Customer Service and Relationship Building: The Responsive Enterprise

This IDC study examines the role of IT to help deliver responsive customer service from a single point of contact. Service is a vital component of customer relationship management (CRM), and nowhere is this more apparent than at the point where the customer makes contact with the enterprise. Optimizing the capabilities of the customer service representative (CSR) is an aspect of competitive differentiation that organizations should examine more closely. The goal is to provide the dual advantage of improving the end-to-end service experience, while at the same time reducing the high cost of escalations and callbacks. Success in achieving this is predicated on:

" To be able to function effectively, the customer service representative must be empowered with the right information at the right time. This must be presented in a manner that reflects the highly specific needs of an individual interaction, while drawing from a wide range of sources. Where this is more pronounced is within organizations where CSRs function in both service and sales roles. ? Jacob Stoller, contractor for IDC's Solutions Research Group