How Customer Retention can be handled in SAP C4C ??

“We are in E-era where if you cannot somebody else will serve our customer”

Customer Retention: Based on business strategy in which activity of a selling organization has to reduce customer defections.

Customer retention rate: Customer retention rate refers to the number of customers lost /defection over a period of time. It is calculated by the percentage of lost customers versus existing customers over a quarterly or annual period, without considering new customer acquisitions.

Successful customer retention starts with the first contact an organization has with a customer and continues throughout the entire lifetime through various business marketing elements like loyalty programs, campaign for new customer and existing customers and Trade promotion discounts. A company’s ability to attract and retain new customers, is not only related to its product but strongly related to the way it services its existing customers and the reputation it creates within and across the marketplace because based on market survey 68% percent defection happens due to an attitude of indifference on part of service provider.Industries like mobile phone, Utility and even banking sector where customer has a choice to shuffle you down and switch to new selling organization or service provider.

Giving the example of banking sector if customer is not getting good service will shift to new bank without closing bank account with existing bank over the era he/she will be you customer but giving business to you competitor.

Why companies lose customers:

1. 1. Customer turned away by an attitude of indifference on part of service provider – 68%
2. 2. Customer dissatisfied with product – 14%
3. 3. Customer lured away by competition – 9%
4.      4. Customer influenced by friends – 5% (Now it is growing from 15 to 20% @ social)
5. 5. Customer moves away – 3%

(Data source: American society for Quality)

• Get the information of customer defection/customer lost forever
• Get the information of customer doing business with you but there is sudden drop more than 40%
• We can have attributes list of defection and based on that we can define Target group (Segmentation) to get them back.
• Calculate the customer acquisition cost
• Cost involved in customer retention

My document will give some of the best customer retention strategies, important topics and common challenges related to customer retention via technological way and add-on solution in existing applications like SAP C4C.

Customer retention is more than giving the customer what they expect; it’s about exceeding their expectations so that they become loyal advocates for your brand “Is that ALL” what they want from you.

Even customer knows the limitation of selling organization then, what factor encourages running away from you is your services and attitude of sales force that includes your sales agent and sales manager if customer has been handle through Interaction center (Call center) then you IC Agent and IC manager plays a vital role.

Customer would like to escalate but getting the answer from call center agent – “Please be on online and fill our telephonic survey by pressing number 1-9” oops this makes situation bad to worse and that’s how the customer defection happen, end of customer life cycle with the organization. And in past to get this customer our marketing team has given big budget to the management. Sorry to say but blame game begins between marketing department Vs sales department.

• Customer retention has a direct or indirect impact on profitability. Research by John Fleming and Jim Asplundh indicates that engaged customers generate 1.7 times more revenue than normal customers, while having engaged employees and engaged customers returns a revenue gain of 3.4 times the norm – Indeed it works.

Customer retention: In CRM application we should have a separate transaction (like activity) and choice to opt it in all modules like marketing, sales and service. It should be accessible through our various channels like Interaction center or call center, web portals, mobile application and sales force team.

In Marketing scenario: Sales person/manager is visiting to any customer for any marketing activity but same time if he is getting complaint about other product or service then customer should not be neglected by marketing person/manger.

He or she should be able to create Customer retention transaction where we will be having option to enter customer name, product and most importantly text. (Optional we could have choice to add survey where customer gives inputs on his dissatisfaction level – Action and work flow should have capability to escalate it to top management)

Employee responsible should get assigned automatically to act on it immediately (Partner determination procedure)

Once customer retention document has been save then customer’s contact person should get email saying you will get response immediately.

• Transaction/document should have capability to add any discounts voucher or coupons if applicable to make customer happy.
  1. In Web portal: Customer should have option on complaint so in background it should get aligned with customer retention transaction
  2. Interaction center : Agent will create customer retention transaction if customer is giving indication unhappiness or if he/she in a complaining mode.
  3. Mobile application should have same option for customer to opt complaints easily.

Now how to resolve this issue: (In brief)

• Pull the report of customer retention

Attribute for action points will be:

1.    Product/Service dissatisfaction

2.    Survey assessment like problem with product/Service

3.    Cost is too high

4.    Service is not good at all

5.    Overall satisfaction

6.    Brand value

Based on these attributes my Retention segmentation will be visible for management to act on it.

1.    Improve services

2.    Reduce product cost

3.    Offer discounts

4.    Future Intention

5.    Give them value for money

Conclusion : Saying above points, I would like to know – How best we can give solution in SAP C4C to handle Customer Retention, One of our customer is looking for specific solution in SAP C4C.

Suggestions Required !!