Maximizing Customer Lifetime Value with SAP Service Cloud
To deliver the outcomes that customers expect, retailers must connect customer service to their value chain. It’s no longer an activity that can be confined to a department – modern servicing requires you to activate the entire enterprise to deliver your brand promise and secure customer loyalty and revenue.
Below, we break down how retailers can maximize customer lifetime value with SAP Service Cloud.
THE CHANGING FACE OF CUSTOMER SERVICE
Today’s retailers are being challenged on all fronts due to unprecedented change. The global economy is reeling from macroeconomic shocks, and business models are being upended. There is a new era of workers and customers – the digital natives – and they are reshaping how we engage.
Customers typically contact an organization’s customer service department with a product or service issue to be resolved. The agent must often liaise with the responsible business unit, be it sales, manufacturing, finance, engineering, or another. No customer should be exposed to this complexity, where agents scramble among e-mails, spreadsheets, and disparate applications for help. For too long, customer service has operated as an island, and this disconnect has often led to agent frustration and customer dissatisfaction.
Research confirms that customers aren’t getting the help they need, with 80% of customers believing that the customer experience needs to be improved, and nearly half say customer service support is the reason. They want to contact the brand once to resolve their issue, and they don’t care about separate departments or practices. In parallel, digital natives are using online channels to purchase increasingly complex goods and services. As such, they have high expectations and demands for their experiences, as dictated by the speed of resolution and channels for communication and self-service.
DELIVERING YOUR BRAND PROMISE AND DRIVING BUSINESS GROWTH
Customer service dynamics have changed, especially with the growing use of AI, and the value has strengthened as the customer experience has been catapulted to front and center. We define it as a moment when your brand promise connects with the customer’s intent – a moment that represents an opportunity. Customer service should seize this moment to drive business.
You can do this by taking a holistic approach to the challenge of solving customer problems, adapting and ultimately reimagining service execution. By transforming customer service beyond a one-department activity, the work of serving customers becomes a process that delivers fast and accurate resolutions, regardless of source, every time. Connecting customer service operations to the back office and across the enterprise helps complete the value chain so that you can deliver the outcomes that matter to customers.
If done right, it can be used to protect and grow revenue, deliver on your brand promise, retain and convert customers, help develop new business models, efficiently scale your business, and promote operational excellence. Ultimately, it can maximize customer lifetime value.
CUSTOMER SERVICE THAT ENGAGES, CONNECTS, AND DELIVERS
SAP Service Cloud includes purpose-built capabilities that support three key actions for redesigning customer service:
Engage at the point of need so customers can be served in their context and on their channel of choice
Connect to the value chain to enable comprehensive and collaborative diagnosis and resolution
Deliver greater profitability by protecting existing revenue streams and enabling future growth while optimizing resolution costs
The solution can help you improve the speed, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of your customer service operations so you can achieve true service excellence. It also helps you better understand your customers and free them to engage with you through their preferred channels, times, and modes.
SAP Service Cloud integrates natively with back-end software from SAP, enabling you to truly transform your customer service by connecting great experiences to outcomes that matter for your customers. The benefits to your business include improved resolution times, greater agent efficiency, lower operational costs, and higher customer satisfaction and retention.
If you’re interested in learning more about boosting your customer lifetime value with SAP Service Cloud, contact our team today.
This insight was provided by SAP for value-added resellers like Crescense. Contact our team to learn more about SAP’s various procurement solutions.