Service Relationship Management

Think of the traditional companies thriving in this downturn. The Southwest Airlines, and The McDonald’s of the world. Why? We think simplicity is part of the success equation. So what’s working for hot online properties like Amazon or Mint.com? They go a step farther. They’re a new kind of “one-stop-shop” for consumers, allowing them to access whole segments of their lives with one single sign-on.

Amazon’s mission – “To be the earth’s most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.” – gives you freedom to choose what you shop for online without being locked-in to a specific product, brand, or site. Mint.com’s approach is to connect you auto-magically with all of your banking relationships. The result: bypass of individual banking destination sites, a singular view of your entire financial life, actionable analytics on spending patterns, and better control over the information you get.

Both companies create a Unified Experience relaying the notion that you, the consumer, know best who you are, how, when, and by what means you want your service interactions to work. So while most businesses track customers through a CRM system, these companies flip the concept to that of Service Relationship Management – so at last you control interactions across a spectrum of otherwise painful individual shopping or financial experiences defined ‘about’ you, rather than ‘for’ you.

By embracing connections from SRM platforms, companies inevitably shift some of their control to the consumer in the way Amazon and Mint do. But the big benefit for those same companies is that SRM allows the consumer to get the simplicity they crave in a world awash in user names and logins. The category allows the consumer to decide for themselves what is important in their lives and in their daily interactions.

So are companies hesitant to release control to the consumer? Do they fear a power shift to the consumer will loosen their hold on brand and loyalty? We think innovative firms will respond to consumer cries for simple values in life — more time, more control, and more enablement — and life decisions delivered through simple technologies that un-tether them from computers.

In the end, service experience wins every time, doesn’t it?

Over recent years consumer relationships with the companies that serve them have evolved from simple telephone interactions to complex, multi-channel interactions which are carefully managed, measured by companies that want to get and keep those customers. A whole category of technology – Customer Relationship Management (CRM) grew up a decade ago to serve that need.

Customers today have dependencies on the internet and mobile devices as the modes for managing daily life from bill-paying to investing to instantaneous interactions with thousands of perfect strangers. These technologies have flipped a bit for every-day needs and expectations among consumers. The immediacy consumers have come to expect across the spectrum of their lives has caused companies they do business with to extend CRM interactions through multiple channels. Banks have turned on two-way transactional models for bill payment and credit card alerts using email or text messages and customer portals that allow users to define how they want to interact.

While consumers get what they want on the one hand – easier, faster ways to do business, they pay a price. They now have dozens of interactions from an array of service entities, each with a unique set of requirements for log on, setup, interaction options. The result is a dizzying array of user experiences across a broad range of media that can have the reverse effect of what was intended. The consumer’s life has become more confusing, more complicated, and more difficult to navigate. Read more…