Staying in contact with your customers, recording and adapting information about them, meeting them and also surpassing their expectations are all essential competencies that every organization must excel in. In today's global competitive environment, more and more organizations are realizing that a customer centric approach is essential for remaining in business. Most of the companies have recognized that the key to success is through building customer loyalty by implementing strategies and also adapting various technology tools to implement the same. Responding to customer in the today's world, clearly defines the success or failure of each and every organization. As technologies evolve, so are the ways and manners in which companies interact and respond to their customers.

When products are getting generic and there are hardly any differentiating features in the product, after sales service becomes the only key differentiator. It is becoming very important that companies today adapt more than one channel to respond to customers. As the competition is increasing, the customer is also becoming more and more demanding. We primarily use three channels to respond to the customer query -an email, phone call or a personal visit. Many times it's difficult to really figure out which are the right ways to respond to the customer. There is no golden rule laid on to respond to the customer query but depending on the nature of the query one should be able to respond to the customers.

Incorporation of web technology to serve the customer in this hyper competitive market is a great start and evolution of using websites to answer the customer query is one of the successful modes of responding to the customer. Here, arises the intrinsic need to redefine the response methodology with the change in the customer buying pattern. Web sites are becoming critical tools for prospecting, selling to, and supporting customers. Providing the right experience to the customers on your Web site will create more opportunities for you to understand your options to either garner more revenue or create cost savings. Not moving early enough on that front will put your organization at a disadvantage. In the geographies where companies don't have authorized agents, website acts as an interface between the prospect as well as loyal customer and the organization.

As technologies evolve, so should the manner in which companies interact with their customers. It was not too long ago that most purchase activity occurred in brick-and-mortar establishments or through mail order catalogs. This, of course, is ancient history in Internet time. Customers now have an entirely new way to research and buy products and services, and new channels to fulfill their support needs. This has spurred the emergence of keyword advertising, and companies are now taking advantage of the Web to acquire new leads on the Internet at a cost that is significantly lower than that of traditional direct marketing methods, while driving increased traffic to their Web site and their bottom line. But it's not enough to respond to this increased Web site activity. In this new environment, companies need to rethink their Web site strategies. The Web site stopped being just a PR tool a while ago and now must provide an all-encompassing experience to customers—one that includes efficient marketing, sales, and support. Thus, the focus must be shifted outward, through a customer's lens, to the customer's interaction experience.

Company should also organize quiz on company's website; this will help to increase the traffic on the site. These quizzes will also help company to drive the product information to the customer, and at the expense of few dollars companies can really drive the message. On the quiz page one can run the advertisement specific to the new product and its features. How many times do we run advertisement of our own products on our own website very seldom, because we take it for granted that customer visiting our website would know about all the product/services we offer? Truth is customer visit website to seek specific information but we can provide him more information through these quizzes or online advertisements on the website.

The single most important technological innovation for automatically understanding customer needs in different regional languages is call centre. The toll free number of the support centre should always be mentioned on the invoice or bill.

Company while advertising for any of the new product should mention the toll free number along with the advertisement.

Always align your strategies keeping customer in mind. Even if you adopt the first two practices, it's still not enough to just understand customer needs, even if you use that insight to automatically deliver a personalized experience. Companies need mechanisms for determining their effectiveness in responding to each customer need at the point of interaction. Intent-based analytics provide actionable insights which companies can apply to improve existing business processes. The complete response from a customer-centric organization, then, includes an exact answer to the customer's current need—regardless of how that need is articulated—as well as related information that satisfies subsequent needs.

Most of the organizations come out with very great and creative marketwise campaign as well as new products, which generate great customer interest but fail to respond the customer queries while the campaign is on, may be due to lack of staff or less customer interfaces .It is very important that with every new campaign we first identify the channel through which we will respond to the customer.

Have you ever planned to have a portal for the institutional customer who interacts with you almost on the fortnightly basis either in terms of repeat orders or shipment status? It would be a great idea to provide a customer portal for such customers with their specific login id and password, where customer can view the details of all the transactions with the organization in the last six months. Sometimes incremental revenue expenditure can get the greater return on investment than expected. Personalize the experience, and reap the benefits. Arming themselves with an understanding of customers' unique needs at the point of interaction presents companies with an incredible opportunity to personalize each interaction and then capitalize on it. Using structured and unstructured data, a unique, individualized Web page is dynamically created to address the customer's request while capturing information that can be used by the organization to qualify prospects, close a sale, up-sell, or optimize call center access.

A fundamental question? Have you displayed the name of the officer in the branch / at your dealer's premises whom customer can contact in case of any queries? Today very few dealers have this concept of help desk within their premises, but to be more customer friendly one should implement it across the locations. Always try to reach the customer personally.

Automating certain processes and technologies will come up short if these initiatives do not incorporate key principles of customer-centricity? In essence, to create a positive experience, the company must be able to capture and understand the articulation of the customer's needs and then provide a highly personalized, one-to-one interaction in an automated, scalable, low-cost manner. Investment in the tools and technology for capturing and executing on your customer's needs is an investment that will always yield better ROI. The critical factor in providing a positive interaction for customers is to first understand each customer specific needs during each interaction and then to apply that understanding to deliver the information that satisfies the customer objectives for that interaction. Companies can follow few of these prevailing practices for achieving customer-centricity in their customer interactions.

By Paras Rastogi

---

Paras Rastogi has more than twelve years of experience in field of Sales and Marketing. Views expressed by him here are his own and doesn't reflect the views of the organization he works for.

He has written several articles in various magazines and journals. He has also published a book in Hindi “Darpan”. He is working on his second book which in on the leadership qualities and how to handle day to day job dilemma's. He can reached on darpanbook@yahoo.com