CRM solutions - panacea or an enabler for the development of deeper customer relationships?

Whilst this progress is significant, there have been (and continues to be) a number of setbacks to organisations wishing to unlock the true potential of their customer bases.

The CRM star has burst brightly onto many senior management agendas over recent years, driven by aggressive software vendors and fuelled by, it seems, ever-increasing pressure on management to deliver quick stellar results. We have seen many senior executives, all too quickly, be seduced by the quick-fix promises of CRM Technology, only to see projected costs exceeded and promised benefits not realised.

Indeed, it can be difficult to resist when very professional software vendors and consultants with all the right words and arguments such as 'retention', 'cross-sell', 'customer insight', 'segmentation' and 'business case' come promising such riches to management themselves under continual pressure to perform in the short-term.

The ensuing failures and associated bad press have made CEOs and Directors extremely skeptical about whether the potential is indeed real or just a figment of the IT Industry's hype.

The problem, it seems, is not solely the CRM vendors, consultants and expedient managers looking for a 'silver bullet'. There is a deeper problem: One where our most senior managers understand Relationship Management or CRM only as a concept, thus abstracting themselves from what the whole essence of their business is, from what's actually going on at the customer face and from what Relationship Management means in real life.

Sure, customers buy good products and services that meet their needs. However, your very best customers buy for a different reason. They buy because they have developed, over time, a relationship with one or more of the people in your organisation - and they value that relationship. They have made a personal connection with these people who they feel have genuinely helped them, or as we say, have properly 'served' them.