Steve Downton, Downton Service Management Consultants Ltd, Noventum Group
Thousands of companies are investing millions of pounds in technology to help them enable their customer relationship management (CRM) strategy. Why?
Surely the essential thinking behind CRM is well-known: by mastering marketing, campaign management, sales and service functions through the use of technology, a company takes an holistic approach to customer needs and can thereby fully satisfy them more effectively and more efficiently. But how does one know if it is achieving that goal? How effectively is it achieving that goal and how can it be measured? Currently money is being poured into CRM-enabling technology by businesses without an understanding of what difference it will make.
Leading edge businesses have realised that, as ever, the journey to the Promised Land is a tough one. Even if the much-vaunted CRM tools live up to expectations, these businesses recognise it is still their job to apply them most effectively. But some still continue with marketing, sales and service as separate entities, each with their own isolated islands of customer information through a failure to integrate their processes and technology. As a result they have failed to fulfil the CRM promise of giving all employees who interact with the customers, complete insight into the customer's history with the company thereby allowing the employee to take the most appropriate action.
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