Transforming versus Overhauling: .NET Framework in CRM

Transforming versus Overhauling: .NET Framework in CRM

Maintaining contact, keeping profitable customers, and preventing customer churn are huge concerns at customer care departments worldwide. This is why there is a constant search for the best possible customer information systems (CIS) that will allow frontline agents to concentrate on keeping customers happy instead of hunting down information on cranky databases and switching through many applications that refuse to talk to each other. Upgrading everything in one fell swoop with a Web-ready, multi-tier platform like J2EE or the NET framework may be an option but the prospect of a painful transition and frustrated customers is enough to cause CIO’s to hunt for compromises.

First of all, NET framework integration ought to include effectively handling multiple legacy CRM applications that are a fact of life at utilities, airlines, telecommunications and the hospitality trade because these industry verticals were the first to drive CIS deployment two decades ago. Today, agents have to cope with logging on to several applications to sign up a customer, relay service pricing, complete a credit check, confirm billing status, and validate a service outage report and so on. This drives cost per transaction sky-high.

To reduce the call queues, Microsoft likes to boast that NET framework architecture can aggregate customer care data into one seamless database. Such a database takes inputs from, and communicates with, all manner of self-service channels: e-mail, IVR scripting, automated online agent, ATM’s and customer terminals.

Rather than replace everything immediately, NET framework SOA can overlay existing systems and present customer care agents with a unified view of all information about a customer, pulled in from a variety of databases. The upshot, of course, is a dramatic decrease in average handling time and agent productivity. Clearly, a proposed solution using NET framework is most promising when it can seamlessly integrate with legacy applications (at least, at first), afford agents a single view of customer data, accommodates self-serve channels and is of course, competitively priced.