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Investments in customer relationship management (CRM) applications have produced a broad spectrum of results. Some companies report amazing outcomes, such as dramatic increases in revenue and boosts in customer satisfaction along with significant savings in operating costs. For others, such investments have delivered only limited benefits or proved disappointing. Notwithstanding notable success stories, we have been witnessing a paradox trend: While implementing CRM, many organizations have lost sight of their customers. They focus on efficiency gains in specific areas like sales force automation (SFA) instead of looking at the bigger picture – from a customer perspective. They fail to become truly customer centric because they rely on point solutions with little or no integration – solutions that are not aligned with the organization’s long-term strategy and provide only a limited view of the customer. They focus on single channels and rarely achieve true multichannel coverage, resulting in bad customer experiences. They either compromise on functionality or try to achieve too much at one time and end up with a complex, expensive implementation with hardly any return on investment. Organizations often just automate existing bad processes instead of redesigning their customer-facing operations based on best practices. No wonder customer satisfaction is near an all-time low in many industries. It’s time to refocus on what CRM really is about – the customer – to achieve the results CRM has promised to deliver. In order to be successful, organizations must approach CRM without compromise.
Focusing primarily on bottom-line costs and departmental goals limits the top-line potential of CRM investments. The benefits of CRM can be much greater if more companies take CRM to the next level by designing their CRM strategy for future ambitions instead of just implementing software to support current capabilities. This white paper describes the concept of “CRM without compromise,” elucidating how organizations can maximize their results by taking a more structured, holistic approach to CRM across the enterprise to gain a competitive advantage and promote sustainable, profitable growth.
Customers Define Your Business
No business can exist without customers. Without customers there is no reason to make any investment in employees, products, office equipment, or technology. That’s why you need to look at your business from the customer’s perspective: The customer defines your business. No matter how good a product is or how efficiently an organization operates, without customers there is neither growth nor profitability. Customers make the purchase decision and they bid the price up or drive it down depending on the value they perceive from a product or service.
It’s the customer who decides which way and when he or she wants to interact with a company and how he or she wants to buy products – online, over the phone, in a store, or through another channel. It’s the customer’s perception of everything a company does that creates an image of its brand and eventually determines its success or failure as a business. Hence, you need to develop strategies that enable your organization to continuously improve the ability to win, know, and keep your customers.
A Strategic Perspective on CRM
CRM isn’t new. Every company needs to do CRM – one way or another. No matter what the business, every company has to make its products known to the market and find customers who are willing to buy its products in order to stay in business. Every company must discover customer needs, market and sell products that meet these needs, provide some sort of customer service, and make sure that the revenue it generates covers the costs of business plus any profit margin it tries to achieve. Obviously, some companies do this better than others.
These companies take a holistic approach to CRM and put the customer first. They elevate the role of the customer throughout their business and approach CRM with the same fortitude, care, and steadfastness with which they approach other critical business functions. Companies that have taken this path, transforming their organization from a product-centric into a customer-centric business, report amazing returns: double-digit revenue growth, improved customer satisfaction and loyalty, reduced churn rates, and increased front line employee productivity, along with dramatic savings in customer acquisition costs, and lower costs of marketing, sales, and service operations. Successful companies build their business around the customer.
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