Services for Organizations

Using our research, best practices and expertise, we help you understand how to optimize your business processes using applications, information and technology. We provide advisory, education, and assessment services to rapidly identify and prioritize areas for improvement and perform vendor selection

Consulting & Strategy Sessions

Ventana On Demand

    Services for Investment Firms

    We provide guidance using our market research and expertise to significantly improve your marketing, sales and product efforts. We offer a portfolio of advisory, research, thought leadership and digital education services to help optimize market strategy, planning and execution.

    Consulting & Strategy Sessions

    Ventana On Demand

      Services for Technology Vendors

      We provide guidance using our market research and expertise to significantly improve your marketing, sales and product efforts. We offer a portfolio of advisory, research, thought leadership and digital education services to help optimize market strategy, planning and execution.

      Analyst Relations

      Demand Generation

      Product Marketing

      Market Coverage

      Request a Briefing


        Ventana Research Analyst Perspectives

        << Back to Blog Index

        Maturing Customer Relationships Continuously

        The old proverb “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” applies well to the management of customer relationships. If business technology vendors are to be believed, managing customer relationships involves – indeed, is driven by – software. 

        We have a somewhat different take on it. In our view, truly mature management of customer relationships is at its core a set of business processes that enable companies to understand and make informed decisions about their lifetime relationships with customers. One aspect of this is knowing about customer moments of truth – the individual interactions between a customer and a company that can occur at any time through any channel. A moment of truth can happen when someone sees an advertisement, buys a product, tries to use that product, calls the contact center, visits the company’s website or receives a tweet from a friend. From these, and how each is handled, the relationship between a company and a customer is formed. So the challenge of optimizing the customer relationship is in truth one of managing moments of truth.

        A number of methodologies as well as applications are available to help companies improve how they handle these moments. Innovative companies have begun to use customer personas to help understand customers’ likely reactions to different events. Customer personas are constructs, built by mapping the key attributes, behaviors, motivations and goals of a company’s target customer groups. They can be used to guide the design of products and services suitable for different market segments, identify the best channels of communication and shape key marketing, sales and customer service messages.

        Personas also can become the basis for customer journey maps, which are documents that visually depict the interactions with a customer segment throughout those customers’ lifetimes with a company. They provide a reference for all anticipated interactions with a company, specify which business units are involved and cover the different communication channels customers might use. By using personas and journeys as a methodology, companies can identify which interactions are working and which are not delivering the expected outcomes – from not only the company’s but also the customers’ perspectives. This in turn allows companies to pinpoint where to focus improvements.

        Then there is the voice of the customer (VOC) and associated programs and processes. As is often the case with three-letter acronyms, VOC has an array of meanings. Most commonly, though, it is associated with using speech analytics to produce reports and derive analysis from call recordings. But a full VOC implementation is more than just this; it is a closed loop that analyzes all relevant customer data, especially interactions from nonvoice channels to produce a complete (“360-degree”) picture of the customer. With this in hand, a company can understand how to optimize future interactions (using personas and journey maps where applicable) and use alerts, workflow and other tools to ensure that those responsible make the required improvements. Tools to enable this can include more focused training, process changes and better use of technologies such as a smart agent desktop, natural language self-service and automated agent applications. But the key input to any VOC program is an analysis of customer feedback, which should come from all sources, including formal surveys and analysis of free-form text such as text messages and social media content.

        Looking ahead we see no one answer to managing customer relationships. It is clear, though, that the traditional software-driven approach will no longer meet the needs of most companies. It is an undertaking that is in the process of evolving, and the details will vary from industry to industry and from one customer to another. To understand these details and search out maturity patterns and best practices, Ventana Research is carrying out research, and I’d like to invite you to participate and see how you are doing compared to everyone else. If you do, I’ll be happy to share with you our findings and some insights on the most direct path to maturity in maintaining excellent customer relationships. 

        Regards

        Richard Snow – VP & Research Director

        Authors:

        Ventana Research

        Ventana Research, now part of Information Services Group (ISG), is the most authoritative and respected market research and advisory services firm focused on improving business outcomes through optimal use of people, processes, information and technology. Since our beginning, our goal has been to provide insight and expert guidance on mainstream and disruptive technologies. In short, we want to help you become smarter and find the most relevant technology to accelerate your organization's goals.

        JOIN OUR COMMUNITY

        Our Analyst Perspective Policy

        • Ventana Research’s Analyst Perspectives are fact-based analysis and guidance on business, industry and technology vendor trends. Each Analyst Perspective presents the view of the analyst who is an established subject matter expert on new developments, business and technology trends, findings from our research, or best practice insights.

          Each is prepared and reviewed in accordance with Ventana Research’s strict standards for accuracy and objectivity and reviewed to ensure it delivers reliable and actionable insights. It is reviewed and edited by research management and is approved by the Chief Research Officer; no individual or organization outside of Ventana Research reviews any Analyst Perspective before it is published. If you have any issue with an Analyst Perspective, please email them to ChiefResearchOfficer@ventanaresearch.com

        View Policy

        Subscribe to Email Updates

        Posts by Month

        see all

        Posts by Topic

        see all


        Analyst Perspectives Archive

        See All