Our seminar on Wednesday was very well received, with three excellent speakers bringing views and insights on CRM from very different perspectives.
Abby Wright-Parkes of ACEVO talked about their recent experience of implementing a new database solution - an experience they’ve found very costly. She drew out a number of interesting points for NFPs: that CRM is about relationships, not data; don’t forget about relationships with people who don’t use computers; there is a need for fine tuning of communication preferences; and that it is vital to ensure the culture of the organisation is right for the new strategy and system.
Chris Jones from Remploy gave his conclusions from their experience of large scale business change, the key theme of which is to build a flexible scalable capability for them as a business. He highlighted two examples of where CRM has been introduced. The first was a technology led programme which has resulted in a system no one uses because the project didn’t engage with the business users to put the system into the context of the business strategy and how the system needed to work operationally. The second was a system (or actually a number of separate systems) that have grown organically in the operational departments. This has resulted in successful individual systems, but which are isolated and with no ability to aggregate the data or the processes.
Both of these really highlight the need to get the strategy right and to view the programme as a business change programme, rather than an IT project!
The final speaker was Dominic Monkhouse of Peer1, who brought an entertaining insight into customer service [relationship management] from the commercial world of managed hosting services. He again emphasised that it is about the culture within the organisation and potentially the need to confront and change that culture. He put forward two challenges around the theme of how can you deliver great service? The first is what can you offer. His examples here were that as UK MD, he gives his mobile number to all clients, and has only ever had four out of hours calls; and that making a very significant offer when things do go wrong has had a huge benefit to customer satisfaction, actually at marginal cost.
His second challenge was how to drastically reduce the amount of service provided, by giving great service, particularly by eliminating errors (that result in service calls) and providing excellent facilities for customers/users to find the answers they need so easily that they don’t need to call.
More information: white paper and presentations
” by Bill Price and David Jaffe is an excellent book that ought to be compulsory reading for all companies with a customer service element, mostly because so many of them are so very far from providing even reasonable service.