Customer Focus for TCS Upgrade

Publication date: 20 February 2008

Swiss auto club TCS has spent the last four years developing a software system which will help put members at the heart of its business.

In this period of increased competition and market complexity, the improvement of customer relationship management (CRM) has become, more than ever, a priority for businesses. CRM is often seen as an essential tool, although, paradoxically, nobody knows what this type of project exactly involves, other than enormous expense.

Swiss automobile club TCS has taken up the challenge and decided to integrate CRM into the heart of the club, in order to set up an infrastructure serving to establish a lasting relationship with the customer. The effect of this infrastructure is to break down the barriers between the TCS and its members and to form a close relationship.

This company project is therefore geared to paying more attention to the client, answering his specific needs and gaining his loyalty, but also to allowing all sectors of the company to access a single information system.

This system must be able to improve the company's knowledge of its customers and provide them with products/ services that best meet their expectations, and also bring about cooperation and coordination between the different points of contact (agencies, headquarters, accidentprocessing departments).

In other words, a 360° customer view, where the TCS positions the member at the centre of its preoccupations while applying single customer approach for the whole club.

Introducing customer management does not consist solely in installing ad hoc software, but also means that a project for a change in the way the company operates necessarily has to be taken into account. In fact, introducing customer management has repercussions on the very strategy of the company, which will have to change its culture and adopt a way of operating that privileges the customer/member. At the TCS, one of the first phases consisted in setting in place a CRM Datawarehouse, which identifies the existing information flow and establishes a system for gathering all existing information on the customers in various computer systems.

All customer data was then integrated and repatriated into a single database during the period 2003 to 2006.

In a second phase, it was necessary to bring in applications allowing the various services (agencies, multi-channel centre of competence, call centre, accident-processing department) to work together with the aim of coordinating the messages sent to the members/ customers. "TCRM" (for Event-Oriented Campaign Management), "CRM-Frontend" (for customer contact management) and "Mailinghouse" (for centralised sending of marketing and sales documents) are three applications that have become projects in the second phase. They complete the circle to cover all the needs of all concerned (TCS and members alike).

In detail, under the illustration of the global project named EOKM, TCRM is an application that has been set in place for the management of targeted campaigns and the segmentation of direct marketing campaigns.

CRM-Light-Frontend is an application for customer contact management. Collaborators benefit from a 360° customer view, with the history and important data of each customer at their disposal. Additional functions for the "club" section of the agencies include the introduction of Contact Management, the centralised sending of sales documents and information, and the management of the TCRM campaigns. This application has been developed specially for the TCS.

Mailinghouse introduces a centralised solution for implementing the TCRM campaigns as well as distributing sales documents and information from the "club" section of the agencies. This solution has been realised with partners from the outside.

The overall objective of this TCS project will be achieved only once the three applications have been integrated. The second phase began in mid-June 2007. Recently, a pilot phase was put in place, which lasts until the end of February 2008. This will be followed by the adaptation and finalisation of the different elements of the project by August 2008 (at which time CRM-Light-Frontend will be up and running for 600 employees of the TCS). By the end of 2008, the project will be fully implemented.

However, CRM is not solely a computer product. Its implementation relies on a technical infrastructure, but the accent is placed above all on human value. In fact, it is people, not computer systems, who initiate and develop the relationship.

If numerous failures have been noted in the setting up of CRM systems, it is because the companies concerned lose sight of that precept, placing the accent on the computer systems rather than on the human aspects. A capacity for empathy, an open, transparent and sincere attitude – particularly in managing critical moments in the provision of services, the ability to honestly recognise one's limits and professional capabilities, and the ability to remain positive vis-à-vis the person one is speaking with, are all assets that can be put to good use in a customer relationship