Top 5 Best and Worst CRM Practices - Tech

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Top 5 Best and Worst CRM Practices

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Top 5 CRM Best Practices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Top 5 CRM Worst Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The CRM Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Worst Practices List. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Things Always to do. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Resources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

About Ziff Davis B2B Ziff Davis B2B is a leading provider of research to technology buyers and high-quality leads to IT vendors. As part of the Ziff Davis family, Ziff Davis B2B has access to over 50 million in-market technology buyers every month and supports the company's core mission of enabling technology buyers to make more informed business decisions.

Copyright ? 2014 Ziff Davis B2B. All rights reserved.

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Ziff Davis|White Paper| Top 5 Best and Worst CRM Practices

Introduction

The excellence of industry best practices is that companies in all sectors can share in proven solutions that meet their common challenges. By embracing industry best practices, customer relationship management (CRM) becomes an innovative stage for designing essential automations that manifest the theoretical strategies and tools of industry best practices. However, a certain amount of flexibility is required when planning and implementing CRM solutions and the customizations lend themselves to the uniqueness of the organization and should be used effectively to strive for best-practice solutions.

Top 5 CRM Best Practices

Industry best practices can be professional or commercial, but they must be proven to be the most effectual or precise practices to use given a controlled set of conditions. Customer relationship management (CRM) sets out to automate industry best practices for interacting and communicating with customers and organizations for the sale of goods or services.

For CRM, business is about customers buying products, and according to industry best practices, a customer will only do so when certain sets of conditions are true. The possible combinations of strategies and tools that identify and capitalize on those sets of conditions are potentially endless.

Enter CRM.

CRM is a one-size-fits-all, all-in-one solution because of its flexibility and scalability of features. From small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to global enterprises, CRM is a collection of enterprise methodologies, software, and Internet capabilities that organize customer communications and interactions.

CRM is evolutionary, as it can be configured to support new industry best practices while allowing for the future growth of companies and their customer bases. Use one or more CRM features to address customer contact:

? Identify and Anticipate Needs to Make Customers Feel Important and Appreciated. Draw from social collaborations to learn customer behavior and automate personalization of the customer experience.

? Help Customers Understand Your Systems. Maintain brand and reputation management. Provide ample information on products, services, and online Web access.

? Pay Attention to Customer Likes and Dislikes. Automate routine interactions based on customer preferences and online activities.

? Set High Sales Targets and Objectives. Use analytics to work from the highest statistical likelihood that customers will make a purchase.



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Ziff Davis|White Paper| Top 5 Best and Worst CRM Practices

? Plan Near-term and Long-term Big Picture Tasks. Use customer purchase history, personal data, and preferences to plan, forecast, and project potential revenues.

Another CRM best practice encompasses the other five: Balancing strategic capabilities is a necessary and important step in delivering the CRM solution. First, the CRM technology must complement the organization's culture and the roles of its employees. Managing CRM will be more effective in delivering the desired results when skilled employees are in charge of administering the CRM software. Balancing strategic capabilities also reflects the accurate processes for customer interaction. The CRM infrastructure is intended to foster customer relationships and build customer loyalty. The processes involved in doing so are most successful when underlying CRM business-development tools produce customer satisfaction and sales. Then, the information that the CRM system delivers to salespeople, business decision makers, and associated users determines the level of effectiveness the CRM solution delivers. So, there is a delicate balance between the three (employee skills, process, and knowledge delivery) that makes the CRM solution effective.

Top 5 CRM Worst Practices

Customer relationship management (CRM) software is lauded in the marketplace as the next best thing in sales and marketing intelligence solutions. Nonetheless, just as best practices are methods or techniques that have proven superior, worst practices are methods or techniques that have proven substandard among available CRM practices.

The enlightened view is that the CRM software, in and of itself, is typically not the culprit when poor results are returned. The CRM software consists of sundry components, features, and functions, but the software is only one element of the CRM solution.

The CRM Solution

The business process is the human interaction of production operations. Orchestration is the IT automations and processes. Together, production operations optimize profitability. The tasks for implementing the CRM solution are, therefore, to use CRM software in orchestrating routine, IT systems?based procedures and predefine business process workflows to streamline the human interaction required to supplement the orchestrated routines.

The Worst Practices List

Undesired results typically occur with the implementation of one or more of the following five CRM worst practices:

? Lack of Staff Preparation. The staff do not understand their roles and responsibilities as they pertain to the new CRM infrastructure production processes.

? Organizational Fit Considerations. The organization's culture provides no change management assistance for adapting to operations under the new CRM customer focus.



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Ziff Davis|White Paper| Top 5 Best and Worst CRM Practices

? Poor Communications. An overall ineffectiveness occurs because of the inconsistency and inappropriateness of communications; selected communication channels are not appropriate to the level and type of communication required; and customer data do not accurately represent the customer, the customer data are not up to date, or the customer data are incomplete.

? Too Much Focus on the Software and Not Enough Focus on the Customer. Sales and marketing campaigns are not implemented to sustain customer interest, and additional CRM features are in place but are not being used in a timely or efficient manner.

? Ineffective Leadership. Directing the processes of operations using the new CRM environment was not well explained, and management is generally unsupportive of the transition to new CRM operations.

Things Always to Do

Poor CRM practices repel buyers. Consumers perceive the communication element of business as an indication of the quality of products and services they will receive following a purchase. Business personnel need to know how to use the customer information from the CRM solution. Leaders must enforce change management to ensure continuity of operations. The level of risks differs among businesses and should be managed as a normal function during project implementation.

Moreover, planning for CRM implementations should always allow for regulatory change. Such change is to be expected in the business environment and can require numerous improvements and enhancements to existing operations. The added complexity requires proper planning, which goes beyond the CRM solution and into the area of system integration and reengineering.



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Ziff Davis|White Paper| Top 5 Best and Worst CRM Practices

Resources ? Be sure to check out karmaCRM's 2011 Best & Worst Social Media Practices for more information about CRM worst practices. ? Check out the Application Solution Providers' coverage of CRM practices at Worst Practices: 3 Ways Businesses Fail at Social CRM. ? Read Worst Practice Customer Relationship Management in a Car Park for an empirical discussion on related CRM worst practices. ? An interesting read on CRM projects is Why CRM Projects Fail by Ventes Marketing.

About the Author Timothy Landers, a principal at , has an MBA in Technology Management and is a Project Management Institute?certified Project Management Professional with more than 15 years in the IT industry. He has written more than 28 courses for corporate training and higher education as well as product manuals and professional certification exams. Timothy is an analyst with Studio B.



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