IDC APAC reported that "customer care is emerging as a key IT investment area for CIOs in the current downturn", according to the findings of a new poll.
While most organisations are reducing or freezing their investments in IT, 23 percent of the Australian-based respondees indicate they will still invest in IT solutions that can help them increase earnings or save costs. Chief among these areas is customer care, which nearly half of the respondents saw as a way to generate revenue, with many ready to progress beyond traditional customer relationship management, IDC says.
The world has changed so rapidly in the last 12 months in terms of customers informing themselves and in creating their own customer experiences that it will take a lot more than "new advanced customer care tools, such as customer analytics, customer database management and new web-based tools".
It's going to take a whole new business planning approach to social media and customer engagement, and that's hard work. It's where you need serious business-purposed planning and execution processes, such as those of the Social Media Academy.
See full article and my comment.
Related is the study released today by the Australia Centre for Retail Studies, which found that found that about 50% of people in Australia research their purchase before heading to the store. Comments to this article centred on the need for an effective online buying website, but I think that it goes much deeper given the new role of the social web.
The social media is part of the brand behaviour, and this needs to be taken in to account in planning the whole customer interaction and how they inform themselves. Again, this is not a simple matter and certainly not something like just running a Facebook campaign or "launching" a Twitter profile. It requires serious cross-function planning and a proper social media assessment.
See full article and my comment.
It's more and more shaping up that 2010 will be the year when social media and the customer experience hits critical mass.
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