CRM Breakthroughs

Developing relationships with customers, as a strategy, has had a chequered past. Not every attempt has succeeded but the major frustration is this shouldn’t be that difficult. I mean the business world has been interacting with customers since … forever. Right?

So, if you’ve tried to get a better understanding of CRM or tried to get something a little more proactive happening, what has got in the way and what is getting in the way? Something is or we’d all be doing it.

Come on, own up!

We all start out enthusiastically enough and then, and then …

Email me with the one thing that has tripped you up. I’ll publish the results in a fortnight or so. (Or, if I can find a way to do it, I’ll get a poll up on this site! )

While businesses, large and small, look for ways to get a leg up on delivering a better customer experience, should they also be considering what customers may be doing to improve their experiences with business.

Is it possible for customers to have an absolute passion for your business? And if it is possible, what are you doing about it?

Customers are wise enough to know that businesses are trying to get to know them. They also know businesses do this to get them to come back and spend more money with them and refer friends and family to them.

So, it can look like all a business’s efforts aren’t about the customer at all - it’s all really about the business.

When consumers realise, fully, that businesses really are in business for themselves and consumers really are just that - people with money who might spend it at my place - the business is in serious trouble. Loyalty and ongoing relationship is at risk and, unless the business has a product that the customer will do without (think medicine and not much else), the chances of them going elsewhere next time is pretty much in the lap of the gods. So much for CRM.

So, let’s look at the R in CRM - Relationship. Because when you get the relationship right, under the right circumstances, it’s pretty hard to break!

Here are some ideas from a personal relationship perspective:

• love
• intimacy
• communication
• commitment
• equality and respect
• compatibility
• companionship.

The question is, do aspects like these pertain to a business relationship?

Certainly we can say we love our customers but how do we express this? What would our customers say or think? (Think back to the context of the simply being consumers of your product) Love is more than just a word. Love is an action.

Now, as you go through the list you may be thinking “Do my customers really think this way? This is just idealistic BS.”

Possibly. But let’s look at the alternative.

Let’s say your customers really do love you and your product. Your team know and love your business and customers as well. Think about that for a moment.

If that were the case, how strong would the relationship be?

Yes, profound isn’t it? People wouldn’t dream of going elsewhere. they would be evangelists for your business, even, at times, irrationally. But that is what CRM is about at its core: an absolute passion for the business people spend their hard earned cash at.

So, how are you building your relationship with custoemrs who know, at the very core, the end result will simply be more money for you?

Are they at risk of going elsewhere just because they can?

Importantly, as a business owner you want to love your customers, what about your staff?

The customer has their own perspective on their current relationship with you. Do you know what that perspective is? Are you willing to find out?

It’s important to understand a concept before launching into any implementation. If you wish to successfully manage customer relationships, you really do need to understand exactly what you’re doing. Over the next few posts I’ll give you my view and the CRM process any company can follow to develop a wildly successful formula.

What is CRM?

By definition we are talking about managing the relationship we have with our clients. It is knowing enough about our customers to provide, at the very minimum, a standard but pleasing level of interaction that will cause the client to:

1. return with more business
2. potentially begin making larger purchases
3. make purchases more regularly
4. provide referrals to your business so others will complete steps 1 - 3 as well.

How does CRM Work?

Getting CRM to work effectively is a lot more difficult. Developing standards and processes that are easy to follow but allow flexibility can be a minefield. Just today I wanted to buy a new motorcycle. I checked with my bank (that prides itself on service) that I could withdraw the right amount of funds and yet on the day, I wasn’t able to and, when I called the Bank, they were not able to help or change their policy.

So how is a small business supposed to make it happen?

CRM allows people within your business to make decisions that will assist your business and the experience of the customer to ensure both benefit. This, of course, means thinking through almost every process and creating a framework that people can follow.

The framework must allow for risk to be managed, services to be delivered and value to be gained.

At the end of the day the business owner requires three things most of all:

1. a profit to be made (otherwise why are you in business?)
2. the staff to feel they have achieved a great result from their efforts and look forward to doing it again
3. the client to consider your business a good place to return to

How Does a Business Get CRM?

To ensure these three things happen a business needs:

• systems people can easily learn
• systems people can easily follow
• processes to follow when things go awry
• data systems to catch information (data in)
• communication systems to add value (data out)

The problem with many businesses trying to implement CRM:

• they have processes that aren’t documented, even at a simple flowchart level
• experts within the business do not have coaching or mentoring skills to easily transfer their knowledge
• there is no formal training within the business
• there is no simplifying of overly complex systems
• there is no recording of what is happening with the client
• there is no “one centralised system” to capture and communicate data

If you review the above points you will have an idea of what you should be aiming for with CRM. You can do CRM with a shoebox if need be. You don’t actually need a complex and expensive system. (though, properly used, they do help.) And the bigger you are as a company, the more you will need technology of some kind, more than likely web based these days.

My point about CRM is that is is a strategy (”strategy before software”) not a software package! And any business is able to develop a proper CRM system with two pieces of very simple technology: pen and paper!

If you don’t know what you’re doing or where you want to end up, software is just going to make life far more miserable. See Point 2 of what a business owner requires.

Here are some more links about what CRM is and it’s intended benefits:

Samsinah Sudin

Customer Relationship Management

Small Business CRM

Duct Tape Marketing

Inside CRM