Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

ANG,

What I did first I had a look at your website.The striking thing is that when I'm there I cannot see right away what's there for me.That's not good.
Now as to your question.IMHO, your as you say old school company stands little chance of successful adopting new CRM model or better said CEM( Customer Experience Management).Why?That's because this approach only makes sense when a company as a whole is totally customer-centric meaning all its activities, way of thinking, strategies are devoted to meeting& exceding customer expectations and needs.That's the starting-point.Otherwise you are in no position to make proper use of even the most sophisticated software.Thus your manangement and stakeholders have to decide which road they want to follow.
As to the question outsourcing or building it in-house I have always believed that as that's the heart of your company as most treasured and valuable info is or should be there you should not have somebody else do it for you.

Regards

Adam

Hi ANG

Sorry to take so long to get round to replying to this posting – I was just putting the finishing touches to the CRM and PRM (Prospect Relationship Management) aspects of a 40 seat outbound Maximizer Enterprise sales office system (They don’t use the word call centre but that is the function it fulfils). OK, that’s enough advertising!

Outsource or in house? I’d go for in house every time. That way, if you take the appropriate advice when you set the system up, continue to develop it as according to your needs and train your staff, administrators and technical people to the appropriate levels, you will have total control over your data, your system and the applications and processes you wish to run on it.

Mccoy_Pauley and others hit a fundamental nail in the CRM argument. Without there being a total buy-in from the top down in your company, any software based CRM project will fail. That said, from management to call centre agents, it’s pretty easy to sell. It makes the hands on job a whole lot easier and more productive, it makes management more focussed because you are managing information, not hunches and it improves both revenues and profits because of the time it saves and the additional effectiveness of the sales process.

Of course, the system has to be set up in the first place to deliver these things and that is where the second point of failure is found. The software will not work out of the box. Someone needs to sit down with the management and work out the business processes you want it to fulfil. This needs to be done with great sensitivity and intelligence or you will end up designing in features which are a waste of time. Many companies baulk at the idea that they need to pay for seemingly expensive consultancy to set the thing up but it pays for itself in a very, very short time.

The third point of failure is that companies will try to deploy a system using their own people – why not? They’ve all trained in IT, network management and everything that Microsoft can throw at them. Well, they might be very bright, but unlike the installation engineers from the CRM houses, they havn’t trained on how to get the best out of what is a very specialised package, how to overcome system related problems and how to deploy it effectively in a minimal time frame. The software is complex – until you get it running. Then with the right initial training it does what you ask of it.

Most systems have a minimal ongoing maintenance requirement and the technical administrator can ensure smooth operation by undergoing the relevant high level training before deployment. DIY systems usually fail on two counts – they keep crashing and they fail to display the ease of use that an agent requires. If it takes a manager a days worth of fiddling around to generate a report that the board requires, the system is not correctly set up!

You do not state whether your call centre operation is in-bound or out-bound. The main difference is in the telecom functionality and the reporting you will require to manage the operation.

Whatever, the starting point is a database of all the people who you need to relate to. If this is a customer list, that’s fine, it’s on your accounts system or your ERP system. Either integrate them or work out an import / export script which will populate both systems with key data held by the other. This integration is often one way. There aren’t many Finance Directors who would be happy to have a customer agent gain access his sales ledger, but to display the current account status of a given customer on a CRM system is both desirable and relatively straightforward.

If the call centre is there to make outbound calls, your database will consist of a list which will presumably have been bought from somewhere. Once it has been imported, the function of the software is PRM (Prospect Relationship Management) The goal is to change the P to a C!

All of the routines that call centre staff need to follow must be focussed on making the job as smooth as possible. They must log information otherwise they won’t know what the hell they’ve been talking about, even 5 minutes after they’ve made the call. They will need to call up a further action such as send literature, send a quotation, book an appointment with a sales person etc. All of these tasks and many more can be condensed into a single button on the screen.

If the staff are making outbound calls, integrating the CRM system (or PRM system) with the telephony switch will allow the computer to dial the telephone number. For God’s sake, don’t automate this with a timer function. The business world is plagued by the so called “silent call” where the CRM software dials a number because some dick-head has said that it should do so every 60 seconds to keep the agents on their toes. When there’s no agent to pick up the outbound call, the number rings and the recipient has the pleasure of listening to your telecommunications system musing to itself in glorious Technicolor silence.

When it comes to responding to incoming calls, web site leads and emails, again the system can simplify things to a ridiculous extent. Take an incoming call. In Maximizer the customer record might pop up on the screen if the phone number is recognised. The operator then opens a phone log, ticks a box pertaining to the nature of the call, records the text of the call, ticks the outcome, selects the next action and then closes the record. That’s not exactly rocket science!

The situation is similar with incoming emails or web forms. Using KnowledgeSync, the subject of the message can be interpreted automatically. If a record for the person exists it can be opened and the content of the email or web form can be up-loaded to the database. Any actions required can be automatically set and if you really want it, a human being can get involved! If the person’s record does not exist, Maximizer will create it for you and then ask an agent to follow through with a call to clarify the details.

There are literally hundreds of other points we could raise, ten of which might be relevant to you, but I hope that this gives you a flavour of some of the technical and procedural issues involved.

One last point. Your call centre agents are human beings. They have aspirations, minds, and sensitivities and if you believe it, souls. So treat them as such. When I am asked if I can automate this and schedule that and measure the other in order to force more productivity out of the machine called the workforce, I paraphrase the words of William Blake, the writer of the hymn, Jerusalem, set the music of CH Parry. “How dark and Satanic do you want your mill” I’ve lost a couple of orders that way, but I wouldn’t want their business in a thousand years.

Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions