I know that sometimes we need to deal with complex problems, markets and processes. But, one simple thing stays the same, customers want service. It doesn’t matter if the price is cheap, customers still want some kind of service. I was thinking this over, and thought, in relation to CRM software, less can be more. If things are kept simple, then staff have the freedom to serve the customer. If we control processes too tightly, then customers hear the phrase “I’m sorry, but it’s against our policy”, and customers don’t want to hear that, so they won’t be coming back.

When solving certain problems, CRM needs to have a level of complexity, but let’s not forget the simple things, as they can make all the difference.

There are many CRM software packages which offer all sorts of feature sets to their customers. I’d say all offer contact management, and many offer sales automation, technical support/service tracking and marketing functionality. Some go as far as providing event management and financial smarts. I’m interested in finding out, which features do most small businesses find essential to their CRM solution?

Over the past few months, my company has been involved in developing a new CRM system. We pretty much have our first version to a feature complete state. During this time, we’ve had one major customer who has been using it within their business. So, we’ve pretty much designed the system with as much communication and feedback from this customer as possible. That way we could aim to have something that is suitable for “real life” effectiveness in a real business environment.

What I’ve realised however, is that even with this level of feedback, the design is still lacking. When trying to use the CRM system within our own business, I find that there are important areas that just don’t work as well as they should.

What does this say to me? Well, I’m not really sure, but I think that those who design CRM systems should have this important feedback from their customers. Also, I think that they should have some skilled people who have knowledge about effective business systems and also program design. This would help the design to be as effective as possible.

By streamlining CRM software in this way, you get advantages like efficient business sysyems (for the businesses who use the CRM system), but also (from the developer’s point of view) well utilised software, and most importantly happier, more effective and growing business customers. Really a win-win for both sides.

I recently noticed that one of the top search results in Google for CRM is Wikipedia.

Disregarding the Wikipedia story for a moment, the first paragraph states:
However, CRM is not a technology itself, but rather a holistic approach to an organisation’s philosophy, placing the emphasis firmly on the customer.

The part that I’m noting in particular is “placing the emphasis firmly on the customer”. How many CRM solutions actually have their emphasis on the customer? I’ve seen many CRM systems, particularly the cheaper ones focus on sales and not the customer. They are not the same thing, and I would say that customers are more important. If you have no customers, then you have no sales. Simple.

I think it would be beneficial for CRM designers to note that they have a special opportunity to help businesses focus in the right area for improved health of their business. I believe CRM systems should teach and help businesses streamline processes and improve customer service and general relationships.

CRM is not a sales tool, it’s a system that helps your business focus on the customer, where it should be.

Getting the right data into CRM systems. I’m sure that businesses spend a lot of money trying to improve their quality of data, and I’m sure some spend almost nothing (yikes!). What about particular businesses in the people industry? By people, I mean that these businesses are focused 100% on helping people, with almost no thought to monetary gain. It seems that one of the big problems with these industries is their aversion to computers (let alone CRM solutions!) and they’re reluctance to take the time to use such a system.

Yesterday I was having a conversation with someone in regards to writing down information about people they interact with in their job. I’ll call this person George (not his real name). George works in an industry where using computers are almost unheard of. The majority of the workforce are older and wiser than most, because these professionals use their experience and years of training to talk to people, helping them with their problems in life.

George mentioned to me that he would be interested in only talking to and helping people without all the administration tasks that go with it. I began to think to myself, there must be a mine of information that George would collect about someone after talking with them, how do you get a people person to spend the time entering information into a CRM system?

An interesting question, can anyone comment on helping George to use CRM in his industry?