CRM - Doing it Right

From a retail perspective, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) will be a critical part of any successful omni-channel strategy.  The ability to provide a great customer experience in-store, online, and across geographies will require knowing who and where your customer during any interaction – before, during, and after a transaction has occurred.

Though it’s not a retail-specific paper, Maklan, Knox and Peppard offer some tips about “Why CRM Fails and How to Fix It” (Sloan Review-MIT, Summer 2011). 

One of the seemingly obvious yet often overlooked issues is that managers see CRM as a technology solution and fail to recognize that IT is just an enabler.  Investing and implementing new systems while running a business the same way it’s always been run is about as useful as a buying a fishing rod in the desert – failure to think about how new tools will be used or by whom is the surest way to see that those tools end up buried and forgotten in a back office without making any impact other than showing up on the wrong side of a balance sheet.

Yet part of this failure to successfully implement new CRM “solutions” is due to unclear or non-existent metrics for success, training that teaches features of the software rather than how to change processes, and abdicating responsibility to the CIO rather than identifying a relevant champion from marketing/sales to take ownership of the project.

Identifying and updating key capabilities and learning processes is an important starting point to ensure a proper needs assessment is conducted before evaluating a CRM system’s features. Making sure to involve key stakeholders including sales reps, HR, and more will help create buy-in and ensure that a solution fits the company rather than trying to make the company fit a solution it just purchased. 

Finally, considering the customer in all of this should be a starting point rather than an afterthought.  Remember, whatever a CEO, CIO or CMO may think their customers want could be entirely based on the results of only offering a select set of options.  Instead of demanding customized offers and coupons, perhaps what they really want is more efficient and unobtrusive service – wherever or whenever they need it.