Pointers to Customer Success for CRM, CDP & MarTech Platform & Onboarding Partners

These are personal views of the writer (not organization). The post is meant to educate potential prospects considering CRM, CDP & MarTech Platforms. It is not meant to diss any platform for they provide a yeoman service to a marketer to up their marketing game. Of course, no pain-no gain.

1.      Remove complexity in Plans Selection

      Unless a prospect is steeped in CRM/CDP/MarTech or migrating from one platform to another – the plans and related platform features are a blackhole

2.      Prospects feel ‘manipulated’ as the Best Plan for Use Case and Single or Combination of Offerings are Not Clear for the First-Timer

      Prospects’ Use Case Requirements are spread over platform plans; unless the prospect subscribes to the highest plan and all the Hubs (in case of HubSpot), for 50K Marketing Contacts, the customer will be billed $100,000 per annum with very few takers, as evidenced by HubSpot Annual Report: average HubSpot customer revenue is ~ $10,000 per annum over 135,000 customers; need of the hour - custom plans as per use case with mix and match of features from across Hubs with an average price of $20,000 - $30,000 to grow the market, exponentially

3.      Simplify Decision-Making at Prospect End (read save time)

      Platforms interact at the CIO / CMO level who are personally and professionally time-starved (if they are doing well, more so, if they are not – the motivation to subscribe to a platform); the sales process must minimize prospect time to decision (‘time is money’) by reducing complexity in the decision-making process

4.      Collapse Sales Cycle for Prospect and for Platform / Improve Cash Flow

      Senior managers have to deliver on their goals / KRA within a financial year, so long sales cycle because of decision complexity, is a major no-no for senior management, so the process gets shunted to junior level who do not have the big picture, a decision is taken and signed off, and immediately purchase dissonance sets in because the senior managers are not seeing the data as they had ‘imagined’

5.      Full-Day Prospect Session to Iterate and In-Principle Sign-