Optimizing Your Organization’s Ability to Get, Keep & Grow Customers

Optimizing Your Organization’s Ability to Get, Keep & Grow Customers Using Enterprise Feedback Management to Balance Your Strategic CRM Focus

Jim Berkowitz

Founder and CEO , CRM Mastery, Inc.

CRM Marketplace Analyst, for both SMEs and a variety of CRM technology companies

CRM Coach/Mentor, for companies seeking expert guidance with the evaluation and selection of CRM technologies

Publisher and Primary Contributor , CRM Mastery e-Journal Weblog (the #1 CRM-related Weblog)

Small & Mid-sized Enterprise CRM Expert , with TechTarget’s SearchCRM.com and SearchSMB.com portals

Uncovering Opportunities to Profit from CRM The first question that executives typically ask me is: What’s the best CRM solution for my business? When what they should be asking is: If we invest our precious time, money and resources on CRM, what can I expect?

The Wrong Approach Will Lead to CRM Being a C ostly, R otton M istake

The two most common mistakes that companies make when considering in CRM is:

They think technology first, and

They think CRM is a project, rather then an ongoing process

CRM is Not Just About Technology Technology is not the be all, end all.. It should be thought of as an enabler to improving business problems, not the answer in itself.

And CRM is Definitely Not a Project You can’t fix everything all at once! Customer Management issues must be prioritized so that the most critical problems can be addressed as part of an initial CRM initiative.

So, What is CRM? CRM is an ongoing process of managing customer relationships using a synergistic blend of people, business processes and technology that, if well managed, will allow an organzation to continuously and measurably improve their ability to GET , KEEP and GROW profitable customers .

Critiquing Your Current Situation All CRM initiatives must begin by gaining a solid understanding of your CRM strengths and more importantly, your current weaknesses; What’s holding you back!

Balancing Your CRM Focus

A well desined CRM plan needs to outline a holistic approach to CRM that synergistically addresses the related weaknesses in each of the following areas:

Internal Customer Facing Operations

Customer Expectations & Loyalty

Employee Satisfaction & Loyalty

Customer Focus

The CRM Discovery Process The CRM discovery process does present a number of challenges… Interviews, customer focus groups and faciliated workshops can be difficult, time consuming and expensive!

The CRM Discovery Process

Traditional CRM discovery processes also have a number of inherent limitations…

The influence of company politics

It’s difficult to analyze the results

Limited employee participation

Limited customer feedback

It’s difficult to build consensus

Enterprise Feedback Management

Here are the 4 Assessment Surveys Needed to Balance Your CRM Focus:

Internal Customer-facing Operations

Customer Expectations & Loyalty

Employee Satisfaction & Loyalty

Customer Focus

Internal Customer-facing Operations To maximize your company’s revenue growth and bottom-line profits, you’ve got to.. Isolate and prioritize all of the weaknesses within your marketing, sales and customer service operations.

Customer Expectations & Loyalty The “best” source of insight into what should be done to become more effective at getting, keeping and growing profitable customers is… Your customers!

Employee Satisfaction & Loyalty To achieve the ultimate goal of satisfied customers, companies must first ensure employee morale because… Satisfied employees create satisfied customers.

Customer Focus Companies can no longer rely on just price, quality and delivery to keep customers coming back… Customer satisfaction is the key (and maybe the only) competitive differentiator.

Conclusion Consider supplementing traditional CRM discovery process steps with a series of surveys… Properly designed, they will allow you to design a holistic CRM plan…

Enterprise Feedback Example Customer Lifecycle Management Assessment