The Customer Relationship and Document Management

For many service oriented businesses, the opportunity to interact with its customers are limited to perhaps a couple of calls a year to a service centre and communications that are sent via the mail.

For companies with multiple service/product offerings the opportunity is to cross-sell additional products to the customer. The premise is that it costs far more to acquire a customer than to sell new products to an existing customer. It is also understood that losing a customer is perhaps the most costly activity of all.

With such limited opportunity to communicate with customers, it can be difficult to achieve the cross-selling goal. Document Management presents organisations with an opportunity. Probably the most frequent customer interaction is, the customer bill. Usually sent monthly, this is the possibly the most common point of customer interactivity.

However, too many companies see this as just a billing process rather than an opportunity. Bills will be studied and analysed in far more detail than a direct mail item whilst customers are becoming increasingly resistant to sales calls to their home.

By using the bill as a relationship opportunity, organisations can improve their overall customer relationship and cross selling performance. Thus in this context, Document Management is a key component of the Customer Relationship Management process. It is strategically important and should be considered by senior executives in this light.