Measures of CRM

1) The theoretical concepts covered-width and depth - mind map of the same
 Increased Customer Retention: It is one thing to acquire new customers, it is
another thing to get them to stay with you. Relationships are key and it is often
more cost effective to retain an existing relationship than building one with a new
customer. The amount of customers that do not defect from your company can be
used to check the performance of CRM.
Increase in visits and orders made per customer: a well performing CRM should be
able to bring in more traffic to your business. The number of people who visit or
order from you higher than what of used to be. In a case where there is no
positive change the in the in traffic and orders, CRM may not be considered to be
performing well.
Increased Sales: making profit is the lifeblood of a company and profit cannot be
made without sales. An increase in what customer spend on average for every
order they make should increase with the help of CRM.
Increased Cross Sale: making cross sales helps creates a balance in sales as a lack of
cross sale might result in company not making profit on certain products. Cross
sale means that customers are purchasing products from different categories. A
well performing CRM should increase cross sales.
Increased Up Sale: even within the same company, products may not go for the
same price. It is necessary that a company sells the more expensive products as
much as the less expensive ones. CRM should be able to facilitate the increase in
the sales of higher priced items.
Increased Win-back: it is not uncommon to find customers ceasing to patronize a
company for one reason or the other. It is the job of the company and also in their
best interest to find a way of winning back such customers. With the help of a well
performing CRM, this should be possible.
Increased Referrals: if you have ever heard the saying 'one tree, a forest', you would
realize that one tree births others which birth more. This is the same with
customers and referrals. One customer could influence others to buy from you
who can also make some other set of people buy from you. The rate at with
referrals increase as a reason of CRM is an indicator of how well it is performing.
 Revenue per salesperson: this refers to the amount of money contributed into the
company by each sales representative. An increase in the average amount realized
as revenue could serve as a means of measuring the performance of CRM.
 Response rate increase: when marketing campaigns are carried out by companies, a
certain level of response is expected form customers and potential customers. CRM
can greatly help increase the rate at which customers respond to market campaign.
Customer response could come in form of actions.
 Increase in marketing return on investment: marketers should be able to equate
resources such as energy, time and advertising spent to results when contributing to
company growth. The money generated as revenue from marketing campaign
should be greater than the cost of running the said campaign. CRM when performed
optimally can contribute to increase in the returns realized from investing in
marketing. The rise or fall in ROI can be used in evaluating CRM performance.
 Service agreement renewal rate: companies often have agreements on services with
one another and such a relationship can be severed by bad management of
relationship. This why CRM is important when it comes to renewal of service
agreement as customers might not be willing renew agreement when there is a sour
 relationship existing between them and the company. People willingness continue
with agreement is a metric of CRM performance.
 Customer Lifetime Value: this refers to a prediction model that foretells the net
profit that can possibly be realized from the entire duration of company's
relationship with customer. It can also be said to be the monetary value of
company's relationship with customer based on the current value of projection
future cash flow from the relationship between company and customer. This can be
used as a performance metric as an increase in customer life cycle could indicate
whether or not CRM is performing well.
 Increase in the number of sales calls made: a sales call is a meeting between
prospect or customer and a sales representative for the purpose of making sales
which is usually face-to-face and prearranged. An increase in the number of sales
calls made is a pointer to just how effective CRM is.
 Sales cycle duration: there are seven stages encountered made making a sale. First
the salesperson does some prospecting in search for potential customers. Once
found, salesperson makes contact to set an appointment and qualify the prospect as
worth pursuing. A presentation is then made where the sales representative should
be ready to handle objections. There is a closing and then referral getting. The length
of this cycle can be used as a metric to measure CRM performance as a good CRM
should reduce the time taken to make a sale.

2) Examples from personal experience or other organization on the application of the

concepts

Amazon and the Power of CRM

User friendly. Great selection. Convenience.

If you ever find yourself thinking of Amazon, chances are that these words immediately

spring to mind. In fact, these factors are so imperative to the company’s success that it

would struggle if they no longer provided a user friendly website, smooth communication

operations, and their impressively high level of data storage. As you might have guessed

from the headline, one of the secrets behind this is a good CRM system.

Financially, Amazon is operating with nearly unlimited resources. Instead of shopping

around for the best software system on the market, Amazon invested valuable time and

money to build an in-house software tailored to their specific needs. Thanks to software

enhancements and constant innovation in the marketplace, it’s now largely similar to most
other good CRM systems on the market. It actively captures customer data - for example, all

your previous purchases - in order to give their customers an accurate and streamlined

shopping journey. Moreover, the customer journey involves basically no human interaction

at all: in just a few clicks, you can access your previous orders, track your parcels or update

your details. All of this reveals a system which is both quick, profitable and efficient - for

Amazon and their clients alike.

  
Neatly Organised User Interface

The most important lesson to be learnt is that the user interface is everything. One look at

the website of Amazon will reveal that their website is clean, streamlined, easy to

understand, and easily searchable. The images are inspiring and high-quality, the

descriptions are detailed and accurate, the prices and reviews are plainly visible, everything

is neatly organised into departments and categories, and the checkout process is clear as

day.

