Xchange Inc., Boston, last week introduced Xchange 7, a customer relationship management solution designed to use a company's previous CRM investments to synchronize activities and help make customer relationships profitable.
Aside from its completely Web-based user interface, this release of Xchange's software suite offers several new features, including:
• Personal home pages that provide users with instant access to an individual's preferred reports and analyses.
• E-mail alerts to users on the status of their campaigns.
• Guided work flow wizards that simplify analyses, campaign creation and execution.
• Several enhancements to Xchange Real Time, including an easy-to-use interface for defining real-time rules; the ability to use information gathered during an interaction session to define rules for that session; and the ability to access legacy systems or front-office applications in real time to gather customer information and determine a course of action during that interaction.
The company said Xchange 7 addresses a critical issue facing businesses: the need to earn more profit from their customer base. In November, Xchange conducted a survey of more than 130 Global 2000 firms and found this issue to be a common concern.
Xchange 7, which integrates with virtually all CRM solutions from other leading vendors, addresses this issue by:
• Creating vertical-specific analyses that identify profitable and potentially profitable customer groups.
• Providing personalized offers to each channel so inbound customer inquiries are responded to with the best, most relevant offer based on up-to-the-second customer profiles.
• Providing a profit-focused methodology for front-line personnel to use in delivering central campaigns.
• Driving consistent customer communications out across all customer channels, including the Web, e-mail, call centers, branches, retail locations and the field sales force.
• Synchronizing front-office applications and legacy applications to share customer information in real time so customers receive a consistent and personalized experience regardless of the channel.
• Enabling companies to measure the results of their efforts with vertical-specific, Web-based reports that contain statistics such as profitability by channel, cross-sell success rates, profit per customer and attrition rate trends.
Allstate Insurance recently bought Xchange's CRM suite and will upgrade to Xchange 7 when it ships. Dennis DeGregor, chief customer officer at Allstate, credits Xchange's profit-focused approach as one of the main reasons for partnering with Xchange.
“We found that so-called 'end-to-end' CRM suites lacked the key components required for enterprisewide synchronization,” DeGregor said. “We selected Xchange due to its strong marketing automation technology, but also because Xchange can accommodate our needs for a fully integrated CRM solution in the future, one that will allow us to leverage and unite our entire CRM infrastructure for greater ROI.”
Five products make up the Xchange 7 solution. They can be purchased separately or in combination, and they share a common, Web-based interface that provides users with a seamless experience as they move from one application to another. Four of the products are encompassed in a suite called Xchange Dialogue; the fifth is Xchange Real Time.
Xchange 7 is scheduled to ship by the end of the first quarter.
