What is CRM?

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management.

CRM is a philosophy. What it says is that in order to have a great relationship with your customer, you need to know as much information about that relationship as possible.

If you understand your customer, what their pain points and needs are, what they have bought from you in the past, the issues they are having, it helps you provide appropriate products and services tailored to that customer.

The philosophy goes on that if you acheive the above you will have a happy and satisfied customer that will purchase more from you and will be a champion of your company. The relationship will be a profitable one for both parties.

Is CRM Cursed?

Like all good philosophies, with CRM the devil is in the details.

AMR Research estimated that for 2004, 33 per cent of CRM implementations had significant user adoption problems while 28 per cent of CRM implementations didn't even get to go live.

These are huge numbers we are talking about!

Look at the office building you are in. If you assume that every organisation has tried CRM in the last twelve months, that means one in every three offices in your building is having issues with their employees using CRM and just over one in four have thrown in the towel!

But CRM should not be forsaken. Benefits are there IF you know how to go about rolling out the project.

How to make CRM happen

The trick with CRM is getting champions within your office to support your project. That is a HUGE battle. Secondly you must choose a software that meets your needs, not something that will straightjacket you into one particular process. Also make sure that it can change over time as you adjust your processes. Also use the change to CRM as a chance to review your company's processes.

More in the Next Podcast

Don't miss the next podcast, because I will going through more on CRM and how to acheive success within the project. The next podcast will be available at the end of this week.