest textile manufacturers and retailers, Raymond India operates across cities and deals with different cultures and people. Knowing all these customers and doing business accordingly is not a cakewalk. To deal with this scenario Raymond India decided to implement CRM (customer relationship management) across most of its retail outlets. Know thy customer Retail is all about knowing your customers thoroughly in order to serve them better. It is an age old philosophy of Indian businessmen that if you know your customers better, you can enjoy a better competitive position in the market. Before making extensive use of IT at its outlets, Raymond s business used to run on a manual basis. In order to know its customers better, a team was formed to survey prospective buyers as well as existing customers. After surveying them they would know the pattern of their purchases, their likes and dislikes etc. This process was cumbersome for the surveying team and at times people were apprehensive about replying to questions related to their personal choices. With the growing use of IT in the retail segment, Raymond decided to implement CRM to know its customers better and in a more sophisticated way. The need was to understand the customers and provide services suitable to them, says Anil Arora, Sr. Manager Information Technology, Raymond Limited. Page No. 1 of 6
The Solution Customer Relationship Management was implemented by Raymond to solve the problems of knowing the customers better. CRM helps the company understand the colour and design preferred by a particular age group or why a particular group or individual did not buy or did buy a particular product. As a result of the implementation, regular customers get a premium card which has all the details of a particular customer and the purchase patterns of that person can be studied efficiently. The CRM implementation is named Premium Circle. Customers using it are known as premium users and are given a premium card. This is offered to Raymond customers at 265 out of 365 Raymond Shops in India. With the help of this solution, a central repository of information is created about premium customers whose details are accessible at any retail outlet where this system has been implemented. The implementation The technology part of the CRM implementation was outsourced to Proximity which owns the infrastructure that provides touch points to the customer through the Web site. Raymond s in-house team was responsible for devising the schemes and plans. Since only the technology part was given to a third party to manage, cost and quality of service provided by the vendor were considered while short listing a vendor. The Retail head from the business side was the champion of the project and he was assisted by the IT department to provide the technological expertise that was required. Three principles The aim of this implementation was to ensure three principles availability, reliability and scalability of the solution, says Arora. Concentrating on availability meant that the solution had to be available at all times and that downtime had to be negligible. Failsafe software would ensure the reliability aspect of the solution. Lastly scalability ensured that the system would work efficiently irrespective of the number of locations at which it was rolled out. With organised retail in the midst of a boom, it is natural that the number of outlets will grow rapidly putting more pressure on ensuring scalability acrossthe chain. Phases The time line for the entire project was close to three months and it was completed in three phases. The first phase consisted of the Proof of concept. In this phase the project was cleared through internal research to prove that the core ideas were workable before going any further. This use of proof of concept helps establish viability, technical issues are uncovered, and overall direction is set. It also helps in providing feedback for budgeting and other forms of commercial discussion and control. The second phase involved running a pilot model created by the project team. This was to ensure that the core solution has been developed satisfactorily and was running as per the requirements. Page No. 2 of 6
In the final phase, the entire Web based project went live across 265 shops. Initially only 10 shops went live but soon 265 shops were on the network. Hardware The entire solution runs on HP servers on Windows Server with the SQL Server database. The database for the CRM is located on a web database server hosted by the vendor at an ISP IDC. The servers are in high availability mode with redundancy at the server link level. In case of a breakdown of the link, the recovery time is approximately an hour. Customer Response Since this project was Web based, many customers are using it across India. This project helped evaluate customer choices to a large extent. With the use of this software, the product lines kept changing according to the customer needs and patterns and the end result has been satisfied customers. The repeat visits made by each customer increased with the help of CRM solution. The only time customers were left a bit dissatisfied was when the database of that customer was not updated properly during the initial days after going live. The overall happiness of the customer has boosted business by a substantial margin. Enhancements Looking at the success of this CRM implementation Raymond decided to extend the similar exercise to its other product lines and brands such as kids wear. This implementation is going to be implemented across 1,000 shops whenever Raymond decides to reach that figure. Case Questions: 5. a. Based on the case identify various decisions that can be taken by Raymond management with the help of CRM system. b. What kind of benefits one can have as a customer from web based CRM? c. While designing and developing a CRM solution, what kind of data source you will use as input to the system. Page No. 3 of 6
