Friday, June 09, 2006

CRM (Re) Defined

Every CEO thinks about managing growth - and more importantly - consistent growth.

Managing multiple growth dimensions is the other challenge. CEOs need growth in:-
- Top line to stay as the market leader
- Bottom line to cover the dividends and the salary hikes
- Workforce to manage financial growth ...

The best kept secret of the growth process?
If you as a CEO seek to fix the organization in isolation, then you are only partially right, and will therefore achieve but partial success. The real growth drivers are outside.

Success Driver
CEOs 'talk' about Customers. They talk about Customer Retention being more profitable than Customer Acquisition. They talk about Customer Satisfaction, Customer Delight and Customer Loyalty. They talk Customer Centricity & about Customer being King. And they talk...
Yet how are the Customers - the key to success - treated?

Customer Experience
How often as a Customer yourself you hear:-
- "You will have to call that department"
- "You may have sent an Email but I don't handle Emails, so tell me what do you want"
- "But our policies do not allow us to do this"
- "Please press 1 if existing customer, press 2 for bill information, press 3 for savings account, press 4 to activate roaming, press 5 for flight schedules.."..

Customer - Your Advocate
When was it last that you really felt your [Bank, Telco, Insurance company..] cared for you, about you?
Do you feel delighted you chose a brand? Do you say - Come what may, I will never change the brand?
Are you from a royal family? Do you 'think' you are a King?
Let your customer take control and make her your 'advocate'. She will rate you supreme - against all - not just against your direct competitors.

Differentiation pays
By creating 'advocates' you will have set a benchmark! With or without CRM in its clichéd form.
In order to set benchmarks, you must be able to answer the WHYs. Why do you spend hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of dollars:
- on CRM deployment
- or on the direct mailers and discounts you shell out to stay in the race
- or on.. whatever..

What do you do about it?
Seek Expert help. Experts are often asked:
- Tell me WHAT are the best practices
- I want to know HOW can I prevent commoditization of my product/service
- I want to know WHAT.., Tell me HOW..

But think WHY? You should do "Customer Segmentation" - but WHY? - to know them so that you serve them the right way - the way they like.

Experts unravel such WHYs, as applicable to you, in your own setup. And only then tell you WHAT!

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting thoughts. A good attempt at attracting Business people to technology issues. Look forward to more of your work

Anonymous said...

This is one eye-opener for the business leaders. Hope they read this and act upon the good advice!

blogasti said...

Interesting perspective as you explain, but the most important indeed is the recomendation as your costumer could do for you and tell about you.
One the most important thing, say to me an CEO of biggest Advertinsing Co. in Europe, "we work with [...] at 15 years a go". Fidelity and trust are the most important things to increase on relationship with costumers.
José A.
see our blog http://crm-recomenda-crm.blogspot.com