This top ten list has been fully tested, tried and proven. If you are looking for a checklist on how to ensure greater success for your Customer Experience (CX) and, or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) projects, you need to take these must do’s seriously.
The Backstory
A few years ago I embarked on a large scale operational CRM project for a financial services group. I was pretty excited about the prospects of developing an organisation-wide approach to customers.
At the time the sales and service teams were split across various product lines, brands and customer segments.
From years of experience on the customer-side of the business I was confident there were benefits in taking a whole of business approach to the customer.
Then I went to a seminar led by one of the leading research firms in the world. I was informed that CRM had a failure rate greater than 70% and they supplied the top 10 reasons for failure. I kept a copy of that top 10 with me for three years as we developed a customer strategy, and deployed six core pieces of technology that supported the business strategy.
Each week I checked the failure list to ensure we had taken initiative to mitigate the risks of failure. If there was something we had not addressed or we did not have a plan for, then we developed one. Within 12 months of the operational CRM deployment we had returned a 100% return on investment. And the benefits kept rolling in.
Over the following years as I taught CRM at the Brisbane Graduate School of Business (QUT) and consulted on many CRM and CX projects for a broad range of organisations, I fine-tuned the list.
The Top Ten “must do’s” for CX and CRM Success
What you see below is the development of those top ten things that will keep your Customer Experience (CX) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) initiatives on track for success.
1. Keep the Leadership team and Board fully apprised of the Customer Strategy
This includes how the customer strategy was developed, how it will bring greater value to the organisation over the long term, how you intend to operationalise it. This is a long-term strategy and you will need their unwavering support.
2. The incentive and reward mechanisms will need realignment (potentially serious).
Part of the change approach needs to address the, soon to be outdated,systems that keep people focused on the old ways. And this can involve all levels of the organisation.
(For example. The ‘product house’ exec’s in the financial services group (banking, wealth management and insurance) shifted their bonus schemes from 100% on profit/underwriting result, to 50/50 that included changes to the customer portfolio mix).
3. People are the organisms that keep the business system alive.
Communicate, engage and enable buy-in with the whole workforce. There needs to be alignment with the new approach and the workplace culture. This is a change effort, bring the people along with you. Otherwise there will be no-one there to make the decisions (small and large) to keep the customer strategy living when your work is done.
4. Remember to look outside–in.
You may well have developed your strategy from looking into your existing customer portfolio. Gain an understanding of how value is exchanged and where the value can best be optimised for both the business and the customer. Remember to balance this with a good dose of customer perspective. Use an open mind to test and validate (or not) your assumptions about what your customers value and the experience they seek.
5. Design and fully integrate your technology and customer data into the business.
The development and deployment of the systems (the technology and data) can often override the strategy (especially when it is vague). The execution of strategy into the business-system is the initiative. The data enables it and the technology supports.
6. Fully integrate your strategy.
Design a fully integrated structure of processes that will provide life-support for the strategy. Once the people have bought-into the strategy and the benefits for customers and the business, you must ensure that everything works towards supporting them in keeping the strategy alive.
7. Treasure customer data and insights.
Value the information you have, invest in data science and create capability in analytics. What you know now is only the start of the story. Push for deeper insights into customer behaviour and value, develop these insights into implementable trials to test validity with customers. Mature your story into an epic.
8. Organisational persistence.
Once the implementation has started there will be a whole range of other initiatives and ideas that are likely to take the customer initiative off course. Projects here, a new shiny object over there, can dilute the will of the business to stay on course. Ensure you create monitoring and internal protagonists to steer these initiatives towards the same destination.
9. Create an interdisciplinary team for implementation.
As highlighted above, this is not an IT or business only initiative. To be successful and bring the strategy to life you will need a team of people that are competent across a range of disciplines. Equal voices building the pathway to true value creation with customers.
10. Evidence and validation.
This is not an evangelical journey of faith alone, this is long-term business survival. You need to be able to measure and validate the benefits of the strategy. Use a proven method. Look for and quantify unexpected benefits. Where the benefits do not first appear, look into the data to understand more deeply. Learn, finetune, adapt, measure and communicate progress.
CX and CRM success
Using this Top 10 will reduce the risksassociated with customer driven initiativces, like CX and CRM.
To significantly improve the results from your efforts, use this top ten each week to check that you are working on the right things to ensure improved CX and CRM success.
You can also download (for free) the CRM Swift Scan, here on this page.
Have a deeper look into CRM on this page.
You can download the White paper “How to get your business ready for CRM”, here; or read more on this other blog article on CRM as a great misnomer.