‘Customer Experience’ – Is it only for B2C?

The stereotype notion that has emerged in the industry is that Customer Experience or ‘CX’ is only meant for B2C businesses and consumers. I cannot disagree more! The problem is a social engagement or social monitoring of consumers or customers, is often mistakenly attributed to CX. The social experience of a salesperson or the end consumer is nothing more than a medium for providing a customer experience. The B2B story of Customer experience, even the partially defined bit, is not clearly understood by many.

People familiar with the traditional definition of CX will understand that a great experience can be achieved at any point during the customer’s lifecycle or interaction with your organization and/or people.

“When you interact with a business customer or an organization, you still interact with an Individual or a contact representing your customer. Relationship building is a two-people task.”

Some questions (not limited to) and requests raised by my wholesale banking customers are: Having worked extensively with B2B Financial Services customers; I can assure you that Innovation in customer experience can be delivered to your Corporate and Institutional customers.

• Want all information about the customer: History, strategy, interaction, products sold, competitor portfolio, in one place.
• Can my Relationship Managers cross-sell more? Can you provide product information suitable for customers’ needs?
• Executives need analytics on the move. Nobody has the time to log in to a CRM application. Can important reports be provided on a Tablet?
• More than one sales or product person works on an opportunity. They interact with Relationship Managers, Industry heads, and external agencies to close or win opportunities.

So how should one address these requirements? Let’s start with segregating the processes that influence the customer directly from those that influence your salesforce, who, in turn, deal with customers.

The above diagram covers the following:

1] How well are the decision-makers aware of their opportunities?

2] Relationship manager is the face of the company when they interact with corporate contacts. The second question to be addressed is how equipped is your relationship manager to influence the customers.

Strategic Account Planning

Strategic Account Planning highlighted below addresses the first question. In a wholesale banking space, each customer is unique and has unique needs. It is imperative to have meaningful information about the client available for decisions makers to understand the intent and make informed decisions.

“A strategic Account Plan of your Institutional client at the fingertips, with information on deal history, Available Wallet, and Competitor share, not only gives your RM an understanding of customer’s intent but also puts him/her in an advantageous position to cross-sell relevant products & take a larger wallet share.”

Credit officers and Auditors may need to share documentation related to approvals and have collaterals in place. It is possible that you need to interact with specialists outside your organization or even customer contacts.*Collaboration among teams is another important requirement to close B2B financial deals. Example: A Debt Capital Market, Loans, and Syndications Opportunities for a Telecom Giant are so big and complex that it requires the involvement of more than two teams at times to win the deal. These deals could require Industry specialists, Relationship Managers, Product experts, your salesforce, or even Sr. Executives, at times, work together through the sales cycle.

In a banking space, such requirements become trickier because of security and visibility restrictions. Such high-value deals cannot be shared openly! So a perfect experience would be to share limited information with others (in a Facebook or LinkedIn-like manner?) while the owner of the opportunity gets complete visibility of all interactions.

Oracle Social Network (OSN) is one such application that allows you to do so. While there are other similar applications available in the market, OSN comes integrated with the Sales cloud and is easily configurable with Oracle CRM On Demand. OSN could be used as a standalone application as well and allows users to easily share documents.

Mobility

Mobility has changed the way business is done. Executives demand meaningful reports on the fly.  Monthly meetings have been replaced with daily stand-ups.  More importantly, they want to be self-sufficient in tweaking the reports to gather more specific information from the collection of data. Traditionally, pre-built reports were used to present a logical set of data. But this is not enough anymore. Especially with a spurt of analytics tools such as QlikView, Tableau, or Roam BI, the expectations from business intelligence are completely different.

Oracle has invested significantly in this space and has products that talk seamlessly to your legacy database and provide analytics on the move. Another integration that we @CRMIT have achieved is with ROAMBI and Oracle Sales Cloud. The results – Roam BI transforms any data into a simple, meaningful, and intuitive experience that can be accessed on your mobiles or tablets.

“Managers have easy-to-understand yet powerful information accessible on the move. A simple and intuitive interface can change the perception of understanding data. Presenting it to a client or Executive is an even better experience.”

