The Customer-Focus/Profit Connection
Taking care of customers takes care of the bottom line. That's the takeaway from this year's Gartner CRM Excellence Awards. BNSF Railway took top honors in the Excellence in Enterprise CRM category with a customer strategy that contributed to 41 percent revenue growth. Uniprise won the Excellence in Sales, Marketing or Customer Service category for its customer care initiative, which resulted in a reduction in average handle time in the range of 18 to 21 percent and an increase customer retention and satisfaction that have boosted the bottom line.
BNSF and Uniprise may have taken top honors, but they certainly weren't the only winners. The other finalists also saw a revenue boost from their customer strategies. In the Excellence in Enterprise CRM category, Thailand-based mobile operator Advanced Info Services garnered such results from its customer strategy as 50 percent revenue growth and a churn rate 50 percent lower than the industry average, and Hewlett-Packard’s gains include a 160 percent improvement in its pipeline health and a lead-to-revenue improvement of $1 billion.
In Excellence in Sales, Marketing or Customer Service category, finalists NetBank (see “Cashing in on the Customer Experience”) decreased attrition to less than 8 percent and began transforming its customer care operation into a sales generator that now contributes roughly 3 percent of revenue for new products and services sold, and Toronto-based men’s clothier Harry Rosen Inc. (see “Tailoring an Old-Fashioned Service Ethic for the 21st Century") is expanding through its focus on what it calls profiled clients.
With such stellar results its surprising that more companies don't take customer centricity past talking the talk to truly the walking the walk. What's your opinion on the link between customer centricity and bottom-line gains?
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