June 2002 Newsletter

Introduction

The aim of this communication is to bring you informative articles, tips and news on how to successfully merge teams and technology and maximise your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

This month:

1. SRD Group Breakfast Survey Review and
2. Employee Incentives Lead to CRM Failure?.

SRD Group Breakfast Survey Review

SRD Group will be facilitating breakfast workshops for organisations that are using, or contemplating using, Customer Relationship Management systems. The aim of these workshops is to explore solutions to commonly encountered, non-technical, issues surrounding CRM. The idea is to share the experiences and learning of the entire group and to come up with some strategies or methodologies that the attendees can take back to their organisations and implement in order to get more value out of their CRM system.

In order to understand what should be work shopped, SRD Group put together a survey in which we sought feedback on how organisations rated the most common problems that SRD Group had encountered in its experience. These ratings would determine what the subject of the workshop should be. We had an excellent response rate (56%) - thank you to all of you who managed to find the time to complete it. Congratulations to John Sweeney of ORIX Australia, who was the winner of the draw for an excellent bottle of New Zealand Chardonnay!

One finding was that managers are the key to success of any CRM strategy. If they do not use the CRM system to manage their team and their customers then they provide no good reason for their team to use. 71.73% of all respondents to the Breakfast Workshop Survey rated this as an issue in their organisation, hence getting Managers to use the system in their everyday roles and to manage their respective teams, will be the subject of the first workshop. This will no doubt cross-over into other areas included in the survey.

The review makes very interesting reading and has provided us with good subject matter for the workshops.

Employee Incentives Lead to CRM Failure?

"If the idea behind CRM is to increase the long-term value of a customer, why are all your employee incentive programs tied to the short-term periodic financial statements? Is it really in the best interest of an employee to take the "long view" on customer value, when this approach could very well mean a decrease in bonuses and a drop in the price of the stock? If the employee must make a choice between capturing long-term customer value and driving short-term personal financial rewards, the CRM efforts of the firm could end up losing out to employee self-interest."

This is a very good short article by Jim Novo - Employee Incentives Lead to CRM Failure? It provides food for thought on incentive programmes and supports the idea of 'future proofing' and making incentives based on both short term and long term objectives. Short term being more numbers orientated and long term, information and profiling orientated for future revenue growth.

Upcoming Events

The first workshop will be held in Auckland on Friday the 5th of July at the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron starting at 8.30am and finishing at 10.30am. Formal invitations will be sent out by email early next week. We are still finalising the date and venue of the Sydney workshop and will let you know in due course.

Customer Satisfaction/Enrichment Programmes

Stop thinking customer satisfaction, start thinking customer enrichment. A blind focus on customer satisfaction binds a business to the here and now, to articulated customer needs. Customer enrichment leaps over paradigms of the present to new technologies, new products, new approaches and, ultimately wonderful new markets.  Melvin R. Goodes, Chairman & CEO, Warner-Lambert Company.

A dissatisfied customer will tell nine to ten people about an unhappy experience, even more people if the problem is serious. 

If handled correctly they will only tell 5 people and could even become an advocate for the company as a result of the way the situation was handled.

• 31% of customers who experience service problems never register complaints, because it is too much trouble, there is no easy channel of communications or because they believe that no one cares.
• Of that 31%, as few as 9 percent will do additional business with the company. 
• It also costs about five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. 
• Loyal satisfied customers are more apt to recommend a company, providing word-of-mouth advertising, the most effective and least expensive sales promotion there is.
• High customer satisfaction and enrichment of the relationship saves money and increases sales and profits.

SRD Group is conducting customer satisfaction/enrichment programmes; projects that are very much part of having a Customer Centric Strategy.If you would like to find out more about these programmes please email   and he will forward you some more information.

Tips/Thoughts

You cannot have CRM without ERM (Employee Relationship Management)!!

That's all for this month!

Regards,

The Team at SRD Group.