Now let’s discuss how a bank can help its relationship manager and improve its customer experience. While all the above points do directly or indirectly create great CX, Mobility is something that would directly impact your customer.  Wealth management executives and relationship managers are consultants for your client. A bank will be able to get the customer’s potential business only when they are able to advise the customer on the right investments.

Strategic Account Planning helps in understanding the client’s current state, future need analysis, and business objectives. But many times this information is not sufficient, and what client’s need is up to date market research data and advice.

This is a different ball game altogether.  Knowledge cannot be replaced with any levels of service and a well-informed consultant is more likely to give better experience than someone who only gathers requirements. Hence, infusing knowledge management capabilities within your CRM application and equipping your salesforce with the recent most accurate information is the need of the hour.

Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management can be split into two (for B2B banking): 1] Internal organization – Product portfolio, Investment trend analysis, Customer Portfolio, Competitor Information 2] External Market – Investment Opportunities, Capital Market  Analysis, Risk Assessments. To have these details require significant research. Also, the challenge is the relevance of the research could change from customer to customer.

Moreover, as portfolios expand and regulatory requirements grow complex, managing is increasingly difficult and costly. Fortunately, CRM applications can now be extended to infuse research information from within as well as outside the organization.

Oracle Knowledge Solutions is one such extension (or standalone) application. It not only looks for information within the organization but, if configured, also searches outside the scope of your organization to stitch together meaningful information. All of this, using a natural language search algorithm.

“Enabling your CRM application with Knowledge Management capabilities not only allows your salesforce to learn continuously but also allows your client facing team to answer contextually, accurately and intelligently.  Nothing builds a better loyalty than a sound advice”

Another capability (and an interesting one) that has a direct impact on your customer, is being aware of their recent events such as an annual celebration or a new product launch or even a job change.

*Going Social is the answer! Get personal, congratulate on a new credential or promotion. These are basic human instincts. Nothing makes a person happier than knowing you care. This is the space where a B2B CX overlaps with B2C.

From previous research done on this subject, some of the business challenges that could be addressed by infusing social media with your CRM are highlighted below:

The capability we built allows a two-way sync between your CRM contacts and LinkedIn Connections/Followers (with security concerns addressed ). These features are now available out of the box in a few products and as extensions in many. Of course, what is important is how well your salesforce uses this data, but equipping them with information through your CRM is the first step!

To conclude, I immediately dismissed a conversation that hinted that customer experience is only for B2C. Relationship building, especially in context of institutional and corporate clients, is still about knowing an individual and interacting with an individual. Great customer experience can be achieved at any touch point of your organization. The only question you should ask is how well have you equipped your employees to deliver this experience.

About CRMIT Solutions

CRMIT Solutions is a leader in transforming businesses with cloud-based Customer Experience (CX) solutions on sales, service, marketing & social cloud.

We are committed to providing customers with the best service in the industry. Everything we do – every order, every delivery, every service, every offering – centers on the satisfaction of our customers and making them more efficient at what they do.

CRMIT Solution is Oracle’s specialized partner for financial services, which means Oracle recognizes CRMIT Solutions for its Expertise in Providing Exceptional Business Solutions within the Financial Services Industry.

CRMIT’s Cloud CRM-based financial solutions are comprehensive solutions for 360-degree customer view, deal management, mortgage expansion, detecting risk, and enhancing customer relationships.

CRMIT Solutions has worked on end-to-end Cloud CRM solutions designed to specifically address the unique requirements of financial institutions, including corporate banking, retail, and wealth management. The solution, which has been implemented at financial institutions, is enabling those institutions to reduce risk, increase customer acquisition, improve customer service, develop and manage more effective marketing programs, enhance sales productivity throughout the consumer sales cycle and provide better management insight.

“We are very proud to have achieved Specialization for Financial Services, and this can help to enhance our already long-term and successful relationship with Oracle. This accreditation is a testimony to our in-depth knowledge and expertise in Financial Services, which has indeed supported our clients to achieve improved financial performance and customer satisfaction across various channels,”  said K V Padmanabha Rao, Regional Director, CRMIT Solutions.

Inputs from
Pratik Bajaj
Principal Business Consultant –Industry CRM & CX Solutions.
CRMIT Solutions