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Customer Call Centre
Posted By: kassertee* on 3/9/2005 2:39 AM (CST) 250 Points
My company is a small local bank in africa. We have 2 main business units catering for B2B and B2C customers. The B2B has 2 seperate units for Institutional and Corporate/Industrial buyers. B2C has a unit for professionals as well as the least preferred retail mass market. The present headache is to set up a call centre for the preferred segments of the B2B + the professionals. My initial thought is for the centre to go beyond complaints and enquiries to handle customer database management to help our CRM drive. I am currently contemplating the procurement of a good CRM software for the purpose. Any ideas on how to go about setting up such a centre and the most appropriate software.

Posted by: jcmedinave Accepted Answer
3/11/2005 8:09 PM (CST)
Now the call center became the contact center, a place where you contact the customers for delivering services, sell products, develop relations, increase customer knowledge, distribute the transactions to all the organization. The better software should be compatible with your actual system, because you will need to communicate to them, give and receive information. The employee profile is very important, enthusiastic, service attitude, listening, trustworthy, positive, financial services knowledge, internal operation, gentle voice, empathic.

http://www.crmguru.com/
http://www.crmadvocate.com/
http://crm-daily.newsfactor.com/
http://www.callcenterdepot.com/CCD/associations.htm
 
Posted by: kassertee* Author Response
3/16/2005 2:48 PM (CST)
The response is wonderful. I fully agree with jcmedinave. The next problem is how to find the best crm software.
 
Posted by: billc24 Accepted Answer
5/10/2005 10:28 AM (CST)
kassertee,
Before you can identify the best CRM software, you need to clearly identify what you want it to do. Different software bring different advantages to the table. My suggestion would be to start with your ideal situation and evaluate software based on that. Most likely no one software will meet all your needs. So then you need to decide whether you are willing to give up a little to buy an off the shelf solution or want to invest in having a custom solution created for you.

I hope this helps!

Bill
 
Posted by: Sanjeev Kumar Vyas Accepted Answer
5/13/2005 6:13 AM (CST)
I will agree with bill.

If you have the resources youmight want to get one customized to suit your needs. Also the solution will have to be compatible with your current systems. Its no point buying a CRM software that is not compatible with exsisting system and them you replace the whole system.

 
Posted by: kassertee* Author Response
5/13/2005 8:24 AM (CST)
Thanks Bill and Sanjeev Kumar Vyas. We have decided on GOLDMINE as the most appropriate software. This is to enable us use the centre also for customer database management. We have not yet made any commitments with the vendors. Members could therefore make comments on this as well.
 
Posted by: Dwell13 Accepted Answer
5/13/2005 8:52 AM (CST)
I have worked with my current CRM for over 7 years, and have advised many people referred to me in my industry on picking their own solution.
One of the MOST critical pieces of advice I can offer is that when you go to evaluate a CRM option, you have a few of your end users with you - preferablely ones that span the spectrum of your group in technical knowledge. Before the CRM I am currently using, I was with an organization where the CRM seemed great to me, a person of higher end technical skills - but all my sales people hated it, and most just would not use it. The one I work with today has 100% adoption by my sales and support crew, and even my lowest tech capable user (who also happens to be my boss) is able to function and use it.
The second most important thing: Don't pay a huge amount of money for the Big Name. I have seen too many organization WAY overpay because they thought that the CRM with the most pretigious name must be the best - and instead found the users hated it, and it was very difficult to customize.
Third: you Will have to customize. It is inevitable. As Bill said - it is VERY important that you go into this with a clear idea of what you need. Once you have that - make sure that the solution you pick is not really hard to cutomize - because inevitably - even if you go into this with a great plan - actual usage is going to show not everything you thought would work does work...and you will need to do additional customizations.
Last: referrals - before choosing a CRM solution, make sure you can talk to some actual customers that use it - and ask them about both their experience with the product you are looking at, what other products they looked at, and why they chose this one.

Hope this helps - Best of Luck!!

Deb
 
Posted by: carrie77 Moderator Response
5/15/2005 1:26 PM (CST)
Hello all. I am closing this question since it's more than 2 weeks old. We do this to reward the contributions of participants in a timely manner + to give increased visibility to the newer questions.

Thanks for participating!
Carrie Shearer, Production Editor
 


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