The Eight Deadly Sins in Customer Relationship Management

Editor’s note: Geoff Ables is principal consultant for Customer Connect, which provides customer relationship management (CRM), website design, marketing data marts and campaign implementation services.

CHARLOTTE - In the rapidly evolving world of Customer Relationship Management and CRM technology and solutions, there are several pitfalls into which new and even experienced companies and managers commonly stumble.

Eight deadly sins, all of which can be avoided with proper care and preparation, are outlined below.

When there is no commitment to the CRM project from senior management, there will undoubtedly be a low level of acceptance for the CRM solution from that same area. Top-down malaise is one of the most powerful contagions in business. Without encouragement from the top level of management, the rest of the company will be very unlikely to accept or employ the solution. Management must be more than enthusiastic about CRM – they must be users of the solution and they must develop processes to enforce usage of the system throughout the organization.

The commitment contagion infects from the bottom up as well. When users are not involved in the design, integration or implementation processes, the solution is not going to provide what the front line needs for success. Without that support a company is like a head and torso with no appendages; the arms and legs of your business will not move, no matter how much you want them to, because they simply are not there.

Often a company will purchase CRM technology with no clear goals or plans for implementing it. Without a clear project plan, this otherwise valuable tool is commonly used merely as a contact manager, gaining little incremental value and ultimately proving costly and virtually ineffective. A clear vision of the deliverables for CRM, and measurable goals, will combat this eventuality and make your project a success.

Along those lines, a sin many companies find themselves committing is that of not committing: not committing to ongoing training, not committing to coaching, not committing to the evolution of the CRM project during its most vital time. The first six to eighteen months of a CRM project are its least certain, the period of time most crucial to the project’s success. Without commitment to following through on the implementation of the project, all of its planning and design are so much wasted time.

Another sin deadly to a CRM project is scope creep. This evil-sounding circumstance occurs when the scope of your project creeps upward in terms of cost, in terms of goals, in terms of deliverables. Scope creep inevitably leads to project delays, expense overruns, steeper learning curves for users, and ultimately low user acceptance. Make sure that the scope of your project stays reasonable, or you may be faced with a product which no one wants to use.

Your CRM tool must be valuable to its users. Therefore one of the most heinous sins imaginable is that of providing low quality information in your tool. If the data your tool provides isn’t of the highest quality available, there is no reason for anyone to use it. Most businesses do a poor job of data integration because they underestimate the time and effort required to do this. You should budget between forty and sixty percent of the total cost of CRM towards this activity. The point of CRM is to deliver greater sales effectiveness and higher quality customer experiences through the usage of customer data; poor data quality translates to an utter failure of CRM to deliver meaningful results.

Many businesspeople assume that all CRM tools are basically the same. They pay a heavy price for that assumption. Businesses that are successful with CRM have selected a tool that is easy for their sales, marketing and service people to use, that can rapidly adapt to meet changing needs, and that fits well with their existing technology. The cost of the wrong CRM tool in terms of the time your team will spend in training, support and getting frustrated can be very high – and will have to be repeated if you roll out the wrong solution. Do your team a favor and do CRM right the first time, even if that means breaking your project into phases or delaying the project until the budget is available.

Perhaps the most obvious sin – and yet one of the most commonly committed – is that of neglecting to customize your CRM tool for its would-be users. Since CRM tools are generally created for the purpose of automating marketing, sales, and service processes, it follows that good processes would be customized to those purposes and automated to suit those needs. Many companies spend little or no time at all identifying exactly what their processes are. They buy expensive tools that do not help their employees work faster or smarter. The subsequent steep learning curve and lack of added value to the business case results in a low user acceptance of the tool and wasted resources and time.

Avoiding these eight deadly sins often means the difference between a successful CRM project and an utter failure. Knowing how to recognize them is a skill you must master.

Geoff Ables is principal consultant for Customer Connect, which provides customer relationship management (CRM), website design, marketing data marts and campaign implementation services. He can be reached at geoff.ables@customer-connect.com or 704-895-2500