How can your company change from inward looking to Customer Experience focussed? SRD Group have helped many become Customer Experience focussed. Those who we managed to convert have been successful, where we have failed to win them over; results have, in the main been ‘less successful’.
During many CRM journeys we have found our customers to be more ‘inward looking’ or focused on the efficiency and effectiveness improvements that can be made within the organisation. There is nothing wrong with this and they are important but we have always tried to get our clients to consider the ‘C’ in CRM.
It was this desire and need to establish this focus that we started doing more research into the world of customer experience. It is through this that we started conducting Customer Experience Survey Programmes and working with clients to ‘engineer’ better customer experiences. This has become an important facet of our business but, most significantly, is that we believe that the work carried out here is having an impact on the way that companies are approaching their CRM Journeys.
For years many companies have been pushing the barrow of CRM, and it has been a very hard one at that. Particularly getting sales, marketing, customer service, finance… basically all departments to understand their role in the CRM Journey. Many was the time that we would hear “but is has nothing to do with me, it is a software tool for sales!”. Try as we might, getting the message across of the 360o view of the customer; more targeted campaigns; better measurement; increased efficiency etc., was very, very hard.
That was until we discovered the power of the 'Voice of the Customer'. By conducting Customer Experience Survey Programmes and doing in-depth analysis of the results we have been in a position to help change the ‘inward looking out approach’ (navel gazing!) of most companies to CRM to ‘outward looking in’.
The feedback generally provides a number of different initiatives to improve results, one of these is better CRM or, to make it even simpler, better utilisation of the CRM application in the organisation.
So what?
The ‘what’ is that by using this feedback to communicate the needs of your customers, their expectations, their results and ‘your’ performance, the customer becomes the energy and driving force behind a CRM Journey … not, amongst others, management, IT, marketing or our corporate masters.
Most staff are keen to do a good job, they are keen to do right by their customers, by getting them to see that CRM can positively impact on the results of the customer experience feedback management will not only have an easier road in terms of CRM adoption but also, CRM Measurement.
