EDITOR ’ S QUESTION

Jean-Michel Moutot , Professor , Audencia Business School

No company today can afford to ignore the quality of its customer relations . There are many reasons for this , both technical and economic .

Technology is obviously at the top of the list of the most critical factors . The gradual extension of digital technology to all areas of economic activity has not spared the customer relations sector over the last 20 years . Static customer databases quickly gave way to CRM systems in the 90s . These were backed up by extranet solutions . It took a second generation of CRM solutions , led by Salesforce , for multichannel to give way to omnichannel .

THE GRADUAL EXTENSION OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY TO ALL AREAS OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITY HAS NOT SPARED THE CUSTOMER RELATIONS SECTOR OVER THE LAST 20 YEARS .

The priority from then on was to bring all customer contact points into line with each other . In fact , the proliferation of digital customer access channels has led , and largely continues to lead , to numerous malfunctions , with customers getting lost in the channels . The first lever for improving customer relations has very little to do with strategy . It is both modest in scope and increasingly complex : bringing the company ’ s various customer channels into harmony .

Next there is the question of customer maturity . The now almost unlimited access to information via digital technology has profoundly transformed the customer we meet on a daily basis . Twenty years ago , customers generally knew very little when they first contacted the company . In B2B , this meant that a healthy relationship could be built through education . By educating customers with what they needed to know , the company could build a caring relationship over time . This is now only marginally possible and not very predictable .

Indeed , any two initial sales contacts may successively reveal first an ‘ old-fashioned ’ customer , i . e . with little technical knowledge of the offering , and then an expert who has spent days on the Internet to understand the technique and specify his needs very precisely – right from the first contact . The company needs to be extremely flexible to be able to put either an expert in front of these two customers from the very first contact , or someone with a lower level of skill and therefore at a lower cost .

The second lever is therefore new hybrid sales organisation models . These models will be based on digital solutions incorporating AI , enabling as many customer requests as possible to be resolved , leaving the best salespeople to respond in real-time to expert customers . However , these models are not stable over time , as they are highly dependent on market maturity and competitive intensity . We need to rewrite the relevant organisational models in this new environment .

Customer psychology has changed considerably over the last two decades . At the same time , the proliferation of digital channels has created an expectation of greater warmth in the relationship . While digital technology has enabled a quantum leap in the functional improvement of the customer relationship , emotion and feeling have been side-lined . This will undoubtedly be the challenge for the period ahead : how to continue to make functional progress in customer relations while recreating the emotional bond that is so important for a lasting relationship .

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