Definition of CRM[/i][/b]
“Customer relationship management is a widely-implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service. Customer relationship management describes a company-wide business strategy including customer-interface departments as well as other departments.”
Reasons why CRM fails:[/i][/b][/i][/b]
The organizational changes that take place can be one of the reasons, since the CRM may be spread over different departments. Data integration, inter-departmental communication, and someone to oversee these processes is critical to success.
Inefficiency of the sales-transaction in the company itself, all the planning regards compensation, budgeting, and incentive policies according to a customer-centric model.
Any company engaged in becoming customer centric must be cognizant of the transitional process, including a step by step awareness, a clear funding strategy, and attainable goals; if this stage isn’t planned properly the efforts put in might fail.
The use of computers/software in CRM doesn’t mean total dependence on the same when human touch lacks and when human beings totally rely on this manmade solution without having an eye on all the operations the procedure might fail as well.
The fact is customer relationship problems are typically organization-wide. They require a commitment from decision-makers and staffers to make real changes to how they operate. Those changes may demand new people with a different mix of skills; they may require a new approach from the management team; they may force a company to re-evaluate the way it performs basic tasks.
Things to be done:
Dream big.
Face the truth.
What’s in it for us?
Nothing comes for free. Do an honest cost-benefit analysis of making the required changes.
Write it down. Create a CRM business case.
You might hear that CRM is nothing more than the company rolodex. If you fall for that, you might believe that making improvements on winning and managing customers is easy. In fact, it requires careful planning and buys in from key players in your company, starting in the corner offices and moving down the organizational chart from there. In the real world, CRM is a system of interconnected elements comprising people, process and technology; any improvements to that system have to be carefully planned and executed. Fortunately, finding the right mixture of those three ingredients for your company is possible.
Acknowledging the facts: [/i][/b][/i][/b]
80 interviews with the top 12 CRM vendors’ premiere reference accounts states the following.
Allowing end-users to continue to perform their job and still meet goals and objectives without ever touching a CRM system;
Providing knowledge into a system makes end users less valuable to the company and augments their fears of being replaced;
Failing to achieve user buy-in before pushing business process changes with the software; and
Lack of executive-level commitment throughout the software’s life with the company.
The above facts that were revealed from a survey conducted prove failure of commitment from employees to CRM.
CRM systems are essentially databases with customer oriented forms built on top. They are very good at capturing and organizing structured information, but are horrific at capturing and organizing unstructured information.
“Customer relationship management is a widely-implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service. Customer relationship management describes a company-wide business strategy including customer-interface departments as well as other departments.”
Reasons why CRM fails:[/i][/b][/i][/b]
The organizational changes that take place can be one of the reasons, since the CRM may be spread over different departments. Data integration, inter-departmental communication, and someone to oversee these processes is critical to success.
Inefficiency of the sales-transaction in the company itself, all the planning regards compensation, budgeting, and incentive policies according to a customer-centric model.
Any company engaged in becoming customer centric must be cognizant of the transitional process, including a step by step awareness, a clear funding strategy, and attainable goals; if this stage isn’t planned properly the efforts put in might fail.
The use of computers/software in CRM doesn’t mean total dependence on the same when human touch lacks and when human beings totally rely on this manmade solution without having an eye on all the operations the procedure might fail as well.
The fact is customer relationship problems are typically organization-wide. They require a commitment from decision-makers and staffers to make real changes to how they operate. Those changes may demand new people with a different mix of skills; they may require a new approach from the management team; they may force a company to re-evaluate the way it performs basic tasks.
Things to be done:
Dream big.
Face the truth.
What’s in it for us?
Nothing comes for free. Do an honest cost-benefit analysis of making the required changes.
Write it down. Create a CRM business case.
You might hear that CRM is nothing more than the company rolodex. If you fall for that, you might believe that making improvements on winning and managing customers is easy. In fact, it requires careful planning and buys in from key players in your company, starting in the corner offices and moving down the organizational chart from there. In the real world, CRM is a system of interconnected elements comprising people, process and technology; any improvements to that system have to be carefully planned and executed. Fortunately, finding the right mixture of those three ingredients for your company is possible.
Acknowledging the facts: [/i][/b][/i][/b]
80 interviews with the top 12 CRM vendors’ premiere reference accounts states the following.
Allowing end-users to continue to perform their job and still meet goals and objectives without ever touching a CRM system;
Providing knowledge into a system makes end users less valuable to the company and augments their fears of being replaced;
Failing to achieve user buy-in before pushing business process changes with the software; and
Lack of executive-level commitment throughout the software’s life with the company.
The above facts that were revealed from a survey conducted prove failure of commitment from employees to CRM.
CRM systems are essentially databases with customer oriented forms built on top. They are very good at capturing and organizing structured information, but are horrific at capturing and organizing unstructured information.