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August 26 Deploying CRM software... Sad but TrueOne of my friends recently send me this cartoon - I couldn't help but laugh out loud because this is a representation of what I have seen in action so many times before.
Before organisations embark on deploying CRM software, they first need to know what part of the business they wish to enhance or which problem areas in the business they wish to address. Organisations should also not be unrealistic on what their expectations are and should know beforehand how big the problem is that they want to address, this will ensure the right internal focus and ownership which is critical to the success of your CRM project. Also remember that fancy features hardly ever contribute real business value - It is important for organisations who are implementing CRM software solutions to understand the relationship in the picture below: The 3 legs of your CRM project is a fixture and if one of the components change the 2 corresponding components will change proportionally, for example if you want to add additional features to the solution the cost and time will increase proportionally or if you whish to cut down on cost you will also cut down on features and functionality. In conclusion: It is important that organisations prioritise the areas they wish to address and focus on a solution that adds value to the business. August 21 Understanding CRM and AnalyticsI once heard the following in a presentation that I attended and it really enabled me to understand the POWER of analytics and I realised that the end goal of any organisation interested in being more profitable, is to enable analytics on their customer interactions - A big retailer in the USA started enabling analytics on their customer purchase data. After completing an analysis they discovered what they thought at the time was quite a unusual trend - Most customers that bought double beds also bought chainsaws at the same time. Now when you look at this analysis your first thought should be that this stuff obviously does not work and that is exactly what they thought, but after deeper analysis they discovered that the reason this correlation existed was that when people return to their winter homes they had to sometimes replace the beds because of mould and also at the same time trim the trees that had overgrown... The retailer then used this information to their advantage and started offering Bed and chainsaw combos with great success :-) If correctly enabled within a business, analytics can allow you to see the result of implementing change almost immediately, simple examples might be: predictive lead rating - this will allow you to rate every lead you enter into your CRM system based on statistical trend analysis, sales staff can focus on leads that are rated with a possible good conversion probability and ignore spending time on leads that won't convert based on proven criteria that has been successful in the past. There is a catch though - you can't just let analytics loose within your business, an example would be: Say you entered 10 leads into your CRM system, of these 10 leads 8 of them were males, living in Pretoria between the age of 25 and 35, driving BMW's and earning a salary between R15 000 and R20 000 per month, and these 8 leads all get disqualified as bad leads - The next time you enter a lead with the same criteria, the system will tell you that this is a bad lead and you should not spend any time on these. However, if you extend this data and add 100 leads and only the first 8 were disqualified but 40 others were GREAT leads your result will be very different... The key is to train your analytics solution to drive a certain behaviour and only when your desired result is attained, allow the system to recommend your next step... The customer is always right...I just could not resist....
August 19 Customer segmentation / profiling - why do it?While reading this article you should know the following up to date information about your customers without having to spend days trying to find the information: 1. Who are my 10 most profitable customers (this should not be confused with customers you spend the most time with) 2. What are the similarities between these customers, Do they share the same region, the same account manager, the same product? What makes these customers my 10 most profitable? 3. What is my most profitable product? why is this my most profitable product? Is this product more popular amongst men, or even in a specific location? I would like to use a very long example of how segmentation could make you more money so please bare with me - Lets use a bank for this example, the bank has 3 different cheque account packages - Silver, Gold and Platinum The questions a bank could ask - Does a 19 year old female in the IT industry earn more money than a 19 year old female in construction, if so on average how long does it take a 19 year old female in the IT industry to earn enough money to move from a silver to a gold cheque account? Lets say for argument sake it takes 2 years the next question has to be, what type of cars do 21 year old females in the IT industry drive? once you know this you could ask is this car more popular in a specific geographic location? If you know this you could ask do we have any promotions with this car vendor and our finance department in this location? As you can see by this example once you have the ability to segment and profile your customers it is far easier to use targeted marketing to reach the right people with a message relevant to them. When adding IT Systems to the mix, that do predictive analysis and statistical trending this process gets far more sophisticated - I will blog about this in more detail in future post. What are learningRelationship(s)?In my article What is CRM? I refer to the value of learningRelationship(s), and the ability to anticipate customer needs and thus have more profitable customers. learningRelationship(s) are when customers and service providers get together to work on a combined mutually beneficial relationship where the customer can share future growth aspirations or diversification requirements and the service provider sharing possible solutions to enable these requirements. Andrew Clare from reLiance has perfected the art of building learning relationships and has shared some of his concepts with me: 1. You won't be able to build learningRelationship(s)with every single one of your customers and therefore it is important for you to identify the customers you would like to engage. 