Seventy-four percent of businesses will spend more money on customer relationship management (CRM) infrastructure in 2001 than they did last year, with a majority committing to increase their spending by as much as 50%, according to Jupiter Media Metrix.
The market research company projects that, despite the current economic downturn, the number of individuals seeking online customer service will jump from 33 million in this year to 67 million in 2005. Jupiter analysts warn, however, that companies investing in online-only solutions will fail to advance customer satisfaction because they will not build a consistent customer experience across all channels.
The survey also found that 63% of companies use customer satisfaction statistics to measure the retuirn-on-investment of their CRM outlays, compared with 33% that view cost savings achieved by reducing service staff as the best measurement of return.
Jupiter analysts noted that businesses using customer-satisfaction ROI measures should not expect a quick return on their CRM investments, because the rate at which a business can measure satisfaction depends on how frequently and through which channels it touches its customers.
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