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A One-Size-Fits-All Approach to CRM Won't Work

By Paul Tenberg, Queplix Corp.

In my ten years as a CRM strategy implementation consultant, I have participated in more than 30 large-scale projects. One of my clients, a Fortune 500 heavy machine manufacturer, was faced with a problem. It had invested several million dollars in CRM technology to interact with customers, dealers and partners. The solution did not address all of my client's needs, but the company had invested heavily in professional services to be able to customize the product to make it meet as many of the requirements as possible. Then the vendor abandoned future development and support.

After spending several months researching existing CRM vendors, obtaining RFP bids and attending presentations, my client was left pretty dissatisfied. The closest contender could match about half of what was required, at a price tag of close to $10 million.

We found another solution that could save the client 95 percent of the cost and address its entire requirement in four months. How? From Day 1, my company has recognized the uniqueness of each individual customer and the way in which it does business. We understand that a one-size-fits-all approach does not work for everyone. Therefore, we created an enterprise-level customer-care solution that can be completely configured and adapted to the way our customers do their business, while maintaining and supporting all of the customizations.

The importance of customer relationships is continuing to drive today’s business and is influencing the shape of the global market place of the future. CRM started as a strategy to manage customer contacts and keep track of customer communications during sales cycles. Many Sales Force Automation companies emerged as a result of this trend in the mid-'90s. These companies have experienced some difficulties in recent years because of the ongoing shift in CRM strategy.

According to CRMGuru’s Dick Lee, there has been a shift in the economic balance of power from sellers to buyers: "Simply put, we can produce more goods and deliver more services than markets can absorb." The result, according to Lee, is customer choice. "Choice equals power. If we don't take excellent care of customers, they have lots of other options. And in this game, whoever keeps the most customers wins."

Value existing customers
In the last century, CRM vendors and consultants offered products and services that helped companies identify and win new customers. The challenge in recent years has been not only obtaining new customers but also keeping existing ones, by constantly providing them with exceptional customer care. This is the only way to assure the ongoing business relationships with your customers and keeping the revenue stream constant.

Unfortunately, many companies, CRM software vendors and CRM consultants have failed to adapt to this new trend. Many companies view customer care as a cost factor, not as a business driver. Companies try to cut down customer support costs by hiring low-skilled workers with little skills. Many companies have outsourced customer care to other countries where labor costs are cheap (like India, Pakistan or Philippines).

How many times have you called your credit card or your phone company to be placed on hold for ages? How many times have you entered your account number, PIN or password, just to get to a live person asking you for the information all over again? How many times have you been passed from agent to agent having to repeat the reason for your call every time? And how many times have you lost time and money, because internal departments within a company could not communicate with each other?

The answer to these problems has until recently been new technology. Technological advancements have helped increase the productivity, and companies flocked to provide expensive CRM products and services to ensure that their customers would be eternally happy. CRM vendors have offered "best of breed" modules with wide functionality from handling inventory orders for manufacturing companies to defect tracking modules for high-tech companies.

These companies tried to pack as many features into their offerings as possible. What they lacked in depth, they tried to make up in breadth. However, many solutions ended up being shallow; with poorly thought-out business rules bundled together behind not very user-friendly screens. They offered a little bit of everything for companies in each vertical market, claiming that being "best of breed" ensures customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Yet, customers are still spending long hours on hold. Their requests for service are being lost by the system or ignored by the customer services representatives, and their expectations continue to be lowered. Despite this, Siebel Systems Executive Vice President David Schmaier, delivering a keynote address at the DCI CRM Conference & Technology Showcase in New York City in 2004, said, "Put simply, CRM works."

The attitude of blaming the customer for not being able to implement CRM is still dominant. Many middle managers, after spending large corporate budgets on the systems that barely do half of what they are supposed to do, are trying to minimize the shortfalls and sustain a rosy outlook.

The reality is this: Customer service is never perfect. But to keep customers happy, companies need to strive for perfection. They need to find processes that work for their own business, leveraging their strengths and accumulated best practices. If a critical customer calls with the problem and the problem has not been solved in a certain amount of time, there should be a way for a system to escalate it to the appropriate level of management. If many critical customers call with the same problem every day, there should be a way for a system to analyze the information and fix the root cause of it. If a certain type of customer likes to buy a certain add-on to a product, there should be a way for a management to learn this on a timely basis to offer it to all customers.

Until companies are able to implement a customer care package built to their specific requirements and can grow and adapt to an ever-changing business environment--while providing a substantial ROI--the CRM promise will continue to be unfulfilled.

Paul Tenberg is a founder of Queplix Corp., the next-generation customer care software company. He is vice president and director of Professional Services, providing strategic management and professional services expertise. He has more than 10 years of senior management experience in all aspects of the CRM consulting and software development. Before co-founding Queplix, Tenberg managed Priority Consulting through its rapid growth phase in the late 1990s. Earlier, Tenberg worked for several global companies including Citigroup, The Limited and Nelson Communications. Tenberg holds a bachelor of science degree in accounting and economics from New York University’s Stern School of Business and an MBA from Drexel University with a concentration in MIS. Tenberg is a registered CPA in a state of New York.

Queplix is the developer of QueWeb, the next-generation customer e-service software suite for industries that sell technically complex products and services. Queplix has a proven track record of helping businesses with technically complex products increase customer satisfaction (and thus customer retention) by delivering a superior customer experience and establishing more profitable, long-term customer relationships, while reducing operating and technology costs.

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