Build a customer centric strategy, understand rules of CRM. Delivered at "CRM as a Strategy" event hosted by Loaded Technologies in Sydney on 28 Oct 2010.
Let’s make sure we are all on the same page here around a common definition of CRM. Plain and simple, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is about attracting and retaining customers. Of course, you do not need a CRM system but a properly implemented CRM system, married with the a good CRM strategy and trained employees allows companies to attract and retain customers at a much greater rate. CRM allows companies to grow.
So what are the rules? The first one is that companies are no longer in control. The efficacy of the traditional communications department is dwindling. Press releases and email blasts become less important each day. The sooner one realizes this the better off that person will be.
A corollary of this participatory or social economy is that traditional marketing tactics are on the decline.
In a recent survey, marketing professionals clearly indicated that the traditional outbound, also know as “push” or interrupt-driven marketing tactics such as direct mail, phone calls and trade shows are losing importance while Inbound, permission-based tactics such as search marketing, and blogging are in the ascendance.
The first two rules show that customers are quite sophisticated. They do not trust companies as much as they do the participants on the Web whether those people are peers, friends or customers of a certain product. In this way, customer service has become the new marketing. A happy customer, to use a military term, is a force multiplier – meaning they not only benefit the customer with their business but they also hold the potential to become the best marketing a company could ask for because of tools such as Facebook and Twitter.
Here is a diagram of this new social interaction. In the old model, customers were not connected. The information source was the provider. Not anymore. Happy customers produce more customers.
So what do companies need to do. They need to join the conversation. If not, they will be defined by forces outside of their control.
Companies can bring order to choas by practicing the rules I have just outlined and harnessing the right tools to engage customers on their terms.
You can spend a fair amount of time on this one slide – anywhere from 2-10 minutes (or more if you are not careful). I would focus on key point on each ‘bullet’1 – Your whole organization and ecosystem is social and will become part of the process, if they have not already2 – If you want to continue to do business with your customers, you may need to adjust3 – Customers will talk at all hours of the day, you need to decide what they means to you4 – Email, Phone and Portals or NOT done, but there are many more channels available to people, they will use these other channels5 – Your customers want to Interact with you, not only transact6 – Your customers will evaluate your business, product and organization on a daily basis – how open and flexible are you?
Companies can bring order to choas by practicing the rules I have just outlined and harnessing the right tools to engage customers on their terms.
This process, sometimes known as Social CRM, helps companies listen, engage, share and communicate with buyers, prospects, influencers in the participation economy. Customer Relationship Management lies at the heart of it.
Traditional CRM is about pushing – Marketing Controlling the information FlowSales Telling Customer what they feel like, when they feel like itSupport and Service being cautious on what to share and when to share it
Sugar is…Open, Intuitive and Customer Focused
One of the main reasons the social media world has blossomed as it has is because the tools were so simple. It is hard to break Facebook or Twitter. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for CRM tools. Often difficult to adopt and use, there has been more failure than success.For companies to truly engage with the social world, the product needs to be incredibly simple to use – which means it needs to tie into the leading social sites and to work on any internet-enabled device.
The application also needs to be incredibly flexible. The pace of technology change is accelerating rapidly, your CRM application has to be just as flexible to change whether it is through product integration, design process or calling APIs from social services.
So how do companies build this architecture of participation. In the current world, companies are already doing so but in a very inefficient way. Let’s say a customer has something negative to say about your company. Someone in marketing will most likely go to the following sources – twitter, the person’s blog, linkedin profile, search, company web site. The will begin to build a picture but it will take a long time. They may never even find a way to talk to the person. Now, imagine the following scenario…
You receive the twitter alert from within your CRM system and it is already associated with contact and account.
One can see all press releases and communications of the company
And call into the person directly from within the CRM application.