ITM335 E-CRM Assignment II Assignment Code: 2014ITM335B2 Last Date of Submission: 15 th November 2014 Maximum Marks:100 Attempt all the questions. All the questions are compulsory and carry equal marks. Section-A 1 Distinguish between operational CRM and analytical CRM. What is sales force automation? 2 What is Enterprise Marketing Automation? Enterprise marketing automation integrates efforts regardless of the channel used. Do you agree with this statement? Justify your answer. 3 Partner Relationship Management (PRM) is a business strategy that allows companies to both market to and deal with customer-service needs. Comment. 4 What is Enterprise Marketing Automation (EMA).How it anticipates and delivers the most efficient and appropriate services without spending inordinate amounts of time, money and resources. Section-B Case Study: Blue Cross makes healthy call with speech-enabled IVR When older customers grew frustrated with Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania's automated contact center technology, the insurer provided a cure. It replaced a touch-tone response system with a speech-enabled interactive voice response (IVR) application from Aspect Software at the end of 2003. "Many of our customers still own rotary phones," said Robin Higgins, manager of voice services for Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania, whose contact center serves both medical providers and insured members. Even many of those with touchtone phones didn't use the automated system. "A common perception among all of our members was that they would get to an agent quicker if they did not interact with the touchtone prompting at all." By doing so, customers burdened call center representatives with calls that could have otherwise been solved through the touch-tone response system, which meant less time for agents to address more callers who truly needed the agents' help. Today, the speech-enabled IVR system handles about 20% of all calls into the insurer's contact center. That shift has delivered efficiency gains and greatly expanded the customer base's access to service. Customers are more satisfied, Higgins notes, because they can quickly find information via the speechenabled IVR system, and because call center representatives have more time to address customers' complex questions and issues. "We can do the same job with fewer agents while providing more individual, consultative service to our customers," said Shawn Brogan, a communications analyst with Blue Cross of Northeastern Page No. 4 of 6
Pennsylvania. "We put this in place because our customers deserve better access. Our IVR is available 24/7, which is a huge factor as we compete in a market where customers demand faster and better access to information." Improving customers' access to information that results in cost savings to the company is just one benefit of today's speech-enabled IVR systems. Some organizations are using these systems to gather and analyze customer information, giving them insight they may not have otherwise gleaned. Still others use speech-enabled IVRs to evaluate and adjust customer service agent performance to help improve the service experience. "One large airline used the technology to find out what customers were saying on a consistent basis and, more important, why," says Oscar Alban, a principal with Witness Systems. "To their surprise, the word 'London' was at the top of the list. This concerned the executives because London was one of their prime international routes." But it was far from the airline's only route, so the executives listened to the recorded calls in which the word "London" appeared. They discovered that callers were using the city's name to point out that a competing airline offered lower fares to London. The executives quickly moved to cut their own fares to London and the London-related complaints on the IVR system promptly stopped. "Something that concerns customer service executives is that they may not know what they don't know," Alban adds. Analyzing customer queries from a speech-enabled IVR can help alleviate that concern. Improving employee performance is another relatively new use for data gleaned from speech-enabled IVRs. "We have several customers who have deployed a post-call survey to evaluate agent performance with the aim of providing better service," says Aspect Software manager Elizabeth Magill. That sort of IVR application is growing common in the utilities sector, where many regulatory jurisdictions require electric and gas companies to maintain certain levels of customer satisfaction or even minimums for average speed-to-answer in the contact center. Last year Capgemini's energy practice introduced a speech-enabled IVR application that surveys customers after their calls to service agents. The results are routed back to the service representatives and their coaches, who identify areas in which the agents can improve their service and interactions. Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania is also in the process of using its IVR application to enhance employee performance by implementing speech-enabled IVR post-call surveys. The information that those surveys produce will be used in coaching activities and to support new, skills-based routing capabilities that are also in the works. Despite new and alluring examples of speech-enabled IVR's promise, the market for the technology, according to a recent Jupiter Research study, is "still very much maturing." The study indicates that only 12% of customer service functions in the United States had deployed speech-enabled IVR capabilities. That figure should climb steadily in coming years thanks to success stories like Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania and Capgemini. Page No. 5 of 6
Case Questions: 5. a. Explain how speech enabled IVR systems help in implementing customer self service in better way. b. Explain how you can use data collected through IVR systems for improving your customer services. c. Can we use IVR systems for solving any kind of problem faced by a customer? Page No. 6 of 6