 
In short, everything is intuitive

As a matter of fact, shopping on Amazon is so easy that anyone can do it. And that’s one of

their biggest strengths as a company - accessibility for all. Their overall focus on customer

experience, or “customer obsession” as they themselves call it, is one of the major reasons

why they consistently outperform other online retailers. As the leading Retail Analyst at

Barclays, Paul Vogel, puts it: “It’s selection. It’s service. It’s convenience. It’s how easy it is to

use their interface. And Amazon’s got all this stuff already. How do you compete with that? I

don’t know, man. It’s really hard.”

Amazon won by investing in a CRM system that can grow with their business. Amazon is not

just Amazon anymore, instead they have evolved into a provider of everything. Prime

members will find a Prime Video selection that seriously challenges providers such as Netflix

and HBO, their Alexa is a serious competitor on the AI market, and they’re financial
investors in up and coming tech firms. Not to mention that they’re the world’s largest

provider of cloud infrastructure.

Amazon’s dynamic system allows them to constantly reinvent themselves. It doesn’t give

restrictions, rather it lets them easily adjust to the market plan.

 
Personal Data Storage

Most CRM systems will be processing massive amounts of data in their data

warehouse every single day. Amazon’s CRM, being no exception, is constantly gathering

information through customers searching and browsing, data mining, their wish list and so

on. Whatever you decide to buy - or not buy - you are providing the system with

information, and this information is then analysed and used to tailor your experience on

Amazon and their service accordingly.

If you want to buy something at Amazon, you will need to set up a personal account. It’s

through said account that Amazon can track your purchases and your browsing history. This

information makes it easy for them to tailor marketing campaigns and email campaigns

based on things you will probably like. What’s more, you can store payment details and
personal information in your private account, and this dramatically speeds up the checkout

process the next time you make a purchase - anything you could possibly want is only a click

away.

Anyone who uses Amazon regularly will notice that they are constantly suggesting products

one might be interested in. Impressively enough, most of these suggestions tend to be quite

accurate, and frequent customers will also appreciate their “customers who bought this

item also bought” feature. Social proof is a powerful tactic which consistently boost sales for

Amazon, the secret to this feature lies in their CRM system’s ability to save data.

 
Customer Interaction
Your personal account on Amazon ensures that you rarely have to reach out to customer

support. In the rare cases where you do require to speak to customer support, you will find

that it’s dealt with quickly and efficiently as the CRM software allows them instant access to

your information. In other words, Amazon is stress-free for both customers and its

employees.

Another feature that makes Amazon so successful and trusted is the focus on peer reviews.

Under every product, you can find a section where other buyers have reviewed the product

you are looking into buying. All of these buyers are verified, and they are freely sharing the

good, the bad and the ugly about a certain product. A recent article by Forbes reveals that

88% of consumers trust online reviews just as much as personal recommendations. In other

words, if your online store is not offering user reviews, you are basically alienating 88% of

your buying population. Arguably, while a bad review might stop someone from ordering

that specific product, it will still contribute to and enhance your image as a trusted and

honest retailer.
How Uber Uses CRM

Here are some of the ways Uber became a CRM success story.

✔ Listening to its customers

Uber’s CRM extracts data from people engaging with the company on key social media sites
like Facebook and Twitter. The CRM system can then store them as contacts. This enables
Uber to get back to any complaints with haste, ensuring it maintains an excellent public
image.
CRM also makes it easy for Uber to track all of its interactions with the public. If there is a
complaint, Uber’s team knows exactly who’s dealing with it, and how far along that team
member is to reaching a resolution.
✔ Targeting the right crowd
By having a handle on key demographic information about its customers, Uber can create
more personalized, targeted marketing campaigns. If you like a few drinks on the weekend,
you might get a notification at 9pm on a Friday wondering if you need a ride. If you take
Uber to work, you might see an email pop up on Sunday evening reminding you to book
your ride for the morning. Genius, huh?
By tapping into the behaviors and riding habits of its customers, Uber gives its marketing a
highly healthy chance of succeeding. And from the customer’s side, they get a superior,
more tailored service – and will be more likely to use Uber again.
✔ Cultivating customer loyalty
CRM systems let you create loyalty schemes to reward your most faithful customers. Take
Uber Rewards, for example. Uber’s own loyalty scheme lets you earn points every time you
travel or eat through the app. These points can later be traded in for benefits and ‘Uber
cash’.

Uber incentivizing its most loyal customers not only makes them feel valued, but it keeps
them using the service. 

Coca Cola-
t from Sales representatives, Mobile device and Service staff. With these details the store
can respond easily to the customers and make the process more efficiently. The RFID gives
feedback that benefits research, marketing and product development

We can improve customer service and satisfaction using better CRM. Using advance CRM we
can get the required information of the customer. IT system again collects all the data and
analysis them and provide information to provide a better product that suit the customer
needs.

Using SAP CRM system Coca-Cola was able to achieve their goal of customer focus. The CRM
help’s the existing processes and also improve the new functions to satisfy the customer.
These kinds of CRM help updates and improve the market share for the computer and
create a better name with the customer and also reduce the cost for transportation.  

The CRM in Coca Cola also handle customer service support where you can direct talk to the
person in the company for problem with the product. They have different type of service all
around the world. They provide the customer service not only through feedback, email and
telephone but also through monitoring and many types of analysis. So by this collaborative
CRM, Coca Cola has provided efficient customer service to gain customer satisfaction.

