Chapter 4: Customer Interaction

Overview

Technology has had a long-lasting relationship with bridging the actions of customers to various components of a company’s business processes. These processes have typically been labelled ‘customer order fulfilment’, ‘customer management’, ‘customer services’ and, simply, ‘order proces- sing’, which represented their basic functions. The application of technology has traditionally been focused on inwardly optimizing these processes with the express intention of reducing processing cost, increasing the number of transactions or improving customer service. Technologies such as the Internet permit these processes to be extended beyond the confines of the corporation directly to the customer. The initial focus of applying new technologies to these processes was to allow existing customers to place orders and thus lure new customers from competitors.

The new challenge for businesses using technology is to present a clear and definable value proposition to their customers. In his book The Agenda, Michael Hammer gets to the heart of the customer value issue: ‘What customers care about is themselves, and from their point of view, your only excuse for existence is your ability to improve their lives and their businesses.’^[119] Value propositions must be developed from the customers’ point of view, and not from the product perspective. It is interesting to note that this seemingly straightforward statement – which most companies will attest to be their express objective – reminds us that companies rarely invite customers to help in the product development cycle or the reengineering of the customer services process. It could be argued that a company’s most valuable asset is its existing customers.

Developing a customer-centric viewpoint has less to do with technology and more to do with resources, time and organizational attitude. Companies around the world are now using the Internet to establish a corporate presence, linking high-speed infrastructures to increase their customer service capabilities and implementing customer relationship management (CRM) technology, automating and recording every aspect of customer interaction. Customer information, which at times is a subject of consumer concern stemming from a lack of privacy (which will continue as a result of more and more government intervention), is the primary source for market intelligence and the development of customer segmentation. We shall see in this chapter that companies must be aware of their corporate presence and how it is interpreted by a wide variety of market segments, and how the influence of technology categorizes products by distinct types of purchase behaviour. This chapter will also explore how some organizations must unlearn their legacy of corporate behaviour in order to compete effectively in the new global marketplace.

^[119]M. Hammer, The Agenda. What Every Business Must Do to Dominate the Decade (London: Random House, 2001) p. 38.