DIGITAL CUSTOMER SERVICE: A PARADIGM SHIFT

Author : SAMIR YERPUDE April 20, 2018

Customer relationship management (CRM) has grown from strength to strength since inception and created an irrefutable space in our lives. CRM helps businesses get outside-in view directly from the market and customer. A survey was conducted to study CRM implementations and benefits derived by businesses across industries. The study revealed some appalling insights, such as CRM is used to the tune of 80% in sales and 45% in service. Conversely, when we look at the benefits they are, significantly skewed towards the customer service domain. Customer Satisfaction and Customer Retention, top the charts with @ 50% contribution. Paradigm shift is observed in recent times from transactional marketing to relationship marketing where customer satisfaction has gained new attention. Kotler also mentioned, “Key to customer retention is customer satisfaction”. Relationship post-sales gains maximum customer attention and at times contributes as an inherent factor in decision making while repeat purchases. Customer satisfaction is a result of the efforts put in by an organization in customer service. Customer satisfaction aids in customer retention finally transforming a customer into a Brand ambassador. Profoundly in an automobile industry the study discloses that post sales, vehicles visit the service setup @2.5 times annually for service and maintenance. This frequency is far too less for any organization to develop the relationship with the customer and bring it to a mature state. Effective engagement and agility are the primary customer demands from an organization. Therefore the most vital element for any organization is to maintain a constant connect with the customer, physically or virtually. This provoked the organizations to embark the digital journey in the customer service domain. Virtual connect with the customer is termed as a digital connect and the customer service offered by the organization are called as “Digital Customer Service”. One such initiative in the digital customer service space is to keep the customer connected virtually with the car while being attended for service and maintenance. Amongst the various technology disruptions, Internet of Things (IoT) has gained the competitive edge where it connects the physical world with the virtual world and integrates with almost everything. Architecturally the IoT landscape consists of smart sensors, which instead of serving a unilateral purpose of recording the change of state also transmit the information on the internet. The amount of data collected directs the usage of “Big data analytics” for the business model conception. Since there is a seamless interoperability to be achieved amongst the heterogeneous devices and application, the best-suited architecture is a service-oriented architecture (SOA). It comprises of four layers i.e. sensing layer, networking layer, service layer and an Interface /application layer. The landscape is configured to transmit the vehicle position and the operational sequence within the service setup over the net to a mobile app. The consumer of the app is the vehicle owner i.e. customer, who has offered his vehicle for service. The system assists the customer with the entire information of the operations performed on the vehicle along with the position and real time alerts. Customer, after the vehicle is offered for service, is unaware of the expected time of completion. IoT landscape implementation ensures that the pick-up time and the delivery of the vehicle scheduled is hassle-free with the customer completely informed. Customer gets the visibility over the map when the vehicle is driven out of the geo-fenced premises for a test drive. Sharing of the entire information transparently with the customer imbibes trust, which is an imperative dimension of customer satisfaction. The service advisor in the dealership gets the visibility of the vehicles, which are allotted to him. Information related to the vehicles assist him plan the operations and deliveries efficiently leading to customer satisfaction. For the dealer proprietor, monitoring and control of the complete set-up becomes stress free. The comprehensive information is available at his fingertips and dashboards with set thresholds ensure the control of operations. Real time alerts make the entire system proactive and agile towards the customer demands. By 2020, estimated growth of the car servicing industry will touch $330 billion as compared to $220 billion in 2016. Connected customer will become extremely significant for an organization to sustain, scale with the promise of quality service delivery. Personalized Services can be offered to the customer, basis the real time data collated from the IoT landscape transforming a retained customer to a Brand Ambassador.

Please contact the author samiryerpude@gmail.com