Customer interaction today has become multi-channel and a customer can reach an organization through various touch points-phone, fax, email, Web. Customers, as a rule, contact organizations only for 3 reasons - to seek information, to conduct a transaction or to lodge a complaint. Depending on the type of interaction, a set of business rules, workflows and process definitions come into play to satisfy that requirement. These rules and processes are integrated to a data layer for information retrieval, updates or notification.

In a multimedia environment, the customer touch points to an organization are many. It is important that the customer is served not just appropriately but in a manner that will make it memorable. For this it is important that the backend of the varios systems are integrated seamlessly and talk to each other in order to provide the desired experience. Many vendors offer specific program to enhance the customer experience memorably. One such program is offered by Servion under the title customer optimization model.

Ask yourself is your customer a person or just another statistic?

Customer interaction today has become multi-channel and a customer can reach an organization through various touch points: phone, fax, email, or the Web.

We can begin by asking ourselves this simple question: how would we like to be treated if we were customers? This gives us a nice perspective. Every time a customer gets in touch with an organization, it has a unique opportunity to bond with the customer and deliver a great experience. Delivering great customer experience through customer interaction management technology and processes lies at the heart of the organization's CRM practice. In fact, over 70 percent of customers in a recent survey stated that they rated the experience they had when they called the organization, as the key determinant of brand perception.

The customer experiences the organization either through the usage of the product/service, or word of mouth, or just a phone call. According to a recent article in a popular speech technology magazine, 92 percent of customers base their opinion of an organization on their contact center experience. customer contact management is the key to brand building and has to be leveraged to deliver complete value to the enterprise.