The capabilities of CX Tech and CRM applications are indeed incredible, but they can fall short in practice. One of the main reasons for this shortfall is building them as stand-alone platforms, not fully integrated with the company’s ecosystem. This inevitably prevents companies from fully realizing the value of their investments.
This week, I had the chance to catch up with Tracey Scheffler, who is nothing short of amazing and boasts deep experience in this field. She is the CEO of Home Work Solution and the founder of ‘Parenting our Parents’. I first met Tracey when we were both working for Sitel, now Foundever, a global BPO and CX company that, among other things, helps large global brands optimize their CRM and Customer Experience touchpoints.
Tracey raised a great point and example about out-of-the-box CRM and CX tech implementations. For instance, ideally, the company’s CRM should be integrated with ‘Call Flow’ and provide ‘Screen-Pop’ for frontline representatives. ‘Screen-Pop’ is the wonderful bit of automation that presents customer information to frontline professionals a few seconds before they actually welcome and greet the customers. This shaves valuable time off the call’s Average Handle Time (AHT) and helps position the frontline teams for better success with that customer.
However, very frequently companies tend to prioritize short-term operational and IT impact. Either due to budget or time constraints, CRM systems are not fully integrated, they don’t communicate with other platforms, and data hierarchy is not built as part of the same ecosystem.
I understand the challenge of delivering on this integrated vision, but the fact is that if companies don’t take the long-term benefits into account, they’ll never be able to fully optimize their ROI.
In short, even the most sophisticated CRM and CX technology implementations require integration planning and expertise. And the beauty of doing your integration homework well is that you may discover other collateral advantages in the future, such as the ability to leverage your data for further automation or even consider an AI application that will simply open new avenues for improved engagement, satisfaction, and revenue.
But what is your experience on this topic? What other challenges do you face? I would love to hear from you!
Leave a Reply