Coca Cola was able to continue to grow with the demands as they were able to provide to
their customer needs. They always focus on to satisfy the customer needs with the new
infrastructure of CRM,ERP and well maintained SCM system they were able to achieve the
goals which they really needed to satisfy the customers. By this way there were able to be in
the top in the beverage industry. They are still facing a lot of problem to be in the top
position but well maintain CRM will never lose the position.

(E.Neville Isdell 2005), “As we have always done in the past, I know that this industry will
rise to the occasion”.

Coca Cola has taken many steps to win back the customer and to retain the existing
customer. They have created a fan page in Facebook which became a very popular with the
customers and when they are connected to Facebook, They can actually keep on getting
update on recent action by Coca Cola. They can send group message in Facebook. Can gain
feedback from customer and provide solution online. Coca Cola is able to advertise in
Facebook and gain more customers through the social site. Coca Cola also can gain all the
details of the customer from the Facebook page and provide appropriate personalized
service to gain more customer and also retain the existing customers.

These kind of social networking site help the company to be closer to the customers.
Marketing and Advertising in these kind of site will also help the company to grown better.
Some of the company does not accept this fact but Coca cola established their Facebook fan
page in the third quarter of 2008 by the mid of 2009 there were around 3.4 million fan. But
this fan page was created by a Coca Cola fan after much consideration Coca Cola used it as a
promotion page and a place where they can build a relationship with the customers.

Coca Cola gained a idea and used this Facebook page as a promotion page and was able to
gain information from the Facebook wall and provide promotional offers to the customers.
They created many ways to keep in touch with the customer by creating Application online
for computers and mobile phone. They also provide exclusive sneak peeks for the customer
in Facebook. Coca Cola was able to maintain this Facebook page and gather the required
information and be in contact with the customers. The company able to attract all the
customer, When you go to the Facebook wall page you can see all the language. From this
we can see that the company is able to build a good name in all the countries. Coca Cola is
the second largest fan page in Facebook as they are around 3.4 million fans in it. When we
calculate the number of members join per day would come around 3500. So Coca Cola
through this is the best way for promotion and gaining the customer feedback.

Coca Cola was able to bring a new innovate vending machine with fountain dispenser called
Freestyle. In this the customer can customize their own drink from 100 combinations and
this was the first time they can have provide 100 combinations which are not introduced
before. The most important about the freestyle vending machine was it is connected to SAP
system. So it collect all the customer data and stored in CRM system. It also identifies if the
freestyle machine needs to be refilled or not. So they can easy refill it and it also uses the
RFID.

The Vending machine also has major disadvantage when there is out of stock of the item.
Customer can easily choose other product so Coca Cola has to main there strategy in this to
maintain the stock and to gain the customer satisfaction. So vending machine should be
place in appropriate place where there is easy access of refilling and places where we can
cover a lot of customers. We can also find out which products which has sold more and the
product which is contribute more profit. We can provide many different products to the
customer by giving different product at same day. This is the best way to sell the product
more effectively.

We can use credit card to pay for the drink which can also provide loyalty points so we can
get a free product once a while. It can also identify your drink with the card and you can
easily select it and pay for it. This is all built in the vending machine so it is more user
friendly for the customer to order and get their favourite drink easily. This is how Coca Cola
is able to attract more customer and provide the customer what they required.

Coca Cola is trying to take a bigger step by creating a beverage on the spot for the customer
and not to put it in a vending machine. Customer can select the required ingredients with a
touch screen and we can track the inventory and the customer favourite product so we can
serve the customer the better. This is a major operational CRM used attract customer into
the company. This is a major step for Coca Cola but being the leader in beverage they need
to take necessary step and new innovative idea to be in the top position.

Coca Cola has started a new marketing environment by providing a unique pin number in
the bottle which can be used to save 75 cents of the mobile bill. They can also gain point for
icoke from this system. So this is one of the best marketing techniques to gain customer by
giving offer to their daily use products. Coca Cola has worked on this strategy and made
some more advance option in it and applied it to United Kingdom. Where you can get the
redeemed instantly with the wireless service and get some credit of the minutes.

Coca Cola customer gain icoke points from this way and they can use these points to
purchase tickets and get some discount on direct purchase. Coca Cola has also joined with
Mc Donald’s and provide varies offer in purchasing a meal. These kinds of offer revoke the
customer and make them purchase the drink. Coke also sells four out of five drinks in all
major countries so consumers are able to select and purchase the drink with selected offers.

Coca Cola has done one of the best marketing with the Air Bonus. It does not have any back
office work. Customer can get the discount instantly without any problem. Mobile phone is
a daily use product which helps the customer more. The phone is used a like a loyalty card.
They also create a lot of contest online and make customer to play for exiting prize. This
kind of action revokes customer to purchase coke.

