CRM
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.
3. Reduce advertising budget... increase marketing budget...
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, autoresponders, self help kiosks or
webpages, 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 commerative 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, ask, 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.
Meredith Gossland is owner of Lasting Impressions2, a Small
business marketing service, specializing in multicultural
marketing and high quality low cost customer service. she can be
reached at info@lastingimpressions2.com.
http://www.lastingimpressions2.com