CRM - The Emperor's New Clothes
Is CRM just an illusion? Read this alternative view on customer relationship management..
The story of the emperor's new clothes is a fairy
tale about men who fooled the emperor into believing that they had made him
a beautiful suit of clothes. In fact they had not made anything. The emperor
went out in public wearing nothing but his underwear because he didn't want
to appear stupid since they had told him only the wisest people could see
the fine fabrics. When the emperor went out in public a little child
yelled..."The emperor isn't wearing
any clothes!" Today I am that child.
"CRM doesn't cover your mistakes or fix your problems and you have been lied
to about its ability to "manage" your client relationships!" CRM is a system
that is based on faulty logic. The premise that companies can manage clients
is foolish!
Business 101 will tell you that clients manage businesses. They tell the
company what to sell, when to sell it, how to sell it, where to sell it, and
will stop buying it on a whim depending upon a long list of uncontrollable
situations (they are getting older, economic circumstances, politics,
trends, health issues etc etc.)
What does CRM do? It lulls CEOs, sales and marketing department heads into
believing that they can hold onto clients by using data alone. CRM bogs down
sales & marketing teams and creates massive amounts of additional work,
keeping them connected to their computers instead of visiting clients. CRM
requires cleaning just like any other database and the larger the database
the more time it takes to clean. The sharing of information within a company
can, in some instances, actually slow down the process of customer service,
since more people are now involved in decision making processes. The bottom
line of customer service is pushed to the side and direct mail marketing
moves forward. Direct mail marketing has abysmal response rates and even if
it was improved is a poor alternative to actually communicating with
clients.
Now is the time to go put on your clothes and fire the tailors!
You have spent a fortune in purchasing the software, you spent thousands of
dollars on man -hours used up in training and retraining, sent memos and
held staff meetings, paid tailors( I mean consultants), and still are no
closer to getting customer loyalty than you were 6 months ago. As a matter
of fact it may be worse because client services have suffered while you
spent all this time getting CRM up and running. Cut your loses and run!
Now pull out a clean sheet of paper and write down this "to do" list...
1. Set goals for customer service that involve "WOW" customer service
principles. Design a quality customer service program. Set a start date and
end date for evaluation purposes.
2. Read a book a week on client relationship marketing and "WOW" customer
service and give yourself a test to make sure you have retained the
information. Then USE it! Make sure all your employees do the same to one
degree or another.
3. Evaluate all your employees, are they happy, do the have a vested
interest in your success, would they want to be your client? What is their
body language on the job, enthusiastic, angry, indifferent, bored? Get rid
of dead weight! If a customer is likely to meet your employees it MUST be a
positive experience. Pay your front line employees what they are
worth. Smiles and enthusiasm are worth at least $1.00 per hour more.
3. Reduce advertising budget, increase marketing budget and understand the
difference.
4. Cut out or reduce systems that tend to isolate you from your customers,
voice mail mazes, advertising campaigns designed for the general public,
auto responders, self help kiosks or web pages, overseas customer service
centers.
5. Increase communication through handwritten notes, visits with clients,
feed back and brainstorming sessions that put the client and the business on
the same side of the table as partners, reduce outsourcing, reward good
clients frequently, use greeting cards with commemorative stamps instead of
postcards with bulk postage (Customers think, "If I'm not worth 37 cents you
don't need my business.") put some thought into client gifts (diabetics
don't appreciate candy) and finally ask, ask, ask for referrals! Then ask
for referrals again.
Don't look to CRM to solve the problems of customer loyalty. Look at your
relationships with your clients.
About the Author