As Coca Cola is working on this kind of strategy by creating a Fan page and using a better
CRM and SCM process they are able to serve the customer easily and personalizing each
customer needs and providing drink according to their taste. This kind of promotion can
create word of mouth in office and other entrainment centre where people can take a time
out and have some drink and talk about it in online and provide valuable feedback. This can
create a major buzz in about the product and help expanding bigger. We can attract new
customer with this kind of CRM strategy and retain the existing customer. We can also win
back the customer by creating personalizing service.
Conclusion-
While expanding the company they started to use advance CRM strategy which help the
company to grow better and Coca Cola also understand the customer needs and provided
innovative vending machine like freestyle made the customer to like Coca Cola. They
provided exiting offer to the existing customer with icoke points and discount in phone bill.
They used the IT system to get feedback and also made a quality monitoring in customer
service made the customer more satisfied. They also used Facebook Fan page as a biggest
promotion centre and provided some seek peek for customer. Coca Cola fan page is the
second largest fan page in Facebook. We have used the QCI model on this case study to
clearly study the Coca Cola CRM process.
How Apple’s CRM strategy took it from a California basement to world domination, and
what your business can learn from the biggest innovators in town
“I’d rather be a pirate than join the navy.”
To this day, Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs’ famous words define the
company’s attitude and ambitions. 
And, though Apple is most well-known for its innovative founder and ethos for doing things
differently, the real secret to the tech giant’s success is something all successful brands do
well. We’re talking, of course, about an excellent CRM (customer relationship
management) strategy – how Apple keeps its billion-strong customer base happy, hungry,
and coming back for more.
And it must be doing something right. Because despite eschewing traditional forms of
customer retention – Jobs was famously opposed to market research, and Apple still doesn’t
run a formal loyalty scheme – the company has built one of the most enduring, exciting,
and enigmatic brands of all time.
Apple’s CRM strategy: the secret to success
“You’ve gotta start with the customer experience, and work backwards to the technology.”
Steve Jobs, Apple co-founder and former CEO
You can boil Apple’s CRM strategy down to just two words: Apple ID.
When you take your first Apple product home, you’re asked to create an Apple ID – a unique
profile that syncs across all Apple devices you own. This ID allows Apple to remember your
purchases with the Apple Store, and provide personalised recommendations for music and
films. You can even share content and cloud storage with other members of your family,
and monitor your kids’ purchases.
For Apple, it’s a self-renewing, seemingly limitless data set, allowing it to constantly tailor its
services and re-engage customers with handpicked deals, discounts, and products. Not only
is this targeted marketing done effectively, but it also engenders a sense of loyalty and
familiarity with Apple’s brand and ethos. 
Apple ID, used in conjunction with Apple’s rich ecosystem of products, is the core of
Amazon’s CRM strategy – and, ergo, its wild and ongoing success. But that’s not the only
trick this Silicon Valley behemoth has up its sleeve. 
Top 4 ways Apple uses CRM

No self-respecting article would be complete without a healthy peppering of Steve Jobs

quotes, right? So here are four, each one demonstrating how Apple walks the talk when it
comes to its lofty CRM goals and strategies.
1. Knowing its customers
“Get closer than ever to your customers. So close, in fact, that you tell them what they need
well before they realise it themselves.”
It’s an ambitious aspiration, but one that Apple follows through on. Apple’s consistently high
NPS (Net Promoter Score) ratings indicate that it’s remarkably good at retaining its
customers. Research recently reported that Apple’s operating system, iOS, had loyalty
rates of around 89%.
Also fuelling Apple’s commanding customer retention scores is its stellar technical support.
Whenever you buy an Apple product, you have the option to schedule in a tailored, one-to-
one session with a specialist – exploring your new device’s best features, and fine-tuning it
to your tastes. 
Apple’s commitment to understanding the individual is no accident. It’s a carefully plotted
out CRM strategy, and it’s paying stunning dividends.
2. Anticipating customer needs
“[The computer] took us three years to build. If we'd given customers what they said they
wanted, we'd have built a computer they'd have been happy with a year after we spoke to
them – not something they'd want now.”
It’s clear Apple’s understanding of its customers runs deep. Yet, paradoxically, Jobs was
famously opposed to market research. Rather, Apple’s intimacy with its customers has
traditionally stemmed from the company’s empathy with their pain points and needs. 
It’s this, above all, that’s driven Apple’s desire to innovate – to expand and evolve its
offerings to meet not only its customers’ current requirements, but those of their futures,
too.
Because if it isn’t game-changing, Apple won’t do it. The iPhone, iPod, and iPad were all
ahead of their time, while iTunes was once the only legal online catalogue of songs to
feature music from all five major record labels. 
With Apple TV now producing original content and Apple Pay redefining how we shop,
Apple’s innovation is a hallmark of its desire to grow with the needs of its users.
Want more? Discover how CRM is redefining the success of other major brands. 
3. Stores focussing on customer experience
“How does somebody know what they want if they haven’t seen it?”
It’s a good question, and one that continues to define how Apple operates its physical
shops.
Apple’s retail departments and staff are built with the individual in mind – to ensure its
customers have an experience, rather than simply make a purchase. Anyone who’s ever
visited one of Apple’s stores will back this up, too – they’re places of wonder, where you can
explore the latest technology at your own pace.
Apple’s use of CRM in-store is a testament to its long-term mentality. An immediate sale is
good, but an ongoing relationship with a customer is more profitable. By foregoing
conventional sales tactics, Apple’s shops create value by encouraging browsers to love and
appreciate the benefits of having an iPhone, an iPad, or the latest Apple Watch.
And, by training its employees to understand (and not just sell to) those that enter its stores,
Apple cultivates a more engaged, loyal customer base that prioritises the person, rather
than the product.
4. Branding that speaks to a generation
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
Apple is… a cool company.
Whether you buy into its products or not, Apple’s pull is undeniable. Boasting one of the
most iconic and instantly recognisable brands in the world, it draws huge queues at product
launches, while thousands of user-generated videos online are dedicated to ‘unboxing’
Apple devices.
But Apple’s brand is more than just a byproduct of designing products that look, feel, and
work well. Its ecosystem of products – each of which functions seamlessly with the rest –
engenders loyalty with the brand, while rewarding the customer for choosing Apple.
Better still, Apple’s branding has succeeded where plenty of other big companies have failed
– by appealing to millennials. Research shows that Apple is the brand Generation Y feels
most emotionally attached to, and it’s not hard to see why. With simple, stripped-back
product designs, a commitment to sustainability, and a playful tone of voice, Apple (quite
literally) speaks to a whole generation. 
1. Unilever uses CRM to gather real-time customer insights across all channels and to front
one-off customer data collection campaigns

Unilever is one of the big brands to understand the importance of having your customers’
information in one place and being able to act on it.

