Adopting a customer-centered marketing strategy sounds simple. Focusing on the customers’ needs, values, and expectations and subsequently providing value for the customers is a goal to which many companies aspire. But too few deliver. The key to successfully implementing a customer-centered strategy comes with the realization that technology alone cannot solve any problem without the people and processes in place to make it actionable. The reality is that most companies don’t have an integrated infrastructure – technology, people, and processes – in place to support such an initiative.
Nearly every company focuses on the technology component of the infrastructure and assigns the people and process portions to a lesser level of importance. Technology rarely prevents a customer-centered initiative from being successful. More often than not, human behavior and organizational processes inhibit success.
So how can you ensure success with such an initiative?
Start by asking yourself the following questions:
- Have your employees proven themselves willing to change how they work, if necessary, to provide better service to your customers?
- Is your entire company well trained in the art of customer service, and is everyone customer-focused – regardless of how frequently they come in contact with customers?
- Are your business processes designed with your customers in mind?
- Do you have all the data about your customers that you need?
- Can your systems support your goals and objectives relative to your customer’s expectations?
You are not alone if you have found that you can’t answer “yes” to each of these questions. Nevertheless, you’ve taken the first step in recognizing and accepting your company’s shortfall relative to customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities. To get back on track, remember the three dimensions of CRM: technology, human behavior, and organizational processes.
Technology
If you are going to be effective in implementing a CRM strategy, you will need many different data sets – not just about your customers and their purchase patterns, but also about your products and services, your prospective customers, your competitors, the market, the economy and perhaps the regulatory environment. Next, quality technical capabilities are a must. To be most effective, you will need to be able to gather, move and mine the data for relevant information. You must integrate your systems so that data sharing is dynamic according to your business needs.
Many companies have transactional systems, such as point-of-sale, telemarketing/telesales, or customer service, but few have built in the degree of integration of the data necessary to truly assist the organization in meeting the customers’ needs.
Ask yourself, how does the information collected at these customer contact points make its way throughout your company? Can product and marketing managers, market research, database marketing, and senior executives access this information at the appropriate summary or detail level to allow them to make sound business decisions?
Finally, most data has some value in and of itself, but it is the combination of the data, the system capability, and the know-how that provides the actionable information needed to create a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
For example, let’s assume you know which customers buy your products or services. Useful information to have, but ask yourself a few more questions:
- Do you know why your customers buy from you? Can you find prospective customers just like your current customers?
- Can you match your essential products and services against those of your competitors? What are the strengths and weaknesses? Are you selling against them?
- Who are future purchasers of your products and services? What do they look like?
- Do you know why your customers are not buying from your competitors?
- Will economic changes influence your customers’ ability to purchase your products and services? How?
- Will changing demographics have an impact on your business? How?
- If your product or service is regulated, will pending changes in legislation affect your profitability? How?
If pressed, many companies can answer these questions on some level. However, the complete information is often spread throughout the organization on computer disks, in file drawers, and in employees’ heads, which can take weeks or months to assemble. With such disparate and decentralized information in an organization, decisions are made without a complete understanding of the big picture.
Of course, reliable, consistent data and systems must be in place to maintain the integrity and credibility of the information. Without that, the ability to make sound decisions based on the information becomes suspect and therefore should not be used.
Technology is the easy part of this equation. Systems and technology can provide virtually any capability that is needed to manage data and information.
The tricky part comes with understanding the information and applying it to everyday situations. Most often, the creation of actionable information is not “rule-based” (generated solely by a computer) but rather “expert-based” (requiring human intervention for interpretation).
Human Behavior
Human behavior is critical to the successful implementation of a CRM strategy. The biggest challenge companies usually face is putting an enterprise-wide focus on the customer. Most employees are not directly exposed to customers outside the sales or customer service areas. These individuals make vital decisions affecting customers. Everyone in the organization – from the CEO down to the line worker – must be focused on the fact that the customers sign the paychecks.
This type of focus is difficult to achieve since individuals within an organization are usually focused on completing the task at hand and often have difficulty in seeing how their duties link to the big picture: satisfied customers. The good news is that overcoming human behavior challenges starts with a simple act – communication.
Communicating the change to all employees is an important – but often overlooked – part of any corporate initiative. Here are a few ways to keep your employees interested, involved, and more adaptable to the many changes required to implement a total CRM strategy successfully:
- Get the individuals who will be affected by the change engaged from the very beginning of the project. Tell them about the initiative, what the organization expects to accomplish from the change, how the customers will be affected, and – most importantly – how the change will affect their work. Ask for their input into the project, not only at the beginning but also throughout the project.
- Communicate regularly with appropriate messages and provide an easy way for employees to offer comments. You will have multiple audiences – from senior executives to telemarketers – within your organization. Each target audience will likely need a different slant and frequency of information.
- Prepare for and provide sufficient training, giving your employees the skill sets necessary for the new systems and processes you will implement. Use this as an opportunity to re-assess communications skills and provide additional training in this area, if needed.
While these three points will not solve all of your change challenges, they will help smooth the transition from merely having a CRM strategy to delivering on your customers’ needs and expectations.
Organizational Processes
Organizations are often their own worst enemies when it comes to implementing a CRM strategy.
In some organizations, the culture and processes are so ingrained that it is difficult to facilitate change – even if you have adequately addressed technology and human behavior issues. Moreover, the mindset that permeates the organization’s processes is often based on technology limitations that were in effect when a specific process or procedure was developed.
What has been done in the past is often no longer the best guide for what to do in the future. Organizations must be adaptable with processes and procedures designed with the customers in mind.
Managing the customer relationship depends on how well these three dimensions – technology, human behavior, and organizational process – are developed, managed and integrated. To be successful, equal attention must be given to all three.
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This article was originally written for Direct magazine and appeared on March 1, 2000, in print. (Direct Magazine is now Chief Marketer)
