In a Multi-Channel Era, How Do we Put The Client at the Center?

Written by: Shai Einat, CTO of CRM, Elad Systems.

How to be client centered.

Twenty years ago, a significant shift in perception began to take hold in many organizations around the world with regard to service: they began to focus on the customer instead of on the product or service. This shift marked the beginning of the CRM age, when infrastructures and processes were developed in order to put the client at the center of the marketing and selling process.

Soon, sales, service and marketing operations were all turned over to the CRM. The system empowered companies to understand a client’s needs better, to focus on which services clients were actually receiving and to identify possible meeting points between the client and the company.

Today, two decades later, the CRM remains a critical component in a company’s interaction with a client, whether the company is large, medium or small. The CRM is possibly even more important in 2019 than ever, due to the transformation in the way companies communicate with their audience.

The variety of channels through which a client can interact with an organization grows from year to year, and changes all the time. Clients no longer speak to companies through letters, faxes or emails only. Consumers of today want to communicate on Facebook or WhatsApp; they expect to receive service through chats on a company website or in a stand-alone company application. Consumers aren’t willing to come to a monthly meeting or even to pick up the phone.

Relationships with clients don’t begin the first time a client approaches the company, but a long time prior. A potential client may pick up information about the company on social media or through other marketing channels. Of course, it is more complicated to work on the relationship during this early stage.

Elad designs and implements solutions for Microsoft Dynamics 365. We develop extensions and plugins for the platform so it can handle the complex requirements of this new digital and social media world.

We understood that clients needed to communicate with companies on their own terms; to accomplish this, we created SimpleChat, a solution that enabled communication on any digital channel (chat, SMS, facebook, WhatsApp), while maintaining the integrity and continuity of a conversation held among different channels. Company representatives access client requests on one unified screen, regardless of the channel from which it originated. A conversation that began in one channel can continue straight into another communication device.

In addition to SimpleChat, Elad has developed a wide variety of plugins for Dynamics. Our goal has always been to broaden the reach of one of the best business tools in the world.

Here’s a short list of some of our projects:

Scheduling Tool: a scheduling tool for field reps, which can set meetings and update Outlook calendars for both parties. The tool can schedule resources based on skills and can plan a work day with optimal use of resources.
Organizational structure tool: This tool was created for large organizations. The tool automatically inputs each employee in your organization, with all related definitions, such as definitions of security roles. Each employee is appointed to a business division.
Synchronizing Tool: Can input tens or even hundreds of millions of items from the organization’s system.
Document Tool: document saving, document tagging, document scanning, showing documents on a screen like a fax, so it is easy to read, digital signing and more.
Service Contract Component: Lets you define the exact process by which you will interact with each specific client – which meetings and calls are needed and at what intervals. Each client is tailored to his or her own specific needs and can be evaluated by reviewing the planning against what actually happens.