Why Empathy Matters to Your Bottom Line, and How CRM Can Close the Gap
Why is empathy valued more highly today when it comes to CRM? Here’s a clue from the Temkin Group’s 2014 Experience Ratings report: companies across the board struggle with their customer’s emotional experience.
- Across 19 industries studied, scores for emotional experience lagged behind the functionality or accessibility customer experience scores.
- The highest-rated companies have a rate only in the 70% range (“Okay”).
- Many companies (especially health care, wireless, and Internet providers) rate no higher than the 30%-40% range.
These are alarming stats if you feel that customer experience has a direct impact on the bottom line, whether you are focusing on B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer) CRM. Improving customer experience means improving customer retention – which has a much better ROI than expensive efforts to acquire new customers.
But how does a customer’s emotional experience relate to empathy, and how does all this messy emotional stuff affect your CRM anyway?
Merriam-Webster defines empathy as “the feeling that you understand and share another person’s experiences and emotions.” Empathy is the building block of relationships, and CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management after all. CRM must help build those relationships, with empathy for both customers and front-line employees built in from the ground floor, not stuck in later.
Today we build relationships quickly with the use of technology, especially mobile technology. Forrester Research’s Top Trends of CRM in 2014 notes that “The Mobile Mind Shift Will Force CRM To Evolve Quickly.” It goes on to say that implementing mobile solutions “requires navigating a complex set of technology, process, and people decisions.”
In that list, the people decisions have to come first. Your CRM solution must allow you to use your technology as tools to build your relationships. This means thinking about people’s experiences and emotions early on in the process of adopting a CRM strategy and technology. Your CRM should be the structure with which you develop important relationships.
BPA is a leader in providing tools that mean better relationships, better collaboration and more effective CRM. BPA mobile solutions offer flexibility, convenience, and ease of use so you can focus on the important thing: building relationships.