According to the Senior direct-to-consumer Manager at Unilever UK, Amanda Smith:

“The scale of Unilever's activity and the number of brands meant that creating a single
multi-channel digital platform was a no-brainer - both in terms of achieving best-in-class
digital marketing and lowering costs.”

But there was a big challenge for Unilever.

“What Unilever wanted to achieve was a single customer view across all channels,”

The Marketing Enablement Director at OgilvyOne, Paul King said. “But at the time there
were very few tools that would do email and SMS, integrate with the web and feedback
directly into a central database.”

Unilever found a solution which was implemented by marketing technology company,

Alchemetrics. Alchemetrics completed the project of integrating customers’ information
into a single platform called “Traction.”

This platform has helped Unilever conduct multichannel campaigns and take advantage of
customer touch points. One example of this is by one of Unilever’s brands, Dove.

To get ‘real women’ to complete an online survey by Dove, they drove traffic to their
website through channels like TV, press, online media, direct mail, door drops, and email.
And this led to 28% more completed surveys than their objective.

“We got over 128,000 completed surveys -- 28,000 more than our objective -- making this
the biggest online survey in Unilever UK's history,” Smith said. “Plus, we've increased our
database and are now communicating with opted-in respondents to keep them engaged
with the brand over the long-term.”

With 44 brands in the UK, Traction has helped Unilever improve levels of customer
engagement and enhance brand experience.

It has also made testing of different elements of their campaigns more effective. Overall,
this had increased the company’s revenue significantly (YoY). More importantly, by
increasing the underlying operating profit, the brand recorded a free cash flow delivery
at €5.4 billion.
2. British Airways uses CRM to automate a number of ongoing campaigns and customer
communications

For an airline that flies over 45 million people to over 200 destinations, one of the most
important parts of operations is customer service. And in the fiercely competitive airline
industry, great customer service could be a brand differentiator.

But to serve your customers better, you need to understand them very well and use the
insights effectively. This is why British Airways (BA) decided to use a CRM software to
achieve this.

BA decided to implement Teradata CRM into its integrated commercial warehouse (ICW) to
reduce the cost for campaign execution in North America and overall external spend.

Teradata CRM allows BA to have email, direct mail, call center, and web channels on a single
interface. This provides a platform for their marketing communications, including Executive
Club and BARCs (BA Online Registered Customers) information.

BA has been able to establish customer loyalty scheme. The benefits of the Executive Club
are:

 It’s free for any customer to join and there are no ongoing charges.
 Has benefits like special offers, and users details are stored to easily book flights in
the future.
 You can earn Avios points which can be used for upgrades, to redeem flights, pay for
car hire and book hotels.
 Members can save seat and meal preferences.
 Members of the club receive personalized and targeted communication.
 You can earn points to progress through the tiers which include blue, silver, gold,
and premier.

They were also able to free up resources as the team of analysts were reduced from 8 to 3.
Due to more sophisticated reports about customers, the volume of requests from
marketing went up by 150%.

Marketing costs were slashed as the company increased their email campaigns and reduced
mail campaigns. This helped the company move in a new direction with a modern strategy,
and recorded and increased revenue growth.

3. Volvo Construction Equipment integrates cross-channel marketing strategy to boost sales

using CRM tools

To boost sales, you must be able to interact with your customers on various channels and
keep track of the interactions. The best way to do this is through the use of a CRM software.

For Volvo, the challenge was to nurture and convert more leads. They decided to use SEO
and social media.
“All marketing is not just direct marketing, all marketing is now cross-channel,” Joel Book,
principal of marketing insight for the Salesforce Marketing Cloud said about Volvo CE. “We
don’t know through which channel our buyer is going to engage with us. It could be via
social media, it could be online, it could be in-store. What we do know is this: Every channel
matters. Every channel has an influence on the customer.”

Volvo CE uses social media and search engines to drive traffic to their website. When these
visitors get to their website, Volvo CE tries to convert them to leads by encouraging them to
sign up for their monthly newsletter.

For those interested, they can also sign up for used equipment newsletter which runs
bimonthly. For instance, Volvo CE’s ad on Facebook got almost 300,000 impressions. From
this, 9,485 people clicked on the ad and 27 turned out to be direct sales qualified leads for
their high-priced products.

They were able to capture a lead for about $2,000 which was a 30% reduction in cost per
lead (CPL). When these leads are generated, they have their data placed in the Microsoft
Dynamics CRM.

This was pretty easy to execute as their email service provider (ESP), ExactTarget, is
integrated with their CRM and website.

