Relationship Dynamics: The Savior of CRMFalling victim to the "silver bullet" syndrome, too many businesses thought a CRM system alone would cure all ills. In truth, the key relationship dynamic is between people and the system — and in tying performance metrics to customer satisfaction and value.
by Terry Jabali Continued from Page 1 Position and DispositionWhat are some of the myths — and realities — under which the people in our tale toil? Here are a few: People: "I know; therefore, I am!" "I have been here over ten years and let me tell you, Finance messes us up every time," says the tenured sales team member. "Our system must be the system of record and must be handled by qualified team members only; otherwise, financial reporting will be skewed," says the VP of finance. Technology: "We are ahead of the game." "ROI last year was over 250 percent. This included a standardization and other initiatives that accounted for an increase in response rate with new customer inquiries as well as gains made from increased processing speed from our new servers," says the CIO. Processes: "If it's working, don't fix it." "Over the last five years we have been growing at an average rate of 20 percent and we continue to gain market share even in this slow economy; therefore, our processes must be working," says the CEO. Are these myths or realities? Perceptions, paradigms, tunnel vision — call them what you want but we've heard them all. Without a doubt, this enterprise's behavior belied corporate culture that at times inhibited effective performance. The Domino EffectWhen we gather in the big picture, we clearly deduce the impact on value creation and customer relationships. We can also imagine that these issues were over-shadowed by other successes within the organization. Performance numbers indicated an "efficient" IT function was supporting growing demand for this organization's products and services; this may have allowed corporate leadership to adopt a "phantom" view of performance excellence. Even while successful, the enterprise in our scenario still produced the following customer experience: For more than five days, the customer battled with the enterprise about something that should have been a non-issue. In frustration, the customer reached a critical point where she vented to other potential customers. Despite significant investment, the CRM system "as deployed" was helpless to address customer concerns — and the relationship ROI suffered. The enterprise's self-deprecating culture hindered inner collaboration, to the detriment of overall customer value delivery. Finally, effective use of organization resources is seriously questioned; the enterprise enjoyed only sporadic efficiencies. This enterprise's leadership team was not fully aware of the impact on the customer. Rather, it found that despite these "gaps," performance was normal and required no attention. Unfortunately, the gaps and holes in performance from the customer's perspective will continue as the cycle repeats with even greater intensity. Applied Value CreationI have a vision that someday, all these enterprise entities will work together in harmony! One critical mandate for effective enterprise performance is to create a proper definition of value creation across departmental entities that balances the dynamics between them. The following assumptions must be considered as core premises:
At this point, I would like to offer a high-level view of some key imperatives about value creation and the essential "entity relationships" among people, processes, and technology in enterprise performance. The first part will focus on people. I. People and Process. Premise: An organization's processes exist to promote customer value creation. Therefore, it makes good sense to include the "people" dimension of staff, vendors, and suppliers as part of the overall value process. In addition, healthy process-based organizations have clear accountability across the enterprise by assigning a success performance measure to each process. While people make these processes work, not the other way around, a clearly defined "customer experience" process ensures that all relevant workgroups are part of that experience.
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