Customer Obsession: Your Roadmap to Profitable CRM

Finally, here is a book that covers the complete "journey" of CRM implementation. Ad Nederlof and Dr. Jon Anton have done the near impossible: to position CRM in such a way that it makes practical sense to C-level executives. Beginning with the title of the book, "Customer Obsession," on through the last chapter, this book positions CRM for what it really is, namely, a complete change in corporate strategy, from the top down, that brings the customer into focus.

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO THE CRM JOURNEY Accessibility Is The Key

Being "obsessed" about building lasting customer relationships is what this book is all about. Our message is plain and simple. In this century, only those companies led by CEOs and executive teams who are driven by "customer obsession" will survive. All others will go out of business, or be absorbed and merged into companies that are infatuated with customer obsession.

In the past fifteen years, we have witnessed several waves of technology improvement initiatives. We all remember major efforts in "business process reengineering," followed by "total quality management." Later, there was the "Y2K" impact. It is fair to say that each of these major technology improvement initiatives has had a profound impact on businesses by reducing product costs, adding new features, and improving product quality.

Today, however, global competition has reduced many products to mere commodities that are difficult to differentiate through features, functions, quality, or price. Having reached parity, where price and quality are the "table stakes" of doing business, the paradigm shift is definitely toward being obsessed about customer service as a differentiator. In particular, the new focus is on giving customers easy "access" to mission-critical information therefore, logically, the growing importance of the multi-channel customer relationship management (CRM) center of today.

With the emergence of e-business, customers can contact companies through many channels including the telephone, e-mail, Web site, chat, VOIP, kiosk, FAX, wireless, and many more. Through these electronic "touchpoints," customers are selecting products based on a characteristic new to CRM, namely, the ease of "accessibility" to information about the product before, during, and after a purchase.

Because of this new focus on "accessibility," executives now recognize the CRM center as a significant generator of revenue, perhaps the surest investment they can make in attracting new customers, retaining existing customers, enhancing customer value, and ultimately improving their bottom-line profits.

With this newfound strategic importance of the customer "answer" center has come a vast array of emerging technology solutions to enable better customer service.

Figure 1.1 shows the dissatisfaction of a typical customer with the customer-company experience. It is our observation that:

· Customers don t like to repeat their names to a call center agent. The name should just be there on the agent s screen, right?

· Customers don t feel important when they are not rewarded for shopping.

· Customers don t like being transferred from person to person. They want their issues taken care of in one phone call.

· Customers don t like when you communicate with them using a method they do not prefer, e.g., some people like telephone calls and others like e-mail order confirmations.

· Customers don t like to be sold something they are not, and will never be, interested in.

So what is a CEO to do? Start by reading this book cover to cover, and then read it again. Give it to everyone on your team to read. And once you feel the team has mastered the basic concepts, then you and your company can begin the real journey of CRM, which starts with understanding the various definitions of CRM.