Customer Services—Your Ticket to High Performance

We researched what it takes for companies to master customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing and customer management (MCM) for market success.

Global politics has put an enormous strain on travel service companies—and high performance takes a back seat to survival. But new research shows that survival, and inevitably, improved performance, rests on your company’s ability to treat your customers right.

Accenture investigated the relationship between customer relationship competency and market success, unearthing useful strategies for travel service companies looking to lead the pack. We found conclusions closely matching our initial theories. It seems high-performance businesses consistently synchronize their marketing programs with their business and finance objectives, enjoying greater returns than low performers.

Looking to extend our understanding of the relationship between high performance in marketing and customer management (MCM) and actual business results, we studied what it takes for companies to master customer relationship management (CRM) and MCM for market success.

No research project is complete without a control system. Our marketing and customer management Mastery Scale did just that; helping us determine:

• The specific capabilities in Marketing and Customer Management most influential in driving Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) and competitive advantage.
  
  
• The logical capabilities order that drives Marketing and Customer Management mastery and Return on Invested Capital.
  
  
• The differences and similarities in customer needs across industries, business strategies and business contexts.
  
  
• The order in which companies deploy their marketing and customer management tactics to transform a low-performance business to a high-performance business in the most efficient way.
  
  
• The impact on competitive advantage of the time-frame between instituting a strategy and receiving a return on that strategy.
  
  
• The speed and cost with which a low-performance business can become a high-performance business.
  
  
• How high-performing businesses simultaneously manage revenue growth, efficiency and long-term shareholder value growth.
  
  
• A reasonable accounting method and/or value framework for measuring the impact of MCM capital and expense investments.
  
  
• The MCM capabilities low- and high-performance businesses report they have, and which ones they focus on building.
  
  

In our quest to define high-performance CRM mastery, we’ve come to see that leading companies are obsessive about continually winning the battle for the customer. They do this through a number of CRM-related long- and short-term decisions.

We’ve defined long-term decisions as long-lived investments in brands, products, channel structure and process technology where significant capital is required to change core messages, positioning and alignment and degrees of integration.

We’ve defined short-term decisions as short-lived and medium-term investments requiring continuous learning and adaptive control over data and analysis, workforce, organization and customer interaction.

Long term decisions helping companies win loyal customers include:

• Targeted marketing and customer management decisions based on analyzing the links between financial and competitive objectives.
  
  
• Optimizing investments in brands, products and front-office systems in the same manner as a manufacturing company would use to justify the return on investment (ROI) of a machining line.
  
  
• Targeting and aligning product and service brands with customer segments while maintaining a consistent company image.
  
  
• Allocating resources based on an understanding of brand/product/channel economics and customer behavior at the segment or individual customer level.
  
  
• Designing the content and style of communications used for new customer acquisition, cross-sell and service interactions in a manner consistent with company branding.
  
  

• Monitoring and detecting changes in market conditions, customer value and root-causes of customer behavior as they happen, much like a machine detects variation in a manufacturing plant.
  
  
• Automatically updating primary sales and service systems with analytically-derived value propositions and employee performance support tools.
  
  
• Continuously revising and updating the marketing mix based on changes in market conditions, customer value and root-causes of customer behavior.
  
  
• Routing customers to the appropriate channel based on economic value and probability of a successful result.
  
  
• Using manufacturing-style quality improvement techniques to improve customer interaction and marketing campaigns.
  
  

Exhaustive industry expert interviews and CRM data analysis have led Accenture to a number of conclusions on how travel service companies master CRM for market-leading success.

• High-performance businesses consistently execute specific long- and short-term decisions in marketing and customer management in support of their business strategies. They pattern these long-term and short-term decisions to be consistent with their business strategy and financial objectives across the eight CRM and MCM mastery areas.
  
  
• Market leaders integrate corporate, product and service brands with segment-specific value propositions to reinforce a single company image. They have well-integrated brand and value proposition with consistent customer experience.
  
  
• Mature high performers in marketing and customer management enjoy greater financial returns than low performers.