David at Infoworld succinctly sums up the problem with CRM. The customer benefit is not there.
Quick. When was the last time you remember being pleasantly surprised by how effectively a company used data about you to improve your customer experience?
Source: Customer Relationship Management (CRM)? So What?
I wrote about the frustration with CRM recently.
David goes on to touch on why this problem exists.
Based on surveys it appears that corporations have simply not decided to make good use of customer data a priority, mostly because no single person or part of the organization owns the issue.
He concludes that lack of single point of ownership for customer data is the issue.
“Data is a bit like global warming,” explained PricewaterhouseCoopers partner Bob Zukis. “Many people see it as an issue, but nobody really owns the issue, so it often suffers from a lack of focused effort.” Will corporate America hear the wake-up call on the importance of leveraging data in time to outpace the competition? Or will it stand by and lose out to rivals that know how put customer data to work?
I think that’s true if you are a data guy, but the root cause might be deeper, and dare I say simpler.
At its core, the premise of CRM was that anyone in the firm could continue the customer relationship at every interaction, because they had such good information (data) about the customer. The customer would feel so well know because of this use of the information, that they would become intensely loyal to the firm, and reward the firm with new business.
I think the premise is generally right, but specifically wrong. The first key is the nature of the benefit that would be useful to the customer. Examples would be:
- details of past problems/ complaints issues resolved
- transactional details including how the customer interacts generally.
- relationship between the contact method, and the requirement of the contact. This would provide for prediction of out of the normal pattern behaviour … for example if some customers phone, this should be a clue that its serious, because that’s not their normal mode of contact
Back to David’s article. I think the single point of ownership is needed at the point of defining the right business requirements to cement customer loyalty through relevance. Then the data discussions can happen, and central ownership may in fact assist.
Relevance to Bankwatch:
Its time to reassess the business requirement for CRM. Just taking the product that the vendor provides and plugging it in doesn’t work.
Technorati tags: crm
Bankwatch 