With this, leads are sent emails that relate to the products they’re interested in. This means
emails are personalized to each user’s specific needs.
They can detect their needs based on the pages they visit on their website, the products
they buy and other important information.

By personalizing emails, Volvo CE raised their email open rates from 15% to 20% in 18
months.

With these cross-channel campaigns combined with a CRM software that makes important
users information available, Volvo CE made $100 million in annual sales due to digital
marketing.

4. Wells Fargo takes advantage of CRM social media connectivity to engage customers and
increase sales

With about 70 million customers, Wells Fargo is one of the ‘-Big Four’ banks in the U.S. With
this huge number of customers, there's a need for a strong customer service.

To provide this service, one place to look at is social media. Wells Fargo uses Salesforce to
track all the mentions of the brand on various social media platforms.

“It's a fundamental change to consumer behavior,” Renee Brown, Head of enterprise social
media team at Wells Fargo said. “[Social media] is the new water cooler and street corner
where people are gathering to talk.”
5. Cisco uses CRM to increase team productivity and identify new sales opportunities

Cisco wanted to improve the productivity of its advanced technology specialists. They

wanted a solution that would allow real-time, mission-critical collaboration and response
across the enterprise.

Since it’s all about solving complex customer inquiries, product sales specialist could only
spend 30% of their time on strategic activities like sales engagement and execution.

As a result, the company introduced the WebEx program to simplify the process. This
program was used to resolve complex issues by customers and also to contact the rapid
response team that is trained to answer tactical questions.

After this implementation, salespeople were able to spend 20% more time on productive
and strategic tasks. They also increased their external interactions by 40% while decreasing
the average amount of working hours by 10%.

Added to these, users were more satisfied with their service giving an average score of 4.88
on a five-point scale. All these were achieved while cutting travel-related expenses by 40 to
60% over the course of three quarters.
This is one example of CRM used to improve employees productivity in serving customers.

McDonald's CRM: Case Study

McDonald’s partners with Astute Solutions, allowing the restaurant chain greater insights
into consumer feedback and satisfaction levels. Being able to assess restaurants by region,
or even individually, means that McDonald's can quickly spot potential customer
relationship issues, and resolve them before they become a serious problem.
And, with Astute Solutions, McDonald’s can also:

 Provide both its franchisees and corporate managers with live access to customer
information
 Integrate data from its dynamic network of restaurants into an effective CRM tool
 Increase the accuracy of its reporting, and inform more intelligent decision-making
As Christopher Garrity, McDonald’s’ own Senior Director of Customer Satisfaction, espouses:
“CRM [is a] critically important function for any large company. It’s clear that Astute
understands the important role it plays, and meets the ever-changing needs of our prime
customers through continued innovation.”

3) Critiquing the concept and suggesting improvements if possible

In 2017, CIO magazine reported that around one-third of all customer relationship

management (CRM) projects fail. That was actually an average of a dozen analyst reports. The
numbers ranged from 18% to 69%. Those failures can mean a lot of things — over-budget,
data integrity issues, technology limitations, and so forth. But in my work with clients, when I
ask executives if the CRM system is helping their business to grow, the failure rate is closer to
90%.

The primary reason they miss the mark in helping companies increase revenue is that CRM
systems are too often used for inspection — to report on progress, improve accuracy of
forecasts, provide visibility, predict project delivery dates, and provide a range of other
business intelligence — rather than creating improvement in the sales process. Front-line
sales professionals and managers rarely find the majority of these capabilities useful in
winning more business for the company.

CRMs today also serve a lot of masters, from executives in the C-suite, technology, marketing,
finance, and sales. They try to address more objectives than are reasonable for any software
system.

If you want your CRM implementation to increase revenue (which it only will if it enables your
sales organization to increase sales), I recommend doing the following:

Re-think your CRM as a tool to increase revenue. Period. That is why you bought this system
and spent millions, sometimes tens of millions, on its deployment. Broadcast this message
loud and clear from the CEO and sales leadership. Your sales team needs to understand that
they drive the execution of your strategy every time they interact with a client or prospect.
Your implementation of a CRM system is not about the technology, and it is not to fulfill an
administrative reporting requirement, which is how too many sales teams view them. The
CRM is a tool to help them sell more, access support resources during sales cycles, and
manage their territory or “book of business.” If the sales team recognizes the value of this
tool, you’ll get all the metric and forecast information you desire. If not, you’ll be back to
modifying guesses in Excel spreadsheets.

Integrate your marketing efforts with sales activity. Historically, these two functions
collaborate on CRM implementation so poorly it’s almost a cliché. Marketing blames sales for
not following up on all the leads produced. Sales points out that marketing doesn’t
understand field reality and truly qualified leads. Overcoming these interdepartmental
squabbles requires a collaborative effort by both teams throughout the sales process. Early in
the sales cycle, marketing and sales have roles to play in identifying and qualifying
opportunities to actively pursue. As sales cycles develop, they should have a shared
understanding of what constitutes a qualified lead, as well your ideal customer profile — both
in terms of the company and level of buyer. This helps filter out business you shouldn’t
pursue. Later in the sales cycle, marketing works with sales to create materials that can be
customized to client objectives and case studies, instead of the generic collateral sales teams
often see as low value. Finally, working together on win/loss analysis provides an active
feedback loop for joint planning and addressing future needs. This kind of integration, using
your CRM as the glue, will improve marketing’s efforts to create gravity with prospects, and
sales’ ability to accelerate sales cycles. It’s an advantage for the business if you can use at least
some of the same metrics to evaluate the success of both departments.

