Attempt all the problems.

Section-A

problem1) Differentiate between operational CRM and analytical CRM. What is sales force automation?

problem2) What is Enterprise Marketing Automation? Enterprise marketing automation integrates efforts regardless of channel used. Do you agree with this statement? Give justification to your answer.

problem3) “Partner Relationship Management (PRM) is the business strategy which allows companies to both market to and deal with customer-service needs.” Comment.

problem4) What is Enterprise Marketing Automation (EMA) .How it anticipates and delivers the most efficient and suitable services without spending inordinate amounts of time, money and resources.

Section-B

Case Study: Blue Cross makes healthy call with speech-enabled IVR

When older customers grew frustrated with Blue Cross of North-eastern Pennsylvania's automated contact centre technology, the insurer provided a cure. It replaced the touch-tone response system with a speech-enabled interactive voice response (IVR) application from Aspect Software at the end of 2003.

"Many of our customers still own rotary phones," said Robin Higgins, manager of voice services for Blue Cross of North-eastern Pennsylvania, whose contact centre serves both medical providers and insured members. Even many of those with touchtone phones did not use automated system. "A common perception among all of our members was that they will get to an agent quicker if they didn’t interact with touchtone prompting at all." By doing so, customers burdened call centre representatives with calls which can have otherwise been solved through touch-tone response system, that meant less time for agents to address more callers who truly needed the agents' help.

Today, speech-enabled IVR system handles about 20% of all calls into insurer's contact center. That shift has delivered efficiency gains and greatly expanded the customer base's access to service. Customers are more satisfied, Higgins notes, as they could quickly find information via speech-enabled IVR system, and as call centre representatives have more time to address customers' complex problems and issues.

"We can do the same job with fewer agents while providing more individual, consultative service to our customers," said Shawn Brogan, communications analyst with Blue Cross of North-eastern Pennsylvania. "We put this in place as our customers deserve better access. Our IVR is available 24/7, that is a huge factor as we compete in a market where customers demand faster and better access to information."

Improving customers' access to information that results in cost savings to company is just one benefit of today's speech-enabled IVR systems. Some organizations are using these systems to gather and analyze customer information, giving them insight they might not have otherwise gleaned. Still others use speech-enabled IVRs to evaluate and adjust customer service agent performance to help improve the service experience.

"One large airline used technology to determine what customers were saying on the consistent basis and, more important, why," says Oscar Alban, a principal with Witness Systems. "To their surprise, word 'London' was at the top of the list. This concerned the executives because London was one of their prime international routes." But it was far from airline's only route, so executives listened to the recorded calls in which word "London" appeared. They discovered that callers were using city's name to point out that a competing airline offered lower fares to London. The executives quickly moved to cut their own fares to London and London-related complaints on the IVR system promptly stopped. "Something that concerns customer service executives is that they might not know what they do not know," Alban adds. Analyzing customer queries from the speech-enabled IVR could help alleviate which concern.

Improving employee performance is another relatively new use for data gleaned from speech-enabled IVRs. "We have numerous customers who have deployed a post-call survey to evaluate agent performance with aim of providing better service," says Aspect Software manager Elizabeth Magill.

That sort of IVR application is growing common in the utilities sector, where many regulatory jurisdictions require electric and gas companies to maintain certain levels of customer satisfaction or even minimums for average speed-to-answer in the contact center. Last year Capgemini's energy practice introduced a speech-enabled IVR application that surveys customers after their calls to service agents. The results are routed back to the service representatives and their coaches, who identify areas in which the agents can improve their service and interactions.

Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania is also in the process of using its IVR application to enhance employee performance by implementing speech-enabled IVR post-call surveys. The information that those surveys produce will be used in coaching activities and to support new, skills-based routing capabilities that are also in the works.

Despite new and alluring exs of speech-enabled IVR's promise, market for the technology, according to a recent Jupiter Research study, is "still very much maturing." The study indicates that only 12% of customer service functions in the United States had deployed speech-enabled IVR capabilities. That figure should climb steadily in coming years thanks to success stories like Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania and Capgemini.

Case problems:

problem5)a) Describe how speech enabled IVR systems help in implementing customer self service in better way.

b) Describe how you could use data collected through IVR systems for improving your customer services.

c) Could we use IVR systems for solving any kind of problem faced by a customer?