If you have a successful business you will have numerous opportunities to provide the wow factor for your customers, whether B2B or B2C. Any interaction can be a positive one, but does your company have the tools needed to go even further and provide a superior level of service, every time? In this week’s post, we help you to identify what might be missing and how you can quickly turn every customer interaction into a success story.
You’ve probably heard about what today’s consumers are looking for, but let’s recap (because these are really significant factors);
- They want high quality products, delivered / available on time, potentially at short notice
- They want the best price possible and are prepared to negotiate
- They expect their questions to be answered at any time
But haven’t customers always expected these things? Yes, they have! But now your customers’ expectations of their interaction with your business are even more diverse. Instead of just wanting a simple transaction, the relationship goes much deeper:
- They also want you to provide customised suggestions and tailored solutions to their needs based on their preferences, tastes and trends
- They want new ways of engaging with your business wherever they are in the world
- They can find out a lot of information about your organisation in just a few seconds online, so they need to be impressed with what they find
- They will be guided by the recommendations and feedback of their trusted online contacts and friends instead of meaningless sales gimmicks and irrelevant special offers
The problem with meeting these expectations is that not all companies are equipped to do so. Some companies might be closely monitoring their social media feeds, others might be trying to impress their customers with special targeted deals, but many are yet to take advantage of the game-changing effects SAP HANA’s enterprise data processing solutions can have on their organisation, and their customers.
How can SAP HANA enhance your customer’s experience?
Your customer doesn’t need to know that you’re improving their experience, they need to feel it. So think about the following areas:
1) What does your customer’s journey look like?
Does it begin with an online search for the best product/service? Where do you fit in amongst your competitors online? Why should a customer pick your online store over your competitor’s?
SAP HANA can support the customer journey by:
- Combining transactional and external data and providing you with a 360° view of your customer, their preferences, their buying trends, their needs
- This means you can see their current activity as well as where they fit in with others in the same industry and provide tailored services for them
- Using this data means you can truly walk in your customer’s shoes, find out what brings them to your organisation and give them reasons to stay there and return in the future
- Examples of this could be providing them with VIP-style service for repeat and bulk orders as well as rewarding their loyalty with advance ordering or automated invoicing for regular requests. SAP HANA also enables you to engage with your online customer while they are making their purchases so you can guide them to the best products for them; this also enables relevant and meaningful upsell opportunities
2) What happens when your customer needs your help?
Are they encouraged to use your call centre helpline or can they locate the information they need from their SmartPhone or tablet? If they contact you, is their problem resolved quickly? Is your contact centre team empowered with the right information to assist your customers? Can your customers use your social media channels to ask for and receive assistance with your products?
SAP HANA can enhance the support you provide your customer by:
- Equipping the contact centre with all the product information they need to respond effectively to customer queries
- Providing you with the analysis and platform to proactively engage with your customer base and become a trusted knowledge centre for them
- Developing your organisation’s own Google-like search facility for your customer service team to extract product information, technical specifications, recall notices, user guidance information and customer order history. Over time, this knowledge can be built up into automated FAQ sections available any time for your customer to access
3) Are you meeting your customers real needs?
How do you know what they really want and need? Are you able to customise and tailor your products and services to meet your customers’ needs? Does your organisation provide products and services that enhance your customer’s life in some way? Does your marketing really hit the mark? Does your customer feel welcome, wanted and loyal?
SAP HANA can help you to meet your customer’s needs by:
- Showing you what they want based on their social activity, preferences and purchasing history and equipping you with the insights to market directly to them based on this knowledge
- Leveraging the customer-centric analysis and enabling you to predict future trends and patterns, SAP HANA can keep you ahead of the curve and ready for your customer’s next requirements, before they even know what they are
Where organisations were once left behind the latest trends and had to quickly react in order to attract and retain customers, they can now proactively engage their existing and future customer base and continuously improve the services they offer to them.
Technology is enabling customers to get what they want, quicker, cheaper and with a personal touch. Now, technology is available to help businesses get ahead and provide their customers with everything they need now, as well as in the future.
That technology is called SAP HANA.
Read more about SAP HANA on our other blog posts and connect with us via our active Facebook page.
Why not use your company’s own data sources and let the Blue Ocean Systems team of SAP HANA experts show you what you could be seeing? Contact us today for a free insight.