The Customer Relationship Management Vision: It Starts with Relationships

When it comes to the creation of a customer relationship management (CRM) vision that truly serves to enhance the customer experience, so many organizational leaders are trapped within their own understanding of what that vision entails. Consider the following statistic: of all CRM programs initiated, roughly 70 percent involve a great solution but a bad implementation plan, resulting in poor return on capital employed (ROCE) and, equally important, a negative CRM experience for all parties involved.

What does this mean?

Companies have a fundamental lack of understanding of what makes for a true CRM vision. The vision that drives the CRM program must embrace the picture of a new, enhanced customer experience—that is, a new relationship.

Therefore, the vision is not about the technology being used or the quantitative measurement of the number of customer transactions occurring. Sure, these elements are important, but they should be viewed as supporting factors or consequences of the vision, not the vision itself.

As a result of these misguided notions and subsequent CRM visions, the "new" customer experience is flat, or even unnoticeable. Further, the value derived by the company becomes mediocre at best, and CRM is given the undeserved bad reputation of not being able to deliver.

Following are four steps to develop an effective and attainable CRM vision.

Step 1: Start with the relationship.

Where does the vision of the CRM-focused organization begin? It starts with an understanding of what the relationship needs to be. That is, the relationship between the organization, its employees, and the customer. This is a triangulated, inter-dynamic relationship, and one that will be tested with every transaction, inquiry, and corporate decision. The vision starts with a picture of the relationship taken from a behavioral standpoint. Consider the following questions:

* What does the future relationship look like—to customers, employees, management, and executives? Can you describe this relationship from each of these stakeholders' point of view?

* What is the desired customer behavior in the new relationship? What would the customer's ideal behavior look like? Is it different for different customer groups?

* What critical behaviors must the company, including executives, managers, and employees, demonstrate in order to promote and sustain the desired customer behaviors? How can current behaviors provide a catalyst for desired customer behaviors? Where is the gap between the two?

Those who are leading the CRM program and who are responsible for the creation of the vision must describe the vision in terms of people and possibilities. Leaders must refrain from focusing the vision on numbers or the type of technology that will be employed, as these are but the results and the tactics that stem from the vision.

To illustrate what I mean, consider the following experience I had working with an executive team from a major technology company.

The team was in the midst of creating a new corporate-wide, customer-centric vision for the transformation of the company's consulting practice. The goal was to create a new vision that would build greater customer reach and ultimately lead to activities that drive more consulting engagements. My job was to facilitate the process and provide coaching as needed.