Steve Downton, Downton Service Management Consultants Ltd, Noventum Group
Strategies are changing to embrace Internet-based technologies as part of a holistic customer relationship strategy.
While Internet technologies were in their infancy, (not very long ago) the success of a web site was measured by the 'number of concurrent users' and 'number of page hits per hour'. Operations now measure the success of their site by the 'profitability by customer segment', 'margin by product line' and 'average order value'. Yhe company can learn more about their customers' needs, and work to develop and deliver the products and services that can satisfy their customers' expectations.
e-Business is now, for most customer-facing organisations, business as usual, just another channel. The different channels of communication enable the customer to have a single view of the company; with the successful ones able to direct customers to the appropriate channel each time. The risk of not doing this and of not using the different channels is that the customers may be lost to the competition.
So how do we gain customer value from the channel of e-business, and why has it become so valuable? The last years have seen many changes in the e-business world with the demise of the dotcom gold rush and the re-emergence of bricks and mortar companies from exile.
Debates about the cost of customer acquisition and tales of the failures were fuelled by high customer acquisition cost, and some have responded by dismissing the web site etc as a means of generating customers, thus effectively throwing the baby out with the bath water. The truth of the matter, as is usually the case, boiled down to poorly advised and inadequately run businesses going bust. Such a verdict is not quite so news worthy, though indeed in some cases quite embarrassing.
This article is accessible for registered visitors only.
You can register here
Registered users can tell Noventum about which subjects they would like to receive email.
Without previous permission data will not be used by others.
