The Customer is Always There!

Now, that little parable is empowered through and through with technology, no doubt about it. And pretty easy technology at that, if a “non-user” could figure out how to get into the repository and make sense of it.

But Pete’s point is that without the cultural imperative that had obviously been well communicated and ingrained throughout the company, that call would have gone into voicemail.

Survival of the Best

Maybe I’m too cynical, but I suggested to Pete that all the “messages from the CEO” and all the lunchroom inspirational posters in the world can’t get people to disrupt their workday to contribute to the greater good. People just aren’t wired that way.

“It’s basic management,” he insists. “You need to determine what is important to the organization, then make sure the reward and measurement systems are aligned toward supporting that. But that is how things can go sideways with CRM; they never make that connection.

”He continues: “If what you’re measuring are ‘call times’ versus ‘average resolution time,’ and success is measured by ‘lots of calls’ and ‘smaller resolution times,’ you’re going to be working against the value you’re trying to instill. The new benchmark metric could become ‘How many articles did you publish in the know-ledgebase today?’”

And thus did we address the elephant in the corner: to what degree can knowledge management have an impact on customer service and resolution?

“The potential for KM to significantly impact a high-level strategy around customer experience is absolutely huge. More and more, you’ll see companies recognizing the strategic and widespread benefit they can achieve company-wide...as opposed to a tactical view.

”They go together, Pete believes. Large companies CAN avoid costs by ramping up knowledge-based customer experience plans—call diversion, self-service, etc.—and at the same time, make those customers extremely happy. It can be both! “This works from a customer self-service perspective, but internally facing knowledge systems can also help agents get better information faster and satisfy the customers better,” he says.

So, are customers investing in CRM to make money or to save money? “I don’t think you’re going to get a single answer to that. Yes to both,” says Pete. “There’s almost always an element of customer satisfaction. If you’re just trying to save money, I’m not sure a KM system is the right way to go. But if you’re trying to combine that with increased levels of customer satisfaction—and who wouldn’t?—that gets to the core of what our customers are really trying to accomplish. Whether they have a holistic view before they go in...well, that’s a different story.”

Some companies still view CRM as a separate activity, and the knowledgebase is used only by the contact center agents. “But I see CRM as a strategy,” says Pete, “and the content should be available across the entire organization. In our own company, we’ve formally defined what we want our customer experience to be. ‘What do we want our customers to think about us?’ Then we set out to determine whether the people and the process, and finally the technology, are aligned in the right way to support that plan.

“Face it—a lot of businesses don’t WANT a relationship; they want a transaction,” Pete says. “Go on Amazon; that’s not a relationship, that’s a transaction.” In Amazon’s case, we both agree that it might feel a little like more—“I see you like to buy cookbooks and country music CDs”—but at the end of the day they just want you to decide between express shipping or not. And that’s OK; that’s their business model.

But according to Pete—and I have to agree on this point, too—there’s a movement out there to focus on the quality of the relationship over the technology metrics normally associated with CRM “systems.” And so it leads to the obvious closing question:

Will CRM survive?“

You have to define your terms. There are lots of systems that call themselves ‘CRM,’” Pete points out, “but are more often than not just automated business processes—tech support, help desk, sales, problem resolution... People were buying the hype, at first. Then the vendors had trouble making their revenue forecasts, because they were based on people continuing to buy at those early hype levels. They forgot to measure real customer success.

“Does CRM have legs?” Pete asks rhetorically. “Well, customers aren’t going out of fashion. Every business has customers. And every company has to keep defining what kind of relationship it wants with its customers. There are technologies that support relationships. But they should come into play only after the company has defined what kind of relationship it wants with its customers.

”There are lots of words in this White Paper about systems and technology. And that’s OK, because with global presences and complex organizations, a certain level of technology DOES have to come into play. There’s a huge need for that.

I guess you need to look at the three words in the title of this particular edition: Customer Relationship Management. It sounds corny, but note that “customer” comes first, “relationship” is in the middle, and the “management” part follows up as merely a close, but significant, third. Please enjoy the following articles, remember to download the PDFs for future use and shared knowledge with your co-workers (and customers!) and keep thinking about what you WANT to be before you buy a bunch of stuff to BE it.