Customer Service Leadership Forum: Achieving Next-Generation Customer Service

The importance of having a business case in place before implementing a CRM system cannot be stressed enough, according to Richard Cunningham, vice president, information services, Prudential Financial (Newark, NJ). Cunningham was part of a panel that addressed the challenges of "Achieving Next Generation Customer Service," at Insurance & Technology's Customer Service Leadership Forum, which took place yesterday at The Roosevelt Hotel in NYC. Also on the panel were Matthew Josefowicz, analyst, Celent Communications (New York), and Mervyn E. Wallis, senior vice president and CIO, New York Life International (New York).

Wallis emphasized the importance of having an organization management structure in place in order to provide customers with consistent information across all touch points. "If you don't have the proper management structure it's harder to achieve CRM," says Wallis.

Celent's Josefowicz concurred with Wallis' view that a company must be organizationally aligned in order to succeed with CRM. "CRM is not a technology problem," says Josefowicz. "It is an organizational challenge that requires technology to address it." Consistency also is critical, Josefowicz stressed. "There is no such thing as a single-channel customer," he told the Leadership Forum audience. "All of the information presented to the customer must be consistent and in real-time across all channels."

Prudential Financial's Cunningham related the initial steps involved in building Prudential's CRM system (the business case for which was established four years ago), which he describes as one of the largest CRM practices on the East Coast. He also warned against management setting up unrealistic expectations of ROIs within eight to 12 months. Cunningham estimates that Prudential's investment in its CRM system, which was between $6 million and $10 million, will see returns in two or three years in total.

New York Life International's Wallis outlined his foundation for achieving next generation customer service. "All the elements are important and none are simple," says Wallis, who stressed the importance of having an organizational focus, relationship services that would manage small projects using customer information to provide an "extra lift of value," and a customer infrastructure that enables complete knowledge of the customer.