There are different groups that pull your CRM system in different directions. If you let any of them pull your system out of shape, it won't be much of a CRM system, and it won't really manage customer relationships. It's typically a balancing act between Sales, Marketing, and the Contact Center.
Sales staff are a special breed – relentlessly positive, pushy (in a nice way), and more often than not, far from tech-savvy. They rely on IT pros who will help them use “tech” (including web, mobile devices, computers, etc) to meet their needs. They care about buyers, influencers, decision makers, and want to categorize and rank people accordingly. They want the simplest possible CRM system, preferably one on a handheld device like a Blackberry or iPhone.
Marketing staff are typically also relentlessly positive, and want things right away! A new marketing idea might have much greater value if implemented immediately. Sometimes they have customer contact (often at larger events, not one-to-one). They want to help sell products, and to figure out what marketing messages work, and which do not. Thus Marketing often wants to ask lots of (time-consuming) questions of the customers when they get a chance.
Sales & Marketing management have a different set of challenges – they need data for forecasting and reporting. This data needs to come from the Sales staff, or external data. They want lots of data, but sales staff doesn't want to enter it.
Contact centers are different still – they talk to customers (including end-users) and hear inquiries and complaints. (Some contact centers also take orders directly, or this function may be outsourced. ) The staff wants to efficiently answer the questions, resolve the complaints. But then Marketing often wants them to ask extra questions. And Sales wants the call center to figure out the role of the person calling – is the caller a valid sales lead? The contact center often has other drivers, such as product improvement/surveillance, regulatory, etc.
What do all these groups have in common? Customers. The same customers, usually. A single person frequently sees a marketing message, talks to a sales person, and calls / emails the company. The Marketing, Sales and Contact Center staff typically report to 3 different Directors(!) So getting everyone on the same page is important, and not that easy to do - you need an overall plan to ensure this happens.
This brings up two related points – one on Master Data, one on the “360 Degree View” of the customer.
First, all Account and Contact data need to be centralized and de-duplicated; master customer data needs a single home. Also, processes need to be developed to keep this data authoritative and correct (no one will use the data if it is not substantially correct and constantly improving). An incoming email with a new phone number should propagate to the sales database, a business card collected at a conference should add a Contact record to the appropriate Account. (And try to get lower-cost staff to do the data entry for those, sales staff is expensive.)
Everyone says they want to know all about the customers, and get a “360 Degree View” of their wants and activities, but it’s usually neither practical nor efficient to try to get all the data at once. (If a salesman spent all his time gathering background data on the people he talks to, he’d never sell anything.) So it’s usually best to build this up little by little, and in different detail for different roles. For people who are most influential to sales, more data is worthwhile (including Sales Force Effectiveness type questions about role, personality, “energy type”, drivers, etc.). For auxiliary people at an account, it makes sense to capture less data. As long as there are places to put this info when it arrives, ways can be worked out to get the info into the correct record.
But it all comes back to the customer. It’s called Customer Relationship Management for a reason. To the customer, you are one entity. They don’t care if they are talking to Sales, Marketing, or the Contact Center – they want a good, comprehensive answer, and don’t want to have to repeat themselves over and over. It’s up to you to figure out how… but if you can do this successfully you will be more efficient internally and have better customer service too. I think they call that a “win-win”.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
