As Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems become more sophisticated and feature-rich, many companies implement the technology working under the assumption that the automation alone will deliver the most effective sales process for their needs.
CRM can be simply described as a customer strategy. This is a strategy or a technique that any business can use. Like any strategy, the CRM strategy has its own process. The implementation of this process should be done step by step following the correct concepts of CRM. The CRM process is not an event that has a beginning and ending part, it is a process that has steps and has no definite end. In simpler terms, CRM is a continuous process.
This step by step process needs to be executed properly in order to prevent problems in the results. This process should begin with a study that preferably should be performed by a special marketing team. Hiring a special marketing team can be a great deal because the members of the team are really focused on performing and analyzing the customer data for the business. The team is the one who will perform some of the most important steps of the process. They will also work with the employees because CRM implementation needs team work.
When a business understands the CRM process, it is able to formulate its own effective methods on how to deal efficiently with their customers. Indeed, the process of CRM is truly an important part in the success of one's business.
CRM is a corporate strategy composed of applications, technology and products that fulfill three essential requirements
1. To give enterprise a 360 degree view of each customer
2. To enable the customer to have a consistent view of the enterprise
3. To enable front office staff to perform sales, service and marketing tasks more efficiently.
By definition, a business is only as efficient as its processes--processes that are measurable and rewarded based on performance relative to strategic goals. Everything a business does to survive is process-driven.
The CRM process is the most influential customer oriented strategy of the decade. Despite its humble origins it has evolved into a relatively complex strategy. The essentials of a CRM program include focus, commitment to CRM goals and above all a desire to be customer focused. Here's how the CRM process actually works in an organization.
The CRM or Customer Relationship Management process is one of the more important topics in the world of business. Its impact and measurement simply cannot be denied. Without proper customer relationship management there is no way to draw in and keep customers to your business and it will be unsuccessful as a result.
The only way to make your business a success then is by making people realize why they should come to you over those other stores. Depending on who you are and what you have to offer you can figure out how to set yourself apart from the others.
The next step in the CRM process is to educate other departments. Then you assemble all required customer information, design the data model, vendor study and select the right CRM solution. After this you establish authority and responsibility. Obviously if you are the sole owner of your company and have no employees, this would all fall on your shoulders. Again this depends on the size of your business and all the people involved with it.
Pilot projects and communicate with customers. This is one of the most important things to remember. It can be hard to always keep up with all your customers and potential customers, especially with the rest of the tasks you need to focus on to run your business but this step must not get neglected. Communicating with customers is a CRM best practice. This practice is how you show them you appreciate their business and build relationships.
Customer surveys can help keep track of your customers and what they are interested in and the same goes for customer satisfaction programs. These help you to realize certain areas you may need to work on. Always get feedback from your customers. It shows you are willing to change and do what it takes to please your customers. Anyone who owns or manages a business absolutely must understand the importance of the Customer Relationship Management process. If not, their business will turn into a struggle and most likely not stay afloat.
The process has a few steps involved. The first step is to establish CRM goals. This would go into your business plan at the startup of your company. This means figuring out who your target audience is and how you are going to draw them into your business.
A LOOK AT THE STEPS IN THE CRM PROCESS
Establishing CRM goals
Educating other departments
Assembling customer information
Designing the data model
Vendor study
Selecting the CRM solution
Establishing authority & responsibility
Pilot projects
Communication with customers through direct mail , electronic mail etc
Customer surveys
Customer satisfaction program
Collection of customer information
Provision of customer information to employees
Usage of customer information in the business activities
Feedback
Analyze
Documenting a new process
Implementing final methodology
CRM process is defined as any group of action that is instrumental in the achievement of the output of an operating system, in accordance with a specified measure of effectiveness. The final objective of the CRM process is to originate a powerful new tool for customer retention. The focus of any process is to achieve something we have always wanted, but didn't have the proper resources. It's only as the inter-operability of systems allow us to break down the barriers between functions, it becomes something that we can even hope to achieve. The CRM implementation and success rate purely depend upon the process, which includes the future, revenue, customer value, customer retention, customer acquisition and profitability.
1.2. BENEFITS OF A CRM PROCESS
Ability to retain loyal and profitable customers and channels for rapid growth of the business project
Acquiring the right customers, based on known characteristics, which drives growth and increased profit margins.
Increasing individual customer margins, while offering the right products at the right time.
1.3. A CLOSED - LOOP CRM PROCESS
Gathering information: Initially, gather information about customers. Customer data comes from sources both internal and external to organization.
Perform data aggregation: It is here that the data is merged and compressed into a complete view of the customer. A large customer data repository is produced.
Create "exploration warehouses": These are the extracts of the customer data needed to support specific analyses, such as customer profitability and predictive modeling .Exploration warehouses are the engines for analytical applications that support identification of opportunities and developing strategies.
Execution of strategies: execute these strategies by developing and launching marketing campaigns across targeted segments of customers. Campaign execution inevitably results in an interaction with customers.
