CRM in the past 10 years 

For the past 10 years almost all enterprises follow the CRM philosophy that says: 

“If all we do is born out of a desire to identify, acquire and retain The Most Profitable Customer in the most profitable ways, we will be a successful company”. 

The process of turning a CRM strategy into business results included initiatives such as aligning your business processes and functions around customer needs, recruiting people that are customer friendly, training staff how to deal with your customer, listening to your customer's likes and dislikes and changing your business practices and product mix accordingly, using CRM software to organize and present important customer information to sales and services employees.

Typically CRM was characterized by a closed loop consisting of analytical and strategic CRM, operational CRM as well as collaboratice CRM.  

Today’s challenges 

For the past few months it is noticeable that markets and customers change significantly. Especially financial markets are under pressure. Web 2.0 is only one reason for markets getting more and more transparent. Customers are well informed and do cherry picking for optimal satisfaction of their needs. Customers’ trust is decreasing significantly and customer retention is reaching an all time low.  

In the banking industry you can watch how customers choose multiple banks in order to handle their banking needs. Consequences are a highly increased complexity to manage financial needs followed by an overload in handling various relations to banks.

CRM turning into CMR 

What do we learn out of today’s challenges and how do we conquer them? Companies need to reconsider and expand their CRM strategy. Methods need to be developed which indicate customers’ needs more exactly. Ideas of conventional CRM need to be combined with new CMR approaches. There is no doubt that the era of conventional CRM is outdated. Customers are in the driver’s seat now and manage all relevant relationships according to their needs and preferences.

In times of customer managed relations we need to learn how to simplify our customers’ lifes in order to reduce complexity. Interactions between customers and companies need to be enriched with pleasant service experiences. Excellent service combined with the right amount of emotions will span the bridge between customer needs and offered products and services. Companies need to learn to listen and manage all open and hidden impulses sent by the customers.   

Today’s challenges call for a fusion of the known CRM philosophy with the CMR proposition: „It is not the strongest that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change“. 

CMR approaches 

First and foremost the CRM closed loop needs to be complemented by a new dimension – the customer!

Changes in philosophy and strategy are followed by modifications in infrastructure and applications. Terms like conversational CRM, social CRM, next best offer and realtime decisioning promise solutions for highly individualized and innovative sales approaches.

“Advanced real-time predictive analytics allow each interaction at any time

and any channel to be tailored for each customer” Source: Gareth Herschel, Gartner, ‘03

Solutions for today’s challenges

There are four elements which are distinguishing a CRM environment from a CMR infrastructure:

 

•        Advanced Channel Management

ü      Discovery of customers as new sales channel (conversational CRM)

ü      Usage of internal and external networks (social CRM)

•        Advanced operational CRM

ü      Real Time Decisioning

ü      Usage of web tracking results and customer profiles to offer most suitable products

ü      Impulse generated campaigns (clustering of homogenous impulses)

ü      Individualized real time marketing (Portal)

ü      Next Best Offer

•        Advanced analytical CRM

ü      Churn analysis

ü      Web tracking reports

 

I strongly believe that CRM combined with CMR elements will be essential for the sustainable survival of all businesses in the future.

Unfortunately powerpoint slides could not be placed within this article. If interested please contact me at info@thomashamele.com

Coming soon: CMR article that focuses on the details of CMR elements such as conversational CRM, social CRM, next best offer, realtime decisioning.

 

Questions, discussions and different opinions are very much appreciated. Please contact me at info@thomashamele.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Thanks to Thomas U. Hamele for contributing this article to our CRM blog:

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