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Making CRM Personal

I KEEP HOPING THAT TECHNOLOGIES that are automating whatever we tell them to will one day bring the human element back. And they are: the whole Web 2.0 thing is about recognizing that we need communication, collaboration, self-expression in every area of our lives. Be it in the personal or business context.

Denis Pombriant writes about his experience with contractors and contrasts it with that provided by companies:

Because the contractors worked for themselves they held themselves to incredibly high standards. For instance the tile guy set up his wet saw on the front lawn and despite temperatures that were well below freezing—and ultimately froze his saw—he went outside to make cut after cut to perfect the junction of tiles on two walls so that they looked like perfect mirror images. [...]

It seems to me that agreeing on cost and deliverables is one of the biggest disconnects we currently have and it degrades customer relationships. It is certainly true that price negotiations have been a part of buying and selling since the earth cooled, but I think we may have gone too far in an almost exclusive focus on price in our dealings to the exclusion of things like quality, fit, and long term reliability. By focusing the discussion on shaving prices we have commoditized too much and in the process cheapened products and services to the point that some are hardly worth buying anymore. [...]

Economics has dealt a blow to CRM through a relentless focus on efficiency—of finding the equilibrium point where all markets clear. That approach might have worked in Adam Smith’s day when most of what people consumed was made at home or bartered for but it is at least unhelpful today and, I think causes real damage to the relationship.

True. And it’s a challenge for CRM to respond. How to create a culture of customer-centricity (gosh, how I hate that word!) unless your employees are intimately aware of the connection between the value they create and the value their employer receives in return from their customers? And why should they care, unless there is a value for them in there, too?

The sad truth is, rank-and-file employees are rarely incentivized to even bother thinking about customers. And it’s not their fault: the company is passionately removing every human element, imperfection, improvisation from its processes. To be efficient. CRM won’t amount to much unless it empowers, not eradicates, the human aspects of business interactions.

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March 15, 2007 | Filed Under CRM 

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