Ouch!
I am still not exactly sure what kind of super-powers my son has. He does posses the strength to break unbreakable LEGO pieces. In my youth, I lost my first tooth by prying apart LEGO bricks with my teeth. It soon became a ritual. Every loose tooth led to LEGO munching. Still, my son does not understand how to harness this super-power. He broke into tears when he cracked the leg off of this guy.
In sales, the ultimate goal is to win the mind of the customer. Service is where a company will win the customer’s heart. With tears flowing, I went online to find LEGO Customer Service. A quick form entry and some checking to see which set our broken train conductor came from was all that was needed. A quick electronic response (less than 5 minutes) let me know that a replacement piece was on its way. Free of change and no questions asked. In 2 weeks, the package arrived. Here is where I was really impressed with LEGO Customer Service.
First, the letter was personal. An agent took the time to write a real personal letter to my son.
Second, LEGO apologized to one of their pieces breaking during play. Not every company that will say truly say sorry. Only the great ones do.
Third, the piece (from a now discontinued set) was good as new and free as promised.
I immediately wrote a note to thank LEGO and had my son add his own thanks in crayon. I have had LEGO since I was 5 and my son has loads of DUPLO LEGO sets. He plays with them near daily. Today, I received another letter from LEGO thanking my son for his artwork. LEGO has great products. LEGO’s great service makes them a great company.
Thanks LEGO.
The 4 P’s (Product, Price, Place and Promotion) are the standard Marketing Mix. This is not just “marketing fluff” the P’s are where the rubber meets the road in CRM, namely quote generation. The 5th P (Problems) still exist with quote generation today.
Product and pricing data are integrated with ERP systems. Promotions live with CRM and for the enterprise are often customer specific. Place in the CRM parlance is the here and now. Sales is looking to book revenue today. The revenue pipeline needs to flow so that the company can grow. It is amazing to me that 5th P (problems) still exist with product and pricing. These problems are identical to problems faced by CRM over a decade ago. Customer-specific pricing is everywhere and is not going away, yet the complexities of this pricing makes quote generation in CRMs nearly impossible. Too many companies have this problem and no one really solves it. Why? Likely the P (price) to fix the P (problem) is way to high and no P (product) or P (promotion) have incentives to fix it in the P (place).
When you know your customer (KYC), good things happen.
– Example, Client A increased user adoption to 70% of total call volume. ROI increase 25% in one quarter.
When you know your customer, you can spot trouble a mile away.
– Example, Client B re-organized and has a new executive sponsor. He has called the ROI model into question.
When you know your customer, the relationship goes beyond business.
– Example, Client C asks for advice on improving the ROI model and photography equipment for his vacation.
I have blogged a bunch on Gist over the last year. The Seattle startup has some nice traction going for it. It seemed pretty clear to me from the beginning that Gist would be a great CRM and/or Sales Enablement tool for the small to mid-size market. Check this nice blog on that at this link: Gist as a small business CRM tool.
More of my take on Gist can be found at: 12Sided, The Blog: Gist Posts
One of my rules is to always consider the front office and the back office needs and desires of any CRM project.
I recently came across a service process that generate a large volume of automated tickets. The process was over-engineered. Nearly all of these automated tickets were not true customer service issues. These were more like information notices. The sheer volume of these tickets obscured true customer service issues. The development team did not believe that it was an issue, but they did not have to live with the tickets. Compliance by customer service faltered. Agents took to their own ways of dealing with these tickets. Metrics were called into question. Standard stuff. Remember the usage and compliance needs to work the way that the users do — not the other way around.
In my experience, pipeline/forecast is one area of a CRM system that changes frequently. Fortunately, these changes require less coding changes through Windows Workflow Foundation (Dynamics CRM) and Workflow Automation (Salesforce). I have seen this both from the consulting side and as a user. Not going to comment on whether it is right or wrong, just that it happens, often, as a matter of fact in many organizations. Change in management, there will be a change to the sales process. New compensation model and the forecasts will change. It happens all the time and makes numbers from sales very short term and difficult to do long term trends. The best way to improve accuracy, find a sales process that works and then measure the core of that process. Less change, more value.
All consultants like to ask questions. Sometimes too many questions. Here are 5 that I keep on hand for initial client engagements.
- What do your expectations of a service provider?
- How do you see out team helping you address challenges and opportunities?
- Why are you changing providers?
- How do we learn about the business to relate action and implementation to ROI?
- What are the good, the bad and the “do not repeat”?
What questions do you use or what to see asked?
This year, I know a ton o fpeople headed to Dreamforce. Sadly, I will not be among them due to scheduling. If you are going let me know and your interests and can match you with some of the people I know.
The first priority of a CRM deployment should be to learn about existing customer data within the enterprise. It is obvious, but often overlooked. I often make it the top priority when scoping CRM services. Is all that customer data in all of the right hands? 99% of the time it is not. It needs to be in the hands of the people working with the customers. My approach is to get that data to them. Usually, this is an instant success which give a solid foundation for future successes.
Second priority is to understand cost per call. Before the deployment, I have to be able to calculate cost per call (the $ metric). This is true for a services or sales force automation deployment. By correlating the cost per call to improvement, I can calculate a cost per call improvement. This is ROI. Automate your internal processes so that you can pull everything you know about your customer into a single view for your rep (sales or service).
Keep these two priorities in mind and your CRM implementation will be on the road to success.
Nice article on Gist and the impact of Office 2010. If you have not tried Gist, check it out.
WSJ: Updating Office on the Cheap
For more of my thoughts on Gist, check my earlier posts. 12Sided on Gist
