Wednesday, 21 March 2019
In a good number of cases, the decision to implement a CRM solution is not given by a strategic plan of the organization, but by the persuasion capacity that large vendors or software implementers have on the people responsible for making a decision of this magnitude, even, it could be said that in some cases the “fashion” effect can exert an important influence. On the other hand, in many cases in which it has been based on a preconceived idea of the objective sought, poor management of expectations about the results that would be achieved, have left a feeling of failure or useless effort, due to the reduced return on investment that most of these projects have generated.
The successful implementation of a CRM solution must, imperatively, be accompanied by a change of organizational culture, where the activity of the organization revolves around the needs of the client. No products and services are produced for the market to welcome. It is analyzed what a client or group of clients requires and based on this the entire operation of the company is planned. This goes through the horizontal integration of all the departments involved in customer management.
Organizations cannot continue to function as sets of ghettos, in which each area treats the information of its customers at its discretion to hide (intentionally or not) information fundamental to the smooth operation of the whole. The customer must be unique to the company and must show the same profile, regardless of the angle with which you look at him. In the same way, the company must show itself to the client as a unified entity, avoiding giving him a feeling that he deals with different organizations when communicating or receiving communications from the different areas that are interrelated with him.
To conclude, we can affirm that not all organizations have the same need to invest in a technological solution for customer management and not all will be able to take the same advantage. It is clear that the wider and more varied the universe of customers of a company, its need to have a support system for their management will be greater and in many cases essential to be able to compete. In the same way, the complexity of the processes associated with customer service is a determining factor. As the marketing/sales/customer service cycle becomes more complex, it is more imperative to have a system that supports these processes.
We must remember that CRM is a management philosophy. The success of the implementation of a technological solution for this philosophy is given in a small percentage in the right decision that is made when selecting the tool and the implementer, but most of the success or failure of the project will be given by the ability to adjust the organizational culture to a vision focused on the client and the support that this vision has from senior management.
We can approach a 360º vision of what a CRM is, according to what wikipedia gives us with this image.
