Some CRM Don’ts to Keep in Mind

There are some strict no-no’s that you should be aware of with reference to offering customer service. The key is to keep the negatives out and accentuate the positive. Remember never say “we never”, “we don’t”, “we can’t”, “you’re wrong” or other such phrases.

It’s all about the customer’s comfort and well-being and not about operational efficiency and protocol. There will always be situations when the customer demands a little bit extra, for example a refund without a purchase receipt. You would be within your rights to refuse but try and put a positive spin to the situation. Offer alternatives like the current sales price of the article in question or bonus loyalty points if you are running some kind of a scheme.

Make good a promise and deliver on what you say. The easiest way to put off a customer and ruin a lot of good marketing effort is to not deliver on time or worse, renege on a promise. Keep your end of the deal if you wish to see the customer again. A lot of CRM don’ts are related to contact center activities. Your contact center employees should not come across as ignorant or uninterested in the customer’s complaints.

How to Select the Right CRM Solution

So you run a business and you wish to select a CRM solution that is a perfect fit for your company. There is a plethora of CRM alternatives out there, you need to select the best based on a few criteria. You have to be in a position to ask the right questions so that you can get the required information about software capabilities and vendor appropriateness.

Consider the following points:

• What are your prime requirements; targeted marketing, customer retention, adding to the customer base, business intelligence, or a combination of these

• Is your staff prepared to move on to a CRM system and work on the deployment

• Do you have the IT strength to run and maintain a CRM deployment

• What is your financial capacity to endure a sustained deployment process

• Is your business better suited to SaaS or an on-premise CRM deployment

• What is the extent of database integration that is required

• Will your legacy systems work with your new CRM deployment

• What will be the cost of upgrades

• Is the vendor reliable, what is his past track record

• At what point will your CRM system yield an ROI

If you search for answers to these questions, you will not go wrong with your CRM selection.

What is Customer Experience Management?

Customer experience management or CEM is the next evolutionary step for CRM. With CEM, the focus is on customer experience rather than on operational practices. A “customer centric” attitude is central to making use of the data generated. A CEM strategy aims to involve the top-level management at every level so that the practices implemented are not purely market- or operations driven. Every interaction with the customer is viewed as an opportunity to learn more about his preferences, his lifestyle, and what drives his purchase decisions.

CEM is an exhaustive strategy and a management style that extends across all business functions and not just the front end. A customer centric attitude has to be visible at the back-end too. This helps to help evaluate the gaps that may exist in your present business practices. Immediate or short-term profitability may have to be put on hold when implementing CEM practices. An exciting new idea to implement in CEM is to make use of Web 2.0 in order to reach out to the customers through blogs, forums, podcasts, emails, online press releases, and social networking sites. CEM is about molding the customer experience to the best interests of parties, the buyer and the seller.

How Crucial is Proactive Customer Care

One of the oft cited facts about CRM is that it is most effective when you exceed customer expectations and the best way to do it is by providing proactive customer care. One of the great things about proactive customer care is that it does not let problems arise so that time and effort spent in problem solving is less. Needless to state that customer satisfaction with a business is greater when transactions happen without ever having to resort to calling the contact centers.

Businesses benefit by a reduction in costs of running the operations as reactive customer care is usually an expense in terms of time and money. Proactive customer care is actually the essence of CRM; it is what a company should ideally strive for with all the data that is thrown up by CRM systems. Call center costs are also reduced. Proactive customer care can be that key differentiator between you and your competitors, you can achieve it without any extra spending, however you require is right thinking and effort, especially from the customer-facing staff. The front end should be allowed decision making powers so that they can make judicious use of their training, experience, and their on-the-spot judgments in dealing with a customer.

Weaknesses of CRM systems – Part 1

Although CRM spending is increasing by the day, there is some concern regarding the rate at which CRM deployments are failing. This two-part piece aims to bring out the issues that CRM vendors are loath to talk about.

• A CRM deployment can be a major resource guzzler through its entire lifespan. Costs include cost of software, deployment expenses, customization costs, upgrade costs, licensing costs, cost of lost productivity during implementation, cost of educating the user staff, hardware and equipment costs and costs of maintaining an IT staff for running the CRM.

• Delayed implementation can lead to increased frustrations as budgeted costs go haywire and employee morale and interest goes down. Rarely does a CRM system start to deliver an ROI within the theoretical time frame arrived at. Delayed ROI and poor gains from a CRM system in the initial phases can quickly down management enthusiasm

• A CRM deployment demands exhaustive changes in the company’s business methods. The IT department has to be up to the task of managing a CRM system; the user base has to be convinced and then trained. Also care needs to be taken that the company’s business philosophy does not become secondary to the software, the CRM applications have to fit in with the company’s business practices as far as possible.

Weaknesses of CRM systems – Part 2

Continuing from the earlier post, here are a few more points that CRM vendors are loath to discuss:

• Organizational co-ordination does not come easy. Departments can often be loath to align their operations to meet system architecture requirements. A smooth deployment requires co-ordination otherwise piecemeal deployments can throw the process off kilter. Companies also need to ensure that their key officers and managers stay involved with the deployment till the end, if one happens to leave mid-way, getting the right replacement can be a tedious process.

• A CRM solution is as effective as its users want it to be. A major reason for slow and failed deployments is that the management often fails to get a buy-in from the users who are to be involved in the day-to-day working. Salespersons especially can be loath to changes in established practices particularly if they are meeting their sales targets. System requirements are to be met at every touch point if the system has to deliver.

• A complete CRM suite that is equally effective across all applications is difficult to find. Each vendor has applications that can be considered best-of-breed and some that are not that good. So, while you may have good BI applications and data mining capabilities, your email management and SFA may not be that great.