Customer knowledge through CRM

A successful CRM strategy can provide answers to many questions that every organization typically has about its customers: (see Figure 1)

 

Figure 1: Integrating customer information.

• Who are my best customers?
• How do I attract them?
• How do I ensure that I'm selling them the products and services that meet their specific needs and still make a profit?
• How do I keep them coming back?
• How do I manage relationships with unhappy customers?

CRM places the customer at the center of the organization and involves every function and department in serving the customer. Sales, service, and support functions as well as relationships with business partners form a continuum, because this is how these corporate functions are viewed by customers. When customers make purchases from a supplier, they believe they have a relationship with the whole organization, from sales to shipping and even to the CEO.

Companies that believed technology alone would solve customer relationship problems learned the hard way that technology is only an enabler. CRM implementations based on this premise failed because they did not change the corporate culture to permit the technology to perform its primary function: developing and retaining loyal and profitable customers. Technology's role as an enabler is to support the strategies, tactics, and processes that result from a defined, enterprisewide CRM solution. The creation and execution of a successful CRM strategy depend on close examination and rationalization of the relationship between an organization's vision and business strategy. If the customer is not at the center of this vision, the vision must be reexamined and altered to be customer-centric.

Customer data

One of the common problems many organizations share is integrating customer information. When information is disparate and fragmented, it is difficult to know who the customers are and the nature of their associations or relationships. This also makes it difficult to capitalize on opportunities to increase customer service, loyalty, and profitability. For example, knowing that other family members are also customers provides an opportunity to upsell or cross sell products or services, or knowing that a customer uses several sources of interaction with a supplier may also provide opportunities to enhance the relationship.

In building toward a CRM solution, the organization must analyze how well it is aligned to deliver the following core capabilities:

• Customer value management
• Prospecting
• Selling
• Collection and use of customer intelligence
• Customer development (upselling and cross selling)
• Customer service and retention

Ultimately, the success or failure of CRM depends on the capability of the organization and its employees to integrate human resources, business processes, and technology to create differentiation and excellence in service to customers, and to perform all of these functions better than its competitors. The customer is in control! (see Figure 2)

 

Figure 2: Customer in control.