In part two of our Connect 4: The Winning Tech Combo for End-to-End Engagement blog series, we’ll be discussing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Quote-to-Cash (QTC) technologies. More specifically how they help businesses create end-to-end engagements that will reshape their commerce ecosystem and ultimately improve their customer experience.
It’s important to reiterate that in order for businesses to remain competitive, they need to be successful at implementing the technologies that are required to drive a digital transformation. As we discussed in our previous post, customers have now come to expect the benefits of technologies such as CRM, QTC, blockchain and cognitive technologies. One of the biggest mistakes businesses make during their digital transformation journey is that they solely focus on the technology itself and implement it without understanding their customers’ needs or having a solid strategy in place to achieve their transformation goals. Another major downfall is they don’t want to change how they conduct their business today. Said another way, they don’t want to change outdated business processes to better align with the new path they are embarking on.
To begin, let’s breakdown how CRM and QTC technologies work, the benefits they bring businesses and how CommerceCX can help customers implement and integrate these strategies properly to create frictionless experiences.
Customer Relationship Management
Customer Relationship Management is the strategy and set of technologies for managing an organization’s relationships and interactions with current and potential customers. Although CRM has been around for a while, the practice of capturing everything about a customer in one place is a new approach. The primary goal of a CRM is to help centralize key information about customers including all the interactions a business has ever had with them.
Today, customers look to work with companies like Apple and Amazon that will enable them to be more effective in their everyday lives. This is why it’s important that organizations strive to improve experiences at every touchpoint. Coincidentally, this spills over into the business world as it has become crucial for enterprises to come up with new, engaging and insightful ways to interact with customers. This is where CRM technology is key because it provides organizations with access to the data they need to create tailored experiences.
At CommerceCX, we help our clients better understand their customers and the information that will help inform and enhance their experiences: from call centers, to their storefronts, all the way down to the supply chain and operations. This includes identifying the critical information that brings a customer persona to life and then creating a blueprint which details the unified profile that will become the centerpiece of the CRM.
Quote-to-Cash
Put simply, Quote-to-Cash is a collection of technologies that powers the actual buying, selling and service experience – something we like to call a commerce ecosystem. This ecosystem starts with the intent to buy and then guides both the customer and the transaction through ordering, billing, configuration, fulfillment and the ultimate delivery of the product or service they purchase. Everything from the quote to the contract can be handled by QTC.
This process is what drives revenue for an organization. Historically, these processes have been disconnected and siloed, resulting in long life cycles which can impact the customer journey and lead to a loss in sales. When implemented correctly, it enables businesses to have seamless transactions which results in increased customer retention and loyalty.
At CommerceCX, we help people understand where they are today, where they would like to be and then transform their current technology into a powerful new selling, buying and service experience that connects the entire end-to-end solution together, creating a commerce ecosystem.
Connecting all these pieces together is key
Now you might be wondering how all of the technologies we talked about in this two-part blog series work together? To recap the first Connect 4 blog, artificial intelligence (AI) is seen as the Sherpa that guides customers as they traverse this new digital end-to-end journey and blockchain helps validate that the data used during this journey is accurate and comprehensive. Then, as we discussed in this blog, CRM comes into play by helping businesses understand customers’ intents. When this is coupled with guided selling, personalized quoting and bundled transactions provided by QTC, it will significantly eliminate friction and make end-to-end engagement possible. When all four of these technologies connect, the result is the winning tech combo for end-to-end engagement.
CommerceCX has the experts and tools businesses need to navigate their digital transformation journey and turn their end-to-end solution into a powerful Commerce Ecosystem.
