Last month, the BPMonline team joined CRM Evolution 2013, an exclusive event that gathers key thought leaders of the industry, best analysts, consultants and vendors. This is the CRM event that defines main CRM trends. This year we showcased our recently launched BPMonline 7.0 with the CRM world’s sleekest user interface. We were able to meet with our customers, partners, potential clients, experts and thought leaders.

The event is known for its dynamic, open and friendly atmosphere which gives great space for networking and productive discussions. Customer centricity became a leitmotif of CRM Evolution 2013.

We are excited to share some of the main trends and takeaways from the event with you:

1. Customer experience takes center stage

   Customer centricity is getting more and more into business strategies and operations. Companies are concentrating on three key elements of Customer Experience: technology, business process management and people leadership.

   Our reality requires business agility. In order to be competitive on the market and provide consistent customer experience, a company needs to respond to fast-changing environments and modify its business processes on the fly. That agility requires appropriate technology to support the changes.

   Though, technology and business processes by themselves do not fulfill customer centricity. It’s rather a state of mindset which requires people leadership. At the end of the day, technology doesn’t solve customer’s issues, but people do. Technology and business processes are needed to assist employees in making customers happy.

   If enterprise software products are tools to serve people in excellent execution of their job, why are these products not designed with the users in mind in order to engage them and lead to greater productivity?

   That is why consumerization of IT has recently become a major trend in the world of modern information technologies. Recent IDG Enterprise research states that consumerization of enterprise IT brings many positive impacts to the organization, including user satisfaction (82%), user productivity (76%) and business agility (70%).

   Indeed, the presentation of Ted Hartley, VP Business Development at BPMonline, was focused on the benefits of Consumerization of Enterprise Software. BPMonline CRM 7.0 with its new context-based interface and human-centered design helps employees stay focused on their work and achieve maximum results.

   If you didn’t have chance to visit Ted’s presentation you can find it here.

2. Deeper personalization of interaction with a customer

   Customer centricity requires right context and relevant content. Deep segmentation, big data and analytics may provide right context, improve customer acquisition and targeting. “B2B and B2C are dead: it is about P2P. Personalized people-to-people experiences.” – says Ray Wang, CEO and Principal Analyst of Constellation Research.

3. CRM is not about technology. It’s all about relations

   One of the most discussed topics of CRM Evolution 2013 was increasing importance of relationships in business, which should be natural and empathic. Ability to find the right words and moment to say sorry when things go wrong, may define whether company earn or lose.

   Businesses need to focus on lead nurturing, relationship building and providing consistent customer experience. Spending money for lead generation may not be enough to keep the business afloat.

4. Social CRM is more than marketing automation

   There were numerous discussions on social media and marketing, but when it comes to social CRM and sales or customer service, they are mostly out of focus. Isolating social media only as a marketing tool, a company can not leverage full potential of social CRM.

   Social collaboration can’t be owned by a certain department. Reviews of happy and unhappy customers are parts of online reputation and can affect sales. That is why work of the front office and back office must be well integrated. True social CRM intelligence is a combination of technology and expert insight from people knowledgeable about your business.

Are you already leveraging these trends to achieve greater customer centricity? Get additional valuable insights from CRM Evolution 2013 with the presentations available here.