Friday, April 25, 2008

The 2.0 concept

I sent the draft to Dr. Charles Savage, one of the extremely inspiring professors at the FOM and he has some important questions that need to be answered in this context. One of them is around the term "2.0" and its meaning - what is it really about Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 or human culture 2.0?
The answer is not the same to everybody, but my definition is this one:
CRM 2.0 is the move from uni-directional contact management to a bi-directional, collaborative and active customer experience. This is the fusion of CRM 1.0 with technologies from the Web 2.0 arena. The consumer is evolving to a prosumer that actively takes part in the development, creation and support of products by providing data, feedback and information about himself and his experience with the offering.
From a company side, it is no longer enough to analyze customer behavior and create a marketing strategy from the analysis of this data. The differentiator will be a unique and outstanding customer experience that can only be created by actively involving the customer and keeping a continous dialogue with them. This will lead to a high value relationship and finally to true loyality to a brand or company.

This active involvement of the consumer can be achieved with Web 2.0 techniques in the various customer touch points:
  • Customer Support
    - Customer helps Customer (Forums, knowledge sharing, mentoring)
    - Intelligent customer self-service (make solutions easily available online)
    - Communities (find users with the same problem)
  • Sales Force Automation
    - Offer the right product at the right time (real time decisioning based on customer live data)
    - Flexible product offering (let the customer decide what he wants to have and when)
    - Personalize the experience (give customers the chance to provide personal data)
  • Knowledge Management
    - Let users take part in the creation and maintenance of the knowledge base
    - Provide feedback (allow easy feedback and suggestions)
  • Ordering / Provisioning
    - Consumers decide on the ordering process (if possible)
    - Flexible in time and location
  • Marketing
    - Customer feedback (listen to customers)
    - Match consumer requirements and expectations if posspible
    - Reduce Time To Market (TTM)
  • Product Creation / Bundling
    - Flexible bundling (let the customer decide)
    - Listen to the customer when creating or enhancing products
All in all, its's all about bringing the customer on board and thus leveraging their knowledge while creating retention and identification to a brand, product or company.

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