e-Customer test drive facility

To help senior financial services executives build profitable, consumer-driven organizations, Andersen Consulting is offering a customer relationship management (CRM) workshop at its New York City-based Financial Ideas Exchange. The five-year-old workshop facility and business solutions showcase offers the financial services industry a chance to explore ways of transforming their organizations for increased competitiveness.

The workshop includes an "eCustomer Interaction Center" integrating the Web and traditional channels. The demo follows a hypothetical customer through different life stages and varying financial needs.

The demonstrations considers inbound and outbound marketing, sales and service capabilities at the point of customer contact -- across a variety of channels including the Internet, telephone, e-mail, and wireless devices.

"e-commerce is rapidly changing the nature of financial services, including customer expectations," said Tom Tynan, a financial services partner with Andersen. "Our vision for CRM is based on enabling consumers to interact when and how they want - which will increasingly occur across multiple channels and traditional boundaries."

The eCustomer Interaction Center demo provides a "clicks and mortar" model that encompasses both traditional channels, including branch offices and call centers, and the Internet.

The demo showcases a number of CRM vendors, who are co-participants at the Financial Ideas Exchange. These include:, S1 Corporation, Chordiant, Kana, and Vignette . Andersen Consulting expects that future versions of the demo will feature components Calico Commerce , Prime Response, E.piphany and Siebel Systems .

"Today's customer-service representatives will require a new level of skills as they shift from simply handling inquiries and transactions on a reactive basis to proactively engaging consumers with financial advice and consulting," said Tynan. At the same time, processes must be redesigned and new information technology applied to support this new role."