Words To Publish

There was a recent article from the University of Houston that defined customer relationship management (CRM) as a relationship where a company interacts continuously with its customers in order to know how the customer’s likes and dislikes have changed. The wording of this definition is particularly insightful because it shows that CRM is a process not an event.

Too many companies approach CRM as an event. Read the following and see if it sounds familiar. Your company’s management catches wind of the exciting new concept of maintaining customers that is supposed to drastically increase revenues and overall profitability. Your company hires a special marketing team to find out your customer’s likes, dislikes, wants, and needs. They spend time and money gathering this data and organizing it into useful information for your company. They give one presentation on the subject and then the whole project is completely dropped; forgotten about forever.

Too many companies take this approach and fail to remember that CRM is indeed a process. It’s very understandable that a company and its people would want to treat it like a project. A project is something you can start, progress in, and finish. As human beings we like to finish things, we have a check-list mentality. However, this project-based approach fails to capture change and long term trends. The project mentality leads to a snap-shot; how people were at one point in time. Customer’s needs are fluid; what they like today, they may not like tomorrow.

Chances are if your company started a CRM project, you did a fairly good job. The first step is usually to really get to know your customers needs. This involves understanding that your company doesn’t sell products, it fulfills basic human desires. Some ways to understand these needs consist of surveys, telephone calls, focus groups, and interviews. In addition it involves spending some quality time with your customers.

After you understand your customer’s needs, you’ll need to put your company in a position where it can meet those needs and at the same time become more profitable. It doesn’t make sense to only focus on the customer; you’ll need to make sure it makes economic sense for your company.

This is the point where most companies stop: they have found out their customer’s needs and they’ve changed. In order to complete the CRM process you’ll need to continue doing this over and over. This way as your customers change, you will be the first to know and you’ll have a leg up on your competition. Always remember that managing customers is not a project, it’s a process. Find out more information this CRM consulting website.