Finally, once a customer interaction takes place and the customer responds, capture that response and "recycle" it to use in the on-going learning, analysis and refinement process.
Each time the process loop is completed, more is learned about the needs and wants of customers. Marketing improves as understanding of customers is enhanced and the ability to anticipate their needs increases.
No two companies sell in exactly the same number of steps or use exactly the same set of conditions or rules to sell. Any company that has not produced a successful, repeatable, sales process--either manually or with some prior automation--will not gain ground by implementing more technology. They will simply drive an incomplete or ineffective process faster!
This paper discusses the need for the development of an accurate "map" of the most efficient process for each discrete sales effort prior to committing that process to automation. Mapping and improving processes prior to enabling them with technology provides several benefits:
Locks in agreement on how things work among sales process owners
Provides an efficient environment to discuss or produce change
Provides Least Cost initiative approaches
Compresses the time needed to decide on changes
Provides an accurate picture of the steps and relative ROI of each for prioritization
Provides documentation and internal disciplines to re-create change downstream
1.4. CRM PROCESS MODEL
Surprisingly, few companies take the time to produce this map in any great detail or to understand the roles within the sales and marketing team. Beyond sales and marketing are many more layers of support and customer service people whose roles create touch-points within the sales process. If sales roles are not well understood, these supporting roles suffer as well.
The reason most companies don't map their sales process is a sense that everything is working--that the perceived process is in place and working by its own momentum. Process is important to the entire enterprise, although for purposes of this document we are generally speaking about CRM process and its role in the implementation.
Within CRM, process is extremely important to establishing valid roll-up of some of the most critical indicators for ROI:
Revenue per year
Gross profit dollars per year
Lower costs of sales as percent of revenue
Customer satisfaction and retention
Each of these metrics requires an accurate and repeatable process in order to derive true and accurate measurements. To maximize the ROI of any CRM system implementation, the processes must be looked at as a whole and not solely as a technology implementation.
When a company chooses to implement a CRM system, several critical questions must be addressed.
How much of the company's front-office business processes will be - or should be - changed by the system implementation?
Can only selected business processes that affect a customer be augmented with automation or must all customer touch points be re-engineered?
Should all processes be re-engineered simultaneously or is there a logical order to proceed - or an illogical order to avoid?
You can't sell what you can't deliver, and you can't deliver what you can't make. Core operational tasks must be stabilized first. This is a lesson that many ecommerce companies learned last Diwali season when they marketed themselves beyond their ability to deliver.
Many sales teams have a few savvy team members who have learned to achieve and excel in standalone mode. The motivation comes from an extreme desire to clear away all hurdles between themselves and commission checks with extreme dispatch and efficiency.
As these few continue to blow out their monthly sales number, management looks at the success as proof of a successful "process" and often begins to skew the structure of the entire sales force and support staff to mimic these successes.
1.5. BUT IS IT A PROCESS, AND IS IT A SUCCESS?
Once you begin to break down the steps needed to support these top performers, it often becomes clear that their sales are supported by an inordinate amount of background resources who manage extraordinary, unpredictable gyrations of paperwork, communications, and customer contact to make all ends meet in the middle. If every salesperson on the team were allocated similar resources, cost of sales would skyrocket as margins plummeted. In fact, these top performers are the antithesis of process. They are inefficient, resource-gobbling engines driving events through the path of least resistance using anyone and everyone who will help them. They rarely do it the same way twice. Documenting the process-literally creating a graphic and textual representation of the steps being created to support the example above-would quickly highlight the problem.
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CRM success requires the seamless integration of every aspect of business that touches the customer-including people, process, and technology-revolutionized by the Internet. Each component presents significant challenges, but it is the ability to integrate all three that makes or breaks a CRM system.
The process component of CRM is the most delicate because inappropriate automation of the CRM business process will only speed up the errant process. While most companies do have customer-facing business processes in place (i.e., processes that directly interface with the customer during the purchase, payment, and usage of the company's products and services), many times these business processes need to be updated or even replaced. To realize effective process change, a company needs first to examine how well existing customer-facing business processes are working. Then the company needs to redesign or replace broken or non-optimal process with ones that have been created and/or agreed upon internally.
1.6. CONCLUSION
Companies pursuing a CRM initiative often make the dangerous mistake of trying to correct their own customer-facing process deficiencies not by agreeing internally on how users would like a process to be done, but rather by purchasing CRM software that contains one or more business processes that have been prebuilt by the CRM vendor and then forcing the "not-built-here" process upon system users. When reviewing your customer-facing business processes, use a structured approach. For example, does each customer-facing business process have clear ownership, goals, and measures? Does each process have proper departmental interfaces that ensure that needed customer information flows across multiple departments? Does each process have documented procedures? Does each process have integrity (i.e., the process gets implemented the same regardless of who implements it and where?)
CRM software will not create or replace a business process, fix an ineffective or broken process, create or maintain customer relationships, make decisions, or produce products/services. Take the time to review customer-facing processes in detail, and make necessary corrections prior to implementing the CRM initiative.
