"Smarter commerce" is more than just another enterprise technology tag-line. It's a concept enterprise executives should be taking seriously.
You'll find that confirmed if you spend a little time in our Smarter Commerce tutorial with Alisa MacLin. Alisa is Vice President, IBM Smarter Commerce Marketing, which means she's reponsible for the global marketing strategy for an approach designed to put help manage the entire commercial cycle -- including buying, marketing, selling, and servicing.
What's new about the approach -- and what makes it exciting -- is that it's committed to customer-centrism. What does that mean? In practice, it means putting the consumer in the driving seat when it comes to strategic decisions and actions.
The reason it's become possible to do this, of course, is the development of the global online conversation between enterprise and customers -- and, more importantly, between customers and other customers.
With the right tool, it's now possible not just to track market response to enterprise initiatives in real-time, but to predict what that response is likely to be. It's possible to learn from customer themselves what really works, whether in terms of products, offers, campaigns, and follow-up service, or just at the basic level of where customers like to make purchases and how they expect the purchases to be delivered.
Smarter commerce draws together three key threads of the digital revolution: social networking -- that global conversation -- business analytics, and mobile communications. Follow Alisa as she explains the importance of tracking social and mobile channels, and how analytics can be used to derive insights from the wealth of data generated.
The tutorial includes not only a series of presentations, but also a guide to further informational materials, and the opportunity to ask questions of the tutor.
As Alisa says, placing the customer at the center of decision-making can help "market, sell, and fulfill the right product and service at the right price, the right time, and the right place." Is your business already focused on the customer? Take the tutorial poll, and let us know.
I've been thinking lately about using call centers as a means of gathering customer intelligence. Most companies struggle to get good customer feedback. And yet call centers are places where customers are giving feedback, and yet companies view call centers as a cost centers, where customers need to be shuffled off the phone as quickly as possible.
That's short-sighted. Call centers should be viewed as an important point of engagement -- although one often gets the impression, as a customer, that they're designed mainly to get rid of you.
Great tutorial, Kim. Very clear and specific information on the value of Smarter Commerce.
To your point of Call Centers, I fully agree that the design of Smarter Commerce - which is increasing value/customer revenues is the driver, not cost savings alone. Most of the current Call Centers consolidate the cost of answering the calls and customer transactions - which is a long way from value-added customer-centric service. (Note: Some utilities actually measure the productivity of their Call Center employees by the physical time they spend answering calls and reward how quickly they finish the call; they also measure even the bathroom breaktimes of their employees.)
That certainly does not put a high value on the customer. The smart and successful companies of the future will complete the full cycle of service to the customer from sales to service and build loyalty and retention. A Smarter Commerce design will deliver better customer service - as measured by the customer!
I quite agree. It's all about providing a holistic, consistent customer experience: not treating people nicely in the showroom or online, then herding them away like pests when it comes to follow-up service.
Boy, do I wish banks in particular would learn some lessons about this.
There you go, Kim! They think once you have deposited your money, that they are doing you a favor with any services! They do not have a clue about Customer Service.
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