The customer connection: armed with the knowledge that customers hold the key to their companies' success. CEOs are embracing customer relationship management as a valuable consumer science - Innovation & the Customer - chief executive officers

Chief Executive, The, June, 2002 by Molly Rose Teuke

The intersection of consumer accessibility and customer relationship innovation is the new locus of competition, says Anton, who cites three key facets of CRM innovation. First is operational -- using technology to make it almost seamless for customers to get information. Second is analytical-using new tools to process the growing body of data gained via data fingerprinting. And third is collaborative -- partnering with vendors to cost-effectively enable all of the self-service desires and demands of the customer.

"Customers will always win," concludes Purdue's Feinberg. "They will always get what they want, so you'd better know what it is and give it to them better than anyone else. The promise of CRM will be as strong 10 years from now as it is today, and we will be further along on the road to fulfilling it."

RELATED ARTICLE: Co-sourcing Calling

Betsy Bernard thrives on innovation and risk. It's one of the aspects she loves most about her job as president and CEO of AT&T Consumer. Not surprising, then, that when she signed an innovative co-sourcing agreement with Accenture in January. it involved significant risk, calling for AT&T Consumer to spend $2.6 billion over the next five years to transform sales and service delivery.

While outsourcing isn't unusual at AT&T Consumer, this arrangement is unique, says Bernard. "We didn't start down this road saying we were going to create a co-sourcing agreement." she explains. "We started with the thought that we needed to transform our delivery capability. What we came up with was so large, so transformational, so radical, so encompassing, that a co-sourcing structure was more comfortable than the usual tag-you're-it outsourcing agreement."

The agreement plays into the three strategic objectives Bernard laid out when she took the helm of AT&T Consumer last year: to manage the business for cash, to expand service delivery capability and to prudently invest in growth opportunities. "I have a burning platform," says Bernard. "I'm operating in an industry that is in decline. We are not going to be successful at AT&T Consumer if we take incremental steps. We have to take big, bold, transformation steps, and this is an example of one of them."

Some would say you don't get much bolder than integrating self-service into customer care, yet that's one central thrust of the agreement. AT&T Consumer has begun exploring new Web-based and IVR (interactive voice response] technologies, and plans to expand on that, drawing on Accenture's expertise with CRM to create an engaging self-service platform.

To bring the process into focus, Bernard began defining a clear set of metrics on what AT&T Consumer was capable of delivering on its own, without the benefit of a co-sourcing partner. "We were signing a deal based on how effectively the partnership would perform off our trend lines," says Bernard. "When you do that, you better work really hard to know what those trend lines are."

That means knowing where you're going, how you're best going to get there -- and being flexible enough to make changes midstream if things aren't working. "You have to zig and zag and constantly ask yourself "Does this still make sense?'" she says. "Flexibility has to be a core competency, both culturally and skill-wise, and it has to be written into the agreement."