Customer Experience and CRM: Strategies and Digital Impact Report

This report examines the multifaceted aspects of customer experience (CX) within the service sector, focusing on how businesses can enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. It begins by defining customer experience and its significance, emphasizing the importance of understanding market segmentation and customer needs. The report then delves into the creation and analysis of customer experience maps, outlining the key stages of the customer journey from initial search to feedback. It highlights how customer touchpoints, such as staff interaction, service quality, and environment, create business opportunities, using The Goring Hotel as a case study. The impact of digitalization on CRM is explored, including the different types of CRM, its features, and how social and mobile CRM are transforming customer interactions. Furthermore, it discusses strategies for improving service standards, such as gathering customer feedback, and examines customer service strategies that create and develop customer experience. The report also covers the impact of digital content, including lead generation and sales boosts, and the evolution of CRM technologies, including IT-assisted CRM and SaaS CRM. Overall, the report provides a comprehensive overview of customer experience management, offering insights into how businesses can leverage strategies and digital tools to enhance customer satisfaction and drive business success.

Managing the
customer experience
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
P1 and P2 Need and expectation of the market segmentation ...................................................3
Covered in PPT............................................................................................................................3
P3 customer experience map.......................................................................................................3
P4 How customer touch points creates business opportunities for service sector organisation. 4
P5 Digitalization impacts on the CRM........................................................................................4
P6 Strategies that improves Service standards of the customers................................................6
P7 Customers service strategies that create and develop customer experience within a way
that full fill the needs with the customers and also the required business standard. ...................7
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10
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Introduction
Customer experience refers to the perception of customer including both consciously an
unconsciously. They are based on the relation resulting from interaction of customers with brand
during the life cycle of customer (Prentice, 2019). The customer experience depends on number
of factor that are associated with the products offered by company. Motive of every company is
to give the best customer experience through its products and services. The quality of the
products how it is benefiting the customer all increases in the experience of customer.
Companies make constants for improving the quality of its products or services customer
experience will be enhanced only when they receive best values for their money.
P1 and P2 Need and expectation of the market segmentation
Covered in PPT
P3 customer experience map.
Consumer experience map is to understand that what are the requirements and needs of
the customers. Goods and services are offered according to the need of consumers. There are few
steps in customer experience mapping, these are as follows-
Search for hotel- This is the first step in which customers search for the Hotel. There are many
ways by which customers search for the hotels as nowadays it i8s the world of internet so they
will search vi8a internet. And the best which suits them they visited that hotel.
Check in- After this step guest visits the place and ask for all the services they wants from the
hotel, and makes use of all the services offered. At this time good and fast services musty be
provided by hotel so that it can attract them and also makes them satisfied to come again to the
hotel.
Check out- This is the situation in which guest after utilizing all the services offered make an
exist from the hotel premises. At this point customers must be treated in an desired way so that
feel valued and make a visit again. Billing is done at this point and any quarries if guest have in
their mind are solved by the staff (Mossberg, 2019).
Feedback- This the last step in this feedback are taken from the guest, these are taken in
different forms as some hotels take this in written form and some hotels prefers online feedbacks.
The benefit of this is that any issues which are needed to be improved are addressed.
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P4 How customer touch points creates business opportunities for service sector organisation.
Customer touch points are the points of consumer contact, from beginning to end. Touch
points are very important to be considered for hospitality industries. Touch points like staff, staff
plays and vital role in the success of The Goring as when the staff is good and experienced better
serviced are provided to the guest, all the operations of the hotels are carried out in desired way.
As when customers are satisfied with the staff they will come again and it assist in overall
productivity of The Goring. Another touch point which is very important to be considered is
service of the hotel. The Goring
Hotel must have fast and efficient services so that it can handle the visitors in an desired
way (Voß, Hennig-Thurau, and Paul, 2015). The staff of The Goring should treat every guest
like an VIP so that they feel valued and happy. Quality services makes customers satisfied and it
attracts more visitors for the hotel. Services like free Wi-Fi can be provided by The Goring so
that the visitors who want to do their business work can do it without any issues. The Goring
should regularly focus on safety and security so that guest arrived in hotel can stay without any
problems.
