A customer relationship management approach: Integrating the call centre with customer information

Abstract

In the age of the e-consumer and the need to manage customer relationships the marketing dilemma that many financial service providers (FSPs) face is how to get closer to their target market without investing more in bricks and mortar than clicks and mortar. This paper looks at how the call centre and the contact centre can be integrated as part of a multi-channel contact and touch-point management within a customer relationship management (CRM) solution based on a scaleable data warehouse (SDW) architecture as the infrastructure for competitive advantage. The way customers are treated and their value to an organisation are reviewed with an emphasis on the customercentric view. The evolution of the call centre, contact centre and e-service are also discussed. This paper explores how the CRM philosophy and SDW architectures can be effectively integrated and implemented and lead to success. There is also a need for clear marketing strategies that can be applied to web and wireless enabled call/contact centres. This is to support customer retention, cross-selling and up-selling opportunities to improve direct/continuous marketing campaigns, marketing to the segment of one and to put the organisation on the road to marketing one to one.