Managers provide coaching to improve, not reporting to inspect. The pivotal role in driving
CRM success is not individual sales people. It’s sales management. They will determine how
the sales team uses and experiences the CRM. If they use it solely to check on the amount of
activity, call volume, or other measures of efficiency, it’s of low value to the sales team and
likely be rejected or filled with fictional data. Instead use it as a tool to jointly create strategies
for major opportunities, and help the sales team to maximize opportunities by coaching them
throughout the sales process. I’ve written in the past about the high value of coaching and the
fact that it’s rarely done well. But CRM can be a powerful mechanism to support coaching for
individual sales calls, as well as opportunity, account, and territory management.

CRM is an important tool, but it is just a tool. When the laptops are shut down for the day, it’s
your sales team that is responsible for bringing value to clients and driving revenue.
Implement your CRM with that in mind and you’ll be pleased with your ROI.

55% of all CRM projects don’t produce results, according to Gartner Group, a research and
advisory firm. Also consider this: According to Bain’s 2001 survey of management tools, which
tracks corporate use of and satisfaction with management techniques, CRM ranked in the
bottom three for satisfaction out of 25 popular tools

Why do CRM initiatives fail so often? Research suggests that one reason CRM backfires is that
most executives simply don’t understand what they are implementing, let alone how much it
costs or how long it will take. More specifically, our research shows that many executives
stumble into one or more of four pitfalls while trying to implement CRM. Each of these pitfalls
is a consequence of a single flawed assumption—that CRM is a software tool that will manage
customer relationships for you. It isn’t. CRM is the bundling of customer strategy and
processes, supported by the relevant software, for the purpose of improving customer loyalty
and, eventually, corporate profitability. This is a subtle yet critical distinction that weaves itself
through the four sections of this article.

Make no mistake—getting CRM right is important and urgent. It is popular and becoming even
more so. In 1989, CRM was mentioned once in the media. By 2000, that figure rose to 14,000.
Seventy-two percent of the executives who took our 2001 management tools survey expected
to have CRM programs in place by the end of 2001. That’s more than double the previous
year’s figure of 35%, making CRM the fastest-growing technique our firm had encountered in
eight years of analysis. And, according to the research and consulting firm META Group, the
CRM software market is expected to more than double from $20 billion in 2001 to $46 billion
by 2003.

The numbers say it all: CRM has arrived. Now it’s up to you to make sure it pays its way by
avoiding the following four pitfalls.

Peril 1: Implementing CRM Before Creating a Customer Strategy

Any new management tool can be seductive, but there’s something particularly captivating
about software that promises to make a perennial problem go away. Many CRM products do
just that, claiming they will automate the delicate and sometimes mysterious process of
repelling low-margin customers and luring high-margin ones. CRM can indeed do that, but
only after—and we repeat, only after—a traditional customer-acquisition and retention
strategy has been conceived of and implemented. 
The reason? Effective customer relationship management is based on good old-fashioned
segmentation analysis. Moreover, it is designed to achieve specific marketing goals. To
implement CRM without conducting segmentation analyses and determining marketing goals
would be like trying to build a house without engineering measures or an architectural plan.
Still, most executives mistake CRM technology for a marketing strategy. That is, they allow
software vendors to drive their approach to customer management. Or, just as often, they
retrofit a customer strategy to match the CRM technology they’ve just purchased. To make
matters worse, they then delegate customer relationship management to their CIOs. It’s
mostly technology, isn’t it? It partly is—and therein lies the problem. Technology that affects
customers must always be aligned with an overarching strategy if it is to work.

Peril 2: Rolling Out CRM Before Changing Your Organization to Match

4) Installing CRM technology before creating a customer-focused organization is perhaps the

most dangerous pitfall. If a company wants to develop better relationships with its more
profitable customers, it needs to first revamp the key business processes that relate to
customers, from customer service to order fulfilment. Having a strategy is not enough: A
CRM rollout will succeed only after the organization and its processes—job descriptions,
performance measures, compensation systems, training programs, and so on—have been
restructured in order to better meet customers’ needs.

5) It’s also important to evaluate existing departmental, product, or geographic structures.

Believing that CRM affects only customer-facing processes, however, executives often do
not see the need for changes to internal structures and systems before investing in CRM
technology. But that’s like trying to repaint a house without sanding the walls first; it’s
bound to look worse than before. According to a survey conducted recently by on-line
resource center CRM Forum, when asked what went wrong with their CRM projects, 4% of
the managers cited software problems, 1% said they received bad advice, but 87% pinned
the failure of their CRM programs on the lack of adequate change management.

Peril 3: Assuming that More CRM Technology Is Better

Many executives automatically assume that CRM has to be technology intensive. It doesn’t.
Customer relationships can be managed in many ways, and the objectives of CRM can be
fulfilled without huge investments in technology simply by, say, motivating employees to be
more aware of customer needs. Merely relying on a technological solution, or assuming that a
high-tech solution is better than a low-tech one, is a costly pitfall. In fact, companies with well-
functioning CRM programs dot all points of the technology spectrum: low-tech, mid-tech, and
high-tech.