Environment plays major role in hotel industry. When the environment of hotel is good
and pleasant customer feels more relaxed. By good environment it means that The Goring must
focus providing well and clean atmosphere to the guest, proper cleanliness should be maintained
so that guest feel good and satisfied. Thus, all these are the touch points by which customers are
attracted towards the hotel.
E mail marketing – It can be used to generate awareness by sending e mails to customers. By
this they get aware about new product or service that hotel is offering.
PPC- it is another way to generate awareness. Here, PPC can be used to increase traffic on
website. When people click on ad they are directed towards website. The hotel pays a fee to
website owner in case if clicking on ad.
SMM- this is best suitable way to generate awareness. Here, various social sites are used such as
Facebook, Twitter, etc. and ads are posted. This allows people to view post and enquiry about
product or service.
Display advertising- here, advertising is done on websites or social media through banners
made of text, images, video, etc. it delivers brand messages to site visitors.
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P5 Digitalization impacts on the CRM
Types of CRM
Operational CRM- this type of CRM is used to deliver customer care services. It includes sales,
marketing and service. This helps in improving customer satisfaction.
Analytical CRM- in this analysis of customer data is done to evaluate their behaviour. The
market data is collected and electronic records of customers are stored.
Collaborative CRM- in this various department like sales, marketing, etc. share information of
customers with each other.
Features of CRM
Customer satisfaction- through CRM customer satisfaction is gained by solving their problems.
Customer service- CRM is used to provide various customer services. The service may be after
sales services, home repairing, etc.
Customer complaint – CRM is used to hear customer complaints and solve it.
Customer retention – it enables in retaining of customer by solving their issues, offering
discounts, etc.
Customer relationship system assists manage customer data as it supports the sales
management, team communication, integrates with social media as well as facilitates team
communication. Cloud based CRM system provides the completed mobility as well as access to
an ecosystem
Most of the leading firms impact through the digitalization in terms of sales, marketing and
services .
Social and mobile CRM
The CRM software products have more exploring ways as well as to maximize the social
media data as well as accessibility that are offered through the mobile technology. Social media
also compels through CRM strategies so that they can move transactional to the relationship that
is interaction relationship (Brashear-Alejandro and et.al., 2016). The most important today is
the uses of the Internet technologies as well as communications channels to improve the
relationship of the customers will provides the digital CRM that impact marketing registries of
the Company .It also provides information about the preferences as well as habits of the
customers with their customers with the more automated as well as personalized through
various internet technologies as well as social media platforms. By delivering target customers
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are also very crucial as today rather than pitching offers. Thus converting costumers into the
brand ambassadors is also considers as the key elements of the model called new CRM model.
Also talking to the customers more than one possible as well as promising trends for the social
CRM.
Increased connectivity with the customers -Their increased popularity within the social media
has made easier to get more and more information about the hotel and the customers. Now the
customer get more information about the goring hotel form their official website as they also the
discount offers of the hotel premises (Yakhlef, 2015). It has been also provides with the helps
form the Facebook,the data provided that will allows the Goring Hotel to link their consumer's
data .
Artificial intelligence-It is considered as the technology that has the potential to crunch as well as
automate tasks for services or sales. In this way social platform have becomes an integral part of
the traditional Strategies of CRM.
Personal customer services- The used if AI to deliver in personal customer service as the
development of robots as well as potential of this technology to grow is more enormous. As it is
able to deal with the general customers facing situations. Connie robot is adopted through Hilton
that is AI . This Robert gives tourist information to the consumers who can interact with them.
While the most impressive is that they can learn the human speech as well as adapt the human
activities this means that more numbers of the customers speaks to it,the best it will get.
SaaS CRM /web based/cloud Hosted.
SaaS (Software -as -a -service) as it became popular at the late nineties. Here the more powerful
desktop solutions and more reliable internet connectivity made SaaS or Cloud hosted CRM
considers as the cheapest premise CRM (Kunz and et.al., 2017). As today Cloud CRM offers
the smaller companies to use the systems called robust CRM through the technical support by a
monthly fee. It doesn't consider as the cheap one as cost is also spreads out within Tidbits of the
monthly subscriptions.