2. You have to ask permission from your selected customers to engage in a learningRelationship(s) 3. You need to understand and document the customers goals and aspirations once they allow you to engage in a learningRelationship(s) 4. You need to articulate your solutions in line with the customers goals and aspirations and decide jointly on priority projects you will engage in and lastly - Deliver on the expectation that you set in these sessions - In most cases you only have ONE shot at making this work. August 18 Unisa Online - course in relationship managementAfter completing this course last year in October I can really recommend that if relationship management is somehow part of what you do this is the course for you! Unisa Online - course in relationship management PS: I believe that Prof Brink marks spelling... I had a whole bunch of red marks on my assignment.... :-) Managing customer expectations - The service downfall!I get so utterly frustrated when people say that Customer Service is no longer a differentiator - Nothing could be further from the truth, In most instances if companies just went back to the basic principals of customer service for instance companies doing what you say they will be doing....their perceived level of customer service will increase dramatically... I heard this example quite a few years ago but it has stuck with me for years... Imagine it is Friday afternoon you go to McDonalds and order a quarter pounder McMeal with a regular fries and coke - when you receive this meal, you look at the meal and compare it to the picture and it is identical - You are quite happy with your customer service... On Monday you go back to McDonalds and order the same meal but THIS TIME when you get to the pickup they give you 2 quarter pounders with a supersized coke and supersized fries all for the same price as a normal McMeal, and just for the sake of it they throw in one of those toys... -You are ecstatic with your customer service at this point!!! You can't hold yourself back, so by Wednesday you go Back to McDonalds and ask for one of those special quarter pounder McMeals and even give the lady at the window a wink... She off-course looks at you as if there is something wrong with you but you are so exited about your meal you don't notice her response - you race to the next window and they give you a quarter pounder McMeal with a regular coke and regular fries - Are you happy with your service: Hell NO! this is the worst service ever - What has changed though, because if you look at the picture and look at your order they are exactly the same - thus you got what you asked and paid for... What has changed in this scenario is the expectation that was set by the company in this case McDonalds. So many organisations today over promise and under deliver and the reality is that customers perceived level of how good your service is will be measured against what you say and then do... Thus YOU control customer service quality! August 11 What is SaaS (Software as a service)Software as a service (SaaS) refers to using software as you would typical services. An example would be the use of electricity – you only pay for what you use and you only use it when you need it. (I guess this is not the best example in South Africa because I would have to spend the rest of the message talking about reliability...J) When it comes to CRM and SaaS there are a couple of topics that we can discuss: 1. During discussions with some of the major companies relating to this topic, it was evident that using SaaS has become a very definite consideration. A key driver for this is that the IT Departments of these organisations have not been consistent in meeting their operational level agreements with the departments that they service and these departments want to avoid being dependant on their IT departments for their CRM solution. This in fact has got its own implications because most of these companies later realise that they still need the IT departments in order to support some of the IT functions related to the solution. 2. The second topic relates to the perception of lower risk projects when using SaaS, this is due to the fact that many companies don’t know what the future of the business holds and therefore do not want to buy a number of licenses which they may never use. In this instance, it would then make sense for these organisations to pay for the software as and when they need it. 3. The third topic relates to a perception of shorter implementation cycles and thus quicker time to value. This perception often creates unrealistic expectations because in almost all of these software solutions the application has to be tweaked and moulded around an organisation and the unique processes which differentiates organisations from their competitors, as well as the fact that when a CRM strategy reaches maturity one would have to integrate it with your transactional and operational systems in order to have a real-time view of the business - software limitations at this point would have a very negative impact on the overall project. 4. Another consideration would be that CRM be procured as an operational expense and not a capital expense. This has several benefits in terms of cash flow and waiting for long capital budget approvals. It is important to understand that there will still be a capital cost for you to customise, implement and train staff on the software and unless the supplier can also include this cost in their monthly contract you would still have to budget for this capital expense. In most CRM software deployments the services to licenses ratio is normally 2:1 (Change management, customisation, implementation and training will fall under this) and therefore the biggest cost surrounding your CRM enabler is not the software. The Pro’s and Con’s surrounding CRM and SaaS will be covered in a future post. What is CRM?
An easy definition for Customer relationship management (CRM) would be:
CRM is an organisational strategy that lends itself to building long-lasting learning relationships with customers by consistently exceeding their expectations in a professional manor, irrespective of how they get touched by your organisation.
Let’s elaborate for a second –
Strategy: It is of critical importance to realise that CRM is a sometimes a long and hard journey that a company embark on with highly profitable customers and efficient business process as a reward. It is critical that this strategy becomes a culture that is lived by all in the organisation and should thus be driven by top management, and designed and owned by the entire business.
Learning relationships: When you build learning relationships with customers it means that the customer becomes part of the product solution design, If companies understand the impact of their products and services on their customers they would have the ability to anticipate the customers ever changing needs in order to prevent competitors from courting those customers. Unfortunately too many companies confuse Anticipation with guessing, losing tons of money in the process.
Consistency: What a lot of companies don’t understand is that my perception of your company’s service is only as good as the last bad interaction I had with your organisation, unless you managed to completely exceed my expectations! |
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