viernes, 16 de noviembre de 2007

"Making CRM Work for your Customer" Event (and II)

Let´s finish with the post I opened yesterday. I had some questions to answer:

1. Which are CRM implementation Golden Rules?.

In Mary Carol Alexander´s opinion, from Salesforce, these are the 8 golden rules a firm should consider when implementing a CRM Project:

1st: Executives´strong vision
2nd: Solid CRM Strategy
3rd: Valuable customer experiences
4th: High organizational collaboration
5th: Well defined and automatized processes
6th: Clear data and quality customer information
7th: Solid CRM Technology
8th: Information and dashboards to monitor CRM project´s success

2. Do customer´s satisfaction improve after CRM implementation?.

Accordingly a research developed by Wesley and colleagues, customer satisfaction do not improve after a CRM project implementation. Of course, there is a logic explanation: When they analyzed data regarding customer´s size, they realized that larger customers were more satisfied and medium and small customer´s satisfaction scores were getting worse.

As CRM project emphasize focusing on best customers, it is logic that after implementing a CRM project the company directs its efforts towards large (are more valuable) customers, forgetting medium and small ones.

3. What should I do to make my sales people use CRM Technology?.

Pay them, in a very radical decission a firm (Saleforce´s customer) decided to pay to their salespeople in order to make them use CRM.

Overall, the event was interesting, even I didn´t get no "whow" idea. Just one last thing what it surprised me a lot: Being the organziser Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association software was prohibited, the conference room had not wifi connection and NOBODY had a laptop, except for me, and I couldn´t use it...



I wonder: Bearing in mind our companies, what kind of CRM Technology they use mostly: On-demand (Salesforce, or others) or Client-server (Siebel)? Why? And in the future?

3 comentarios:

David Sanchez Bote dijo...

Now, clearly, Client-Server but the future is On-Demand. One of the rules of the web 2.0 is the use of Internet as a platform.
We only need a more open minded people here in the valley

Iñaki Arenaza dijo...

It strikes me that in an event that is clearly 'software oriented' (what's a CRM system but software atfter all), you are prohibited from using any software at all. I wonder if they even prohibited mobile phones, just in case you took pictures, or recorded any video and then sent it to 'the outside world'.

As to the questions you pose, I find the 3 remark 'amusing'. You intented to use a system that is supposed to improved your sales, and you need to pay your sales people to use it!! I'd say something's clearly wrong here.

As a final remark, I'd say David's proposition makes sense. Web (I think he means Web when he talks about 'internet') as a platform is more interesting both to the final clients and the software makers.

But it'll take time to take off. Firstly due to web technology just starting to be mature enough to build rich applications (not just basic web forms). Secondly because organizations have a very slow adoption rate of new technologies. The bigger the organization, the slower the rate. So I figure MCC companies will use still client-server CRM systems for quite some time.

Saludos. Iñaki.

Mikel Mesonero dijo...

Thanks for your answers and comments, guys.

David, that´s what it was said in the event, and even though it was their product and, of course, they have to sell it, Saleforce looked very interesting and friendly-used.

Iñaki, about the "prohibition", it could be I´m wrong. The box with candys (the picture I put on my post) is the Saleforce´s logo, so what I thought was a prohibition was just...advertising. Anyway it was remarkable that nobody in the conference room had laptop (and most of the people was in 30`s and 40`s). In fact in our School of Business you see few people (professors and students) with laptops.

About questions, it didn´t surprised me about paying salespeople. I think using CRM technology it takes lots of time at the beginning, and only when you have used it, put all the informaton in, you get results. That´s why sometimes you need to "force" people to use it (and we all know that "money is money")

Completely agree with you, both, about "on-demand" solution´s slow acceptance in firms. In fact, I have a couple of interesting articles about the topic:
"Encouraging existing customers to switch to self-service technologies" and
"e-CRM: Revisiting the general principles of usability and resistance".

I´ll tell you about...