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I recently visited Aptify’s India operations. I had an interesting experience one evening that I found relevant to the subject of Customer Relationship Management. A fundamental goal of CRM is to maximize relationship value for your customer. One of the principles is to know the customer and their preferences well so that you can personalize offerings.
During my trip, I was enjoying dinner one evening and one of the people I was with realized that he needed to get some medication that had run out. It was around 9:30 at night. He dialed a number on his cell phone. He didn’t say his name, address, or anything else, just spoke a couple of words. Within 5 minutes, there was a knock on his door and he had the medication in his hand. This was fascinating from my viewpoint on a couple of levels. This medicine delivery man probably has hundreds of customers, but he knew who had called and where to go and which medications to bring. Perhaps the guy has an advanced database system at his office, but I doubt it. The point here is that the customer experience (and loyalty) is a huge factor that makes this model effective. The vast supply of labor in a country such as India can help make such a service possible where it might be cost prohibitive elsewhere. But, I think we can still learn from this and keep in mind that improving customer value isn’t something that is driven entirely by automation. Technology can help scale a good concept and in some cases make it more effective. However, the value to the customer is created by knowing the customer well and finding a way to deliver what they want, when and where they need it.
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