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Customer Engagement – Barriers and Solutions
- October 1, 2019
- Posted by: Admin
- Category: Blogs, Business Process Management
“Customer Engagement”, we all hear and use the term, but what is it, really, and how can it be improved to drive business growth and market leadership? In this post we will cover the fundamentals of Customer Engagement. We will also discuss a few of the typical barriers to customer interaction as well as strategies to overcome those barriers.
Customer Engagement – What is it?
Simply put, Customer Engagement is the ability of the enterprise to maintain a seamless, efficient, engaging, connection to its customers. Customer Engagement occurs across a broad spectrum of communication media—traditional and online—and can encompass virtually every touch point within the enterprise. These would include: Sales (inside and outside), Customer Service, Operations, Quality, Delivery, and Post Sales Support.
An enterprise’s ability to construct a Customer Engagement ecosystem that delivers maximum value is an essential element in building brand awareness and customer loyalty. Failure to do so can inhibit the ability to attract and retain customers. Ineffective or inconsistent customer interactions also make it difficult to stay current with customer trends and to predict future behaviors.
Barriers to Customer Engagement
Barriers to Customer Engagement can vary depending on specific conditions within the enterprise; however, there are a few common problems.
Weak Organizational Commitment
A lack of organizational commitment can create a barrier that is virtually impossible to overcome. For some enterprises, any commitment to active customer interaction quickly dissipates once an order has been received. This short-sighted approach ignores the fact that the majority of customer interactions occur after an order has been taken.
This lack of commitment to development of a full-scale Customer Engagement program usually serves to sacrifice the long-term in favor of the immediate. This is not a strategy that creates lasting success.
Outdated and Siloed Processes
Organizations operating with customer-facing processes that are outdated, siloed, inefficient and non-transparent will not be able to deliver the quality of engagement that customers now demand. Customer interactions that are driven by legacy processes will not provide the levels of automation and control required to deliver outstanding customer support.
Organizations that fail to invest in process improvement will continue to lag behind in market growth. The resulting loss of market share and revenue can be debilitating.
Lack of Technology-Enabled Applications
Enterprises that lag behind in adoption of new business-supportive technologies will struggle to keep up, much less to excel. Customers increasingly demand that suppliers deliver front-to-back engagement and support that is optimized to the full extent provided by ongoing advancements in technology-fueled applications.
The hard reality is that if an enterprise does not provide its customers with these technological advantages, the customer will find someone that will.
Overcoming the Barriers
So, how can those barriers be overcome? What can the enterprise do to re-invigorate an under-performing Customer Engagement process?
Culture-Shift , A Top-Down Organizational Commitment
Most attempts at organizational culture shifts originate from the top. Virtually all successful shifts are fully supported at the top. Customer Engagement improvement initiatives that are not adequately supported will die on the vine.
Improving the breadth, depth, and quality of customer interactions will require an all-out organizational effort. Management commitment to applicable investments in training, processes, and technology is essential. That commitment must be filtered throughout the entire organization. Full organizational buy-in is crucial.
Process Revitalization
Investments in process revitalization can pay significant dividends for any business enterprise. The conversion of processes that are manual, disconnected, sluggish, and opaque into processes that are automated, connected, agile, and transparent can completely transform a Customer Engagement ecosystem. This process revitalization can consist of several, or all, of the following:
- Workflow-based process automation. Automation of customer-facing processes through development and implementation of intelligent process workflows.
- Investment in custom CRM solutions. Custom CRM solutions that deliver enhanced capabilities in the areas of: customer communication and support, opportunity tracking and response, predictive analytics (customer behaviors and market trends), resource allocation, etc.
- Customer Digital Experience initiatives. Creation of engaging digital experiences that satisfy the increasing expectations of the customer and that can drive market recognition.
- Cloud migration initiatives. Migration of legacy applications to cloud environments that will improve application performance and provide your customers with application access from anywhere, at any time.