IT -assisted CRM within the 1980s
Technological innovation such as Spreadsheets databases, fax machines and Hotline numbers
raised CRM to a proactive operation. Technological advances within this period also helped to
enhance the customer relation strategies (So and et.al., 2016). Such as programming based on
the data database could shortlist the buyers ,but offers were applied separately and manually
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through the direct mails. One of the successful adopters of this strategy is Reader's Digest. It also
upselling its prints subscriber with the help of the book as well as various other products that are
supported on Collated return-mail orders forms. The Publishing company also tells that which
subscribers has books and also what types of Books to up sell. Thus, all can be done through the
Browsing its Subscription base ,creating direct response mail campaign ,order forms, frequent
buyer database.
Due to the development of the IT applications ,it brought the contact management software that
able to organize different customer personal as well as transactional data within one program.
Such as Retrieving the last purchase of the customer and address that was quite easier and faster.
Various struggling small companies today also treats as an IT – assisted. For examples the Hotel
like Goring using MS Excel to sort the repeat customers as it is able to culled from the Facebook
page ,sending the customers Thank you emails could be come under as IT- CRM.
The impact of digital content is as follows :-
Generate leads- the digital marketing helps in attracting more customers as get aware about new
products or services on social media. People share links and content on website and on social
sites. It results in rise in enquiry about services.
Boost sales- digital content is useful in boosting sales. The people get attracted and buy company
products. The effective promotion leads to target specific audience. Moreover, large number of
people are attracted and this leads to rise in sales.
More affordable- it is more affordable as it only require social media to advertise. The cost
incurred is less than traditional marketing. Beside this, from one place only marketing is done
and all services are provided.
P6 Strategies that improves Service standards of the customers
Costumers are considered as the core of the business as should always on the top priority.
Customers are the ones who deliver the best experiences (Gardner, Linderman, and McFadden,
2018) . Mention below some strategies.
Feedback from the customers
In the service industry ,to provide the most excellent services ,all there are needs to
understand the experiences as well as pain points. Customers feedback are the most necessary
one as Hotels like Goring industry provides there customers to share their views through the
multiple ways. Such as telephonic surveys and feedback sent from the email. Other than these
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kind of surveys Managers of the goring hotel can also establish a complaint system that will
better allows them to raise their issues regarding raise their issues. This will let them know bout
the good,bad as well as ugly experiences and Managers of the Goring hotel can easily do the
improvement . Connecting through the customers is consider as the best benefit as it makes them
to feel valued and willing them to resolve their issues. This makes them to enables more trust and
also prevent to share negative comments on the social media platform.
Strengthen customer service team
Hire as well as train the employees with the right skills.
Improving the service of the customers starts with building a strong performance such
as hire as well as train the employees which have right skills. So when hiring the employees for
the customer's service team there is a need of the look for the people who have right skills. Also
training sessions should be provided to them to improve the skills as the consumer service
representatives have mention below skills.
Good communication skills- The people hired for this post have posses excellent
communication skills as well confident about their job. They should be able to convey the
messages within positive manner (Steinhoff and Palmatier, 2016). They never wants their
customers to dissatisfied.
Patience and Empathy- Customers are of various kinds some of them are annoying while some
of them are very good ,the good customer relationship means that they have to deal with various
kinds of customers . Some of them are very annoying as well as confused and also some of them
have lot of questions. Their work is to deal with them with professionally and patiently.
Knowledge – Assure that Goring customer service representatives have complete knowledge of
the services, products as well as pricing plans. If the Goring employees are aren't sure about
anything they say the customers like they will let them know after some time instead of
providing the incorrect information.
Track the performance of the employees or the customers service representation
If the managers are not sure about the performances of Goring Hotel customer representatives
than they should ask their customers that how they are dealing with them.
The three strategies are :
Assessing the market needs- It can be used to analyse market size. With this new product or
service can be developed.
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Experience mapping – this can be used by business to understand target market. So, customer
views and opinions are identified. This enables in identifying their needs and fulfilling it.
Touch point analysis – Here, touch point will be analysed that are pre stay, during stay and post
stay. Thus, the data is used to find out weak areas and improve it.
P7 Customers service strategies that create and develop customer experience within a way that
full fill the needs with the customers and also the required business standard.
