Really. What constitutes CRM?

If I can put it down in bullets, they would probably be:

• Know who your current and potential customer is (hitherto known simply as ‘customer’)
• Engage your customer and “manage” all touch points with customer
• Know what customer is telling you and about you directly and indirectly
• Know your own performance against your stated objectives regarding customer

A few thoughts on why only four points are below..

Know your customer #

CRM should enable you to know where your potential customers are (literally and figuratively), know what they would potentially like you do to - may be in sales or marketing, and how to convert them into customers.

At the same time you should know what your customer wants are - a new product, a new service opportunity, know what would make sense for them to remain as customers.

I will refer both potential and current customers as simply “customer”.

Engage your customer #

Managing relationship is not about maintaining a set of activities that you perform, but more of making sure that the customer gets a seamless omni channel experience for all her activities.

Set up an email auto response, provide a contact centre if you can afford one, hold real conversations with customer on social media, and in the meantime make effective use of those customer engagement opportunities to sell. Sell your product, service, an idea, or simply yourself.

The bottom line is to get the customer to know what she gains by remaining your customer.

Know what your customer is saying #

Listen to the customer. This may be simply talking to them across channels, monitoring your brand in social media, or even talking to your competition. Identify the market, the product/service direction, and your short term/long term objectives by what the customer is saying.

Measure your performance #

Know your past and present performance by measuring yourself against objectives. Let your Analytics tell you what you had been doing so far, and what can you incrementally do better. Use those lessons to ideate on what you can amazingly do better.

Any and all of the process, technology, organization alignment, strategy, frameworks, et al. should fall under one or more of the above factors.

Did I miss anything? Comment and let me know.

[image src: Jisc ]