engaging Chinese consumers

Interviewing entrepreneurs in China: How to build a robust CRM in China

China Paradigm interviewed Enjoyce Zhu, the co-founder of Edenred China, a global agency specialized in loyalty marketing in China, to learn the best practices for both big corporations and small brands to do CRM in China.

Enjoyce Zhu, a veteran journalist, an evangelist of CRM in China

Enjoyce Zhu completed her Bachelor’s Degree in International Business Communications at Nanjing University in 1999. Right after graduation, she began working for Xinhua News Agency in Beijing as a journalist. In 2004, she furthered her education and received an MBA degree from China Europe International Business School.

With a huge passion for CRM in China, Enjoyce joined Edenred China in 2004 as an Account and Operation Director. In 2013, with almost 10 years’ experience of doing loyalty marketing in China, Enjoyce was promoted to the Chief Operating Officer and Dean of Loyalty Plus Academy of Edenred China.

In the past March, she was invited to attend the ERMS Congress 2019 & 6th China Ecommerce and Retail Innovation Summit in Shanghai as the moderator in the panel discussion. Now, Enjoyce is one of the most well-known specialists in engaging Chinese consumers with revolutionary CRM in China.

loyalty marketing in China
[Enjoyce Zhu, a master in the CRM in China]

Edenred China: Good customer service in China is the foundation of a brand

Unlike Edenred China, that is specialized in CRM in China, Edenred Group focuses more on providing payment solutions for the working world. Founded in France in 1962, Edenred started with the famous Ticket Restaurant to introduce the business model of meal vouchers into the French market. Within the past 50 years, Edenred has succeeded in growing into a global leader of employee benefits with digital solutions.

 CRM in China
[Edenred China, a global leader in CRM in China and payment solutions]

In 2000, Edenred decided to work on loyalty marketing in China with pre-paid business. However, the company discovered that the old business model did not work for engaging Chinese consumers. Therefore, Enjoyce Zhu developed the tailored service of customer relationship management for Edenred to succeed in China.

Nowadays, Edenred China has more than 100 employees and serves 20 key clients, including Sephora and Michelin. All of its products and services surround its core business, which is CRM in China. According to Enjoyce Zhu, in the past, the company only provided customized CRM for big corporations. However, observing the rising market of big data in China, the company integrates CRM 4.0 more and more into its solutions for customer service.

“In new retail in China, big data is the essence of the company. You have to make full use of these data to build a strong CRM in China.”

With the help of big data, Edenred China can collect all the necessary information to engage Chinese consumers with a unique ID across all channels. After establishing a powerful internal ecosystem of big data in China, the companies are able to educate all their employees on how to provide excellent customer service.

“At the end, the CRM in China is all about engaging Chinese consumers,” said Enjoyce, “The consumer experience at 4.0 is all seamless, no matter where these consumers are.”

What does new retail mean to CRM in China?

In a 2017 letter written to the shareholders, Jack Ma, the founder, and CEO of Alibaba, first bring the concept of “new retail in China,” which opened a new age for Chinese online marketplaces. To Enjoyce, new retail is how businesses can operate offline stores like online ones, where big data still plays a critical role to enable a revolutionary way of doing CRM in China.

To improve the offline customer service in China, Enjoyce Zhu and her team developed a digital solution called Smart Inchain, which can be used as an APP or as a WeChat mini program. Through this product, all the sales representatives are able to engage the Chinese consumers who have been in their stores before.

Smart Inchain is connected with Edenred’s powerful model of big data in China. Therefore, once a returned customer enters the store, based on his or her preferences, Smart Inchain will recommend the best products to sell to this particular customer. Moreover, it can connect the salesperson with customers they recruited to provide personalized CRM in China.

However, witnessing more and more innovative ways of engaging Chinese consumers, Enjoyce Zhu also predicts that the rising AI-formulated chatbots will be efficient for CRM in China.

“Even if you have human beings doing calls, sometimes they will make mistakes. I believe chatbot is the right way to do CRM in China in the future because it saves a lot of manpower for the customer service.”


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