Several companies have adopted a healthy hybrid approach to CRM. For example, Grand
Expeditions, a Florida-based company that manages eight tour operators, started its CRM
project by identifying the low-tech activities that were already working well and could be
replicated across the company. Its senior executives, led by president Bob DeVries,
discovered, for example, the effectiveness of handwritten thank-you notes that one of its tour
operators was sending clients days after their excursions ended. Customers loved this
personal touch, and DeVries realized that this was an effective—and simple—way that the
whole company could strengthen relationships in an industry where customer-acquisition
costs are high and clients are risk-averse. Only when the continuous study of such practices
was under way did Grand Expeditions start evaluating software solutions that could bolster its
ability to build relationships with customers.

Peril 4: Stalking, Not Wooing, Customers

If your best customers knew that you planned to invest $130 million to increase their loyalty
to your products, how would they tell you to spend it? Would they want you to create a
loyalty card or would they ask you to open more cash registers and keep enough milk in
stock? The answers depend on the kind of company you are and the kinds of relationships you
and your customers want to have with one another. Such relationships can vary across
industries, across companies in an industry, and across customers in a company.
Unfortunately, managers tend to ignore these considerations while using CRM, with
disastrous consequences. They often end up trying to build relationships with the wrong
customers, or trying to build relationships with the right customers the wrong way.

Relationships are two-way streets. You may want to forge more relationships with affluent
customers, but do they want them with you? Fail to build relationships with customers who
value them, and you are bound to lose these people to a competitor. Try to build relationships
with disinterested customers, and you will be perceived as a stalker, annoying potential
customers and turning them into vociferous critics. That is what most loyalty programs seem
to lapse into, as any hapless customer who has registered with a CRM-equipped retailer will
tell you. Just because managers can contact customers doesn’t mean they should; it depends
on the customer strategy, not the CRM program.

Learning from Failure

Even if you’ve been unsuccessful at implementing CRM, there’s hope: Companies do recover
from their failures. Consider the case of BMC Software, a systems-management software
provider based in Texas that was forced to abandon its entire CRM program and start over
again—and again. After two failed attempts at implementing a CRM system, the company
finally succeeded the third time around. What went wrong during BMC’s first two stabs at
CRM? Many of the pitfalls we’ve described. BMC’s managers didn’t research what customers
wanted; they only asked themselves what processes they could perform faster. They assumed
that a CRM initiative did not require much top-management involvement and that it could be
handled by IT managers. They believed that the software would sell itself to employees and
would automatically generate the organizational changes required. Each time, the program
simply floundered.

Finally realizing that the CRM project was a cross-functional undertaking, BMC’s leadership
tapped the vice president of sales for North America and the manager of marketing programs
for North America to head up the initiative. The marketing duo’s commitment to defining the
CRM program’s requirements up front and articulating its benefits to employees proved to be
critical. They carefully aligned every change with budgeted sales targets to show how CRM
would help the sales force attain its goals. And they involved many more employees, with as
many as 175 people helping to develop the new program’s configurations and serving as its
early champions.

It took BMC five months to roll out a sales-force automation system. To overcome any
residual skepticism within the company, the rollout included an internal marketing campaign,
spearheaded by a veteran from corporate communications. At the same time, the company
shut down most of its other technology-related projects and carefully sequenced the CRM
implementation. First, the direct sales function was automated, followed by sales-lead
management and business-partner channel managers. BMC then equipped its Web channels
with CRM technology. Success in one area set the stage for success in the next, and if there
was a problem, the entire company didn’t get embroiled in it.

CRM use eventually became mandatory at BMC, its benefits being carefully communicated to
every employee to ensure buy-in. This time, the implementation strategy worked. The CRM
system was relaunched in March 2000; six months later, 80% of the marketing and sales staff
were up and running on the system—and 95% a year later. Under the new system, BMC’s
sales representatives were able to access data in five to ten minutes, compared with what was
once a couple weeks. When the TeleServices team, for example, used the software to
research contacts for a product sales blitz, one sales representative was able to close a
lucrative deal in less than a week instead of months. A study that will identify the revenue
benefits and cost savings from the project has been only recently commissioned, but results
are sure to reveal the success of BMC’s third attempt.• • •

Management tools have come and gone, but CRM is not, we are convinced, just another fad.
It is a powerful idea, albeit a difficult one to implement. Its pitfalls explain why everything that
is presently being done in the name of CRM seems to be driving managers away from, rather
than closer to, customers. But CRM is by no means impossible to use; it’s no more difficult
than any other organization-wide initiative. If you remember the principles on which it is
based and avoid the pitfalls in its execution, your CRM project won’t end up diluting earnings,
disaffecting employees, and damaging customer loyalty.

Successful CRM depends more on strategy than on the amount you spend on technology.
Strategy is about allocating scarce resources to create competitive advantage and superior
performance. The only way you can make CRM work is by taking the time to calculate your
customer strategy, which helps employees understand where they are going and why, and to
align your business processes before implementing the technology.

You’ll also need to effectively lead and manage change, showing CRM support teams how to
achieve their goals through new processes. Employees must be equipped with the tools
necessary to succeed—whether it’s stationery and pens to send thank-you notes or software
to create self-service options for customers. Indeed, while technology is a powerful facilitator
in the process of customer relationship management, that’s all it is—a facilitator. And the
moment companies forget that, CRM will turn into a tool that, instead of building loyalty, does
just the opposite.

4) Assessing its applicability in the digital ecosystem (wherever possible)