Communication
To understand who the customers are communication is the best things , the more costumer
opens with the more information get through them and the way to improve this there is the need
of the of proper training to the employees (Verleye, 2015). Good communication makes the
customers happy and feeling valued so communication play an important role. Sometimes
customers behave very poorly all there is a need is maintained a decorum of peace and healthy
environment.
The first step that the what kinds of the customers are and how to deal with them. There are
various customers needs as well as wants as representatives needs to connect as well as
emphasize within the current situations that customers face. Segment customers and also create
personas, try to provide a name personally to the costumers and provide a persona (Gardner,
Linderman, and McFadden, 2018 ).
Create emotional connections with the customers
for the service sector it is very crucial to make the customer loyal towards the organization ,
customers becomes loyal when they are emotionally attached and also remembers how they feel
about the product or services which was provided to them earlier .As sometimes past experience
is the best way to recognize any feeling (Kunz and et.al., 2017).
Capture the feedback
Feedback for the customer as the crucial thing in the service sector so that the services provide to
the customers are improves as per their positive or negative feedback. So feedback plays a major
role as telephonic feedback, feedback from the emails and through the messaged can be taken
from the customers. This provides the hotel Goring about the information of the Hotel that can
improved. Good and Bad experiences are part of feedback some gives the best in positive sense
while some provides the worst in negative sense (Mossberg, 2019).
Hire the right employee for the right job
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Managers of the Goring are always hire the employees that possesses good skills such as
patience, good in communication skills and also have knowledge about the services and
products. Patience is crucial while handling the customers as some customers posses less
manners and screamed a lot for small things in such situation impatience employees who are
customer representatives have maintained the patience (Brashear-Alejandro and et.al., 2016).
Knowledge is also important as of the customers asked about anything and employee of the
Goring Hotel doe not know than the mind of the customer impact in a negative manner. If they
do not know the answer then they make smile on their face reply the customers that “ please sir
wait for a while I will get back to you within some minutes”( Prentice, 2019). This kind of
gesture liked by the customers, and they feel like they are valued and important for the hotel.
CONCLUSION
It has been summarised that need and expectation of customers is to be determine fir
providing products to fulfil their needs there are various customer touchpoints in the Goring
such as websites, check in check out and more . There is great impact of digital advancement in
the service sector to as resulted in improving their operational efficiencies by providing
effective Customer relationship management system like SaaS CRM /web based/cloud Hosted.
IT -assisted CRM and many more. Furthermore there are various customer services approaches
that can be used to improve customer service such as communication ,knowledge, patience .
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REFERENCES
Books and journals
Brashear-Alejandro, T. and et.al., 2016. Leveraging loyalty programs to build customer–
company identification. Journal of Business Research, 69(3), pp.1190-1198.
Gardner, J.W., Linderman, K.W. and McFadden, K.L., 2018. Managing quality crossroads in
healthcare: An integrative supply chain perspective. Quality Management Journal, 25(1),
pp.2-17.
Kunz, W. and et.al., 2017. Customer engagement in a big data world. Journal of Services
Marketing, 31(2), pp.161-171.
Mossberg, L., 2019. Managing extraordinary event experiences: Understanding consumer
immersion. In A Research Agenda for Event Management. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Prentice, C., 2019. Managing service encounters with emotional intelligence. Journal of
Retailing and Consumer Services, 51, pp.344-351.
So, K.K.F. and et.al., 2016. Enhancing customer relationships with retail service brands: The
role of customer engagement. Journal of Service Management, 27(2), pp.170-193.
Steinhoff, L. and Palmatier, R.W., 2016. Understanding loyalty program effectiveness: managing
target and bystander effects. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 44(1), pp.88-
107.
Verleye, K., 2015. The co-creation experience from the customer perspective: its measurement
and determinants. Journal of Service Management, 26(2), pp.321-342.
Voß, C., Hennig-Thurau, T. and Paul, M., 2015. Determining Customer Outcomes By Managing
Employee Emotional Display: A Multilevel Approach. In Ideas in Marketing: Finding
the New and Polishing the Old (pp. 170-170). Springer, Cham.
Yakhlef, A., 2015. Customer experience within retail environments: An embodied, spatial
approach. Marketing Theory, 15(4), pp.545-564.
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