Put Technology to Work
Technology is revolutionizing Customer Engagement. New technologies and applications are enabling business enterprises to not only engage with their customers in new ways, but to also enhance the mutual benefit of those engagements. Your business now has access to a variety of technology-fueled tools that can be utilized to improve your performance in the area that matters most—-your engagement with your customers. A sampling of those technologies would include:
- Intelligent Workflows. Enables development of dynamic, code-free, workflows that can convert customer-facing processes that are manual and static into processes that are automated and agile.
- Big Data & Analytics. These technologies, and their corresponding solutions, provide the enterprise with the tools needed to collect and analyze the vast amounts of data generated throughout a typical Customer Engagement ecosystem.
- Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML). AI/ML-enabled applications provide the means by which the enterprise can “learn” from its customer interactions; learning that drives the ability to predict, and proactively plan for, future customer behaviors and expectations.
Developing Customer Engagement strategies that address culture, process and technology will help ensure that your enterprise is able to deliver exceptional value to your customers; value that is clearly recognizable by your customers; value that is repeatable and reliable; value that creates sustainable customer loyalty and brand recognition.
Client Says
We are implementing Plasma Ag Solutions across our network of locations. Plasma Ag provides several capabilities that stand out for our users such as Programs, Rebate management, and Inventory tracking. It is quite difficult to track margin information on crop protection products in our industry so our Owner Operators love the transparency the system provides. We utilize the system to professionalize our support to the network and it has become a bit success with all of them.
Several hundreds of our retail locations and joint ventures use Plasma Ag solutions as a part of their core operations. Plasma solutions provide very useful tools and deep insights to users – including tracking customer transactions and financial information. Their applications are tightly integrated with CRM, ERP, Accounting, and our other mission critical IT infrastructure and third-party systems. The dashboards provide rich analysis and insights that helps us adjust to the changing markets.
Plasma Ag solutions have been a tremendous asset to our operations. They offer powerful capabilities such as managing Retail programs, Products, Programs, local discounts, and wraps. Ability to track inventory at physical locations, calculating true and average costs, rebates and accruals on user-friendly and simple interfaces has helped us and our retail customers adopt Plasma Ag solutions quickly.
Our software, system and processes used to be an old struggling engine. Plasma team solved all that. With exceptional training and planning, their consultative executive team down to their support team executed the deployment with first-class speed and professionalism. Their platform not only removed all the pain points in my division, but also created a ripple effect benefiting my entire company.
It has been my experience that Plasma has the technical expertise, commitment, and work-ethic to deliver best-in-class solutions that allow business owners to fully realize business strategies and objectives. They work in a highly professional manner to ensure that the clients’ requirements and recommendations are fully realized. I would highly recommend Plasma for any web enablement initiative that you may be considering.
Plasma has been a smart choice for us as our online business partner. I don’t even consider our work with them outsourcing because Plasma management takes the time to truly understand our business and is able to direct its technology resources for the most efficient and quality output possible. I don’t think you can say that about many companies in their space.
Plasma has been a smart choice for us with our online requirements. I would recommend them to any company looking to better manage their online presence.
It has been my pleasure to work with the Plasma Team since August 2008. We have completed three major builds and multiple smaller projects in this time. I heartily recommend Plasma Comp to anyone needing a workable, practical and effective system solution. Plasma’s Q&A process was extremely thorough. They quickly understood what was needed and then worked the process with pointed and penetrating questions to ensure they had the entire picture of the finished product.
I think Plasma has come a long way in embracing our philosophy of becoming more agile, both leading and following in this area when necessary. The teams have been very open to change and have a great attitude. I have no complaints!
Plasma is a great vendor to work with. They took us from an email-based process to a fully designed, web-based workflow. They have dramatically changed how our devices are certified to be used on our network and they will save you time as well! One of the many processes in our current environment has saved us so much time; from four months down to a few days!
