EFM as the Hub of the Extended CRM Application Infrastructure
Posted by Roderick Morris on Wed, Aug 19, 2009
(Used by permission of Forrester.)
As
the pioneers of EFM, and the ones who named the category, we at Vovici are glad to see that Forrester has recognized the central role that enterprise feedback management can play in extending the capabilities of traditional CRM. Clearly, customer understanding is critical to each of the other segments:
- Customer targeting works best when organizations understand the types of customers that are most satisfied and most loyal, as discovered through EFM surveys. One could argue that customer targeting without customer surveying is like shooting in the dark.
- Customer acquisition works best when deploying sales force automation. And sales force automation works best when you have deep understanding of win/loss and rep productivity through transactional surveys. Acquisition is also supported when EFM is used to audit, measure and alert issues in Contract Life-cycle Management (CLM) systems.
- Customer retention is a key focus of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty studies. By using surveys with email alerts and triggers, EFM systems help organizations intervene to improve customer loyalty…not just measure it.
- Customer collaboration has been a particular area of focus for EFM vendors. Vovici integrates with third-party customer forums and customer community platforms, as well as offers our own online community platform or MROC specific to research.
Back at the center of the hub, Vovici has long integrated with third-party BI systems, and—in our
Feedback Intelligence product—has a BI system that uniquely combines survey and operational data. There is no more powerful tool on the market for creating highly analytical and segmented reports on the fly.
EFM has come a long way since Vovici introduced the first enterprise feedback management system (under that label) in 2004. Expect the pace to accelerate as EFM solutions are more tightly woven into the fabric of complementary CRM applications.