In the connected-customer era, there’s only one way to keep customers engaged: meet them when, where, and how they want. Cloud, social, and mobile have the potential to enable this, yet on average, only 20% of customers are fully engaged. To bridge this gap, and avoid becoming irrelevant in the emerging Customer Engagement Economy, companies must revolutionize the way they sell, service, market, and innovate.

The revolution is a whole-of-company obsession with delivering what customers want before they know they want it. 

Since 2000, Bluewolf has helped companies adopt cloud, social, and mobile technologies to start their own customer-obsession revolutions. From our global experience, three key principles have emerged:

1. Enable your employees to own any customer “moment”
2. Treat your customers as people, not transactions
3. Know what your customers want before they do—and act on it

1. Enable your employees to own any customer “moment”

What is a customer moment? It’s simple, yet profound: it is any interaction between a customer and an employee. The point here is that outstanding customer service staff are only the beginning: to excel, organizations must empower every employee to provide an excellent experience. But how?

Because customer moments can occur at any time, with any employee, innovative organizations are increasingly turning to social customer service strategies to construct multi-dimensional views of each Case or Account.

In 2010, Vodafone, the leading provider of 3G coverage in Australia, experienced a wave of negative customer feedback following a coverage gaffe. Their response was noteworthy:

• A multi-channel customer strategy, implementing Salesforce Service Cloud, live chat, and self service
• Harnessing Salesforce Marketing Cloud to monitor and measure brand sentiment
• Employing Social Hub to integrate conversations as live cases in Service Cloud

With this innovative customer service system, Vodafone gave service agents the customer information right when they needed it, which resulted in 4x the number of positive customer interactions, as well as 2x the amount customers using self service. For more on the Vodafone story, read How Vodafone went From Social Media Oversight to Customer Obsession.

2. Treat your customers as people, not transactions

These days it’s tempting to look for a quick-fix technology for everything, but what Bluewolf’s experience has shown is that software is only step one, not a magic pill for organizational culture.

At Nuance Communications, Bill Nelson, EVP of Worldwide Sales, understood that they could not compete without better customer engagement. Faced with typical global growing pains, Nuance suffered from disjointed sales forces, inconsistent sales processes, and misaligned sales and marketing departments. Worse than dinging customer experience, it was denting their bottom line. So what did they do?

1. Deployed Salesforce globally, redefining their global sales process
2. Integrated Eloqua (marketing automation), with their Salesforce CRM
3. Developed and adopted a comprehensive employee engagement plan 

The result? Through these three steps, Nuance gained insight into buyer habits, developed a persona-based marketing strategy, and delivered timely, tailored responses to inquiries. Instead of viewing leads and customers as mere transactions, Nuance harnessed a rich database to provide targeted and differentiated engagements for each customer. Their employees are now empowered to tackle every customer moment with real-time access to comprehensive global customer information. Find more about Nuance’s transformation here.

3. Know what your customers want before they do – and act on it

The real-time capture of information furnishes a richer knowledge base about your customers that makes it easier to predict their future expectations. Combine a robust cloud-based CRM solution and an integrated enterprise mobile app and you provide your field reps access to a rich database anytime, anywhere. For sales, this means less time behind a desk and more time with customers.

Situated in the highly competitive global pharmaceutical market, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), looked to improve their relationship with their clients: the health care providers who prescribe their products. To accomplish this, GSK designed and implemented a native iPad app, iKoach, for sales reps to track past and current customer behavior, resulting in greater forecasting of their customers’ needs—all in a mobile environment. This innovative solution has allowed GSK sales reps to stay in the field, maximizing all customer-facing interactions.

“ The iKoach mobile app has increased customer engagement & elevated our reputation in a highly commoditized market, increasing our brand loyalty and sales revenues.”

- Nancy Fernandez, GlaxoSmithKline

Nearly 90% of CEOs rank customer engagement as their primary initiative. Viewed as a driving force behind profitability, customer engagement - or even better - customer obsession, may be easier to achieve than you think. Innovative combinations of cloud, mobile, and social technologies are allowing organizations to capture and own each customer moment, ensuring an excellent customer experience, every time. 

Let Bluewolf help you start your own customer obsession revolution, and launch a new era of success in the connected global marketplace.

Download a free copy of the essential guide to customer obsession and join Bluewolf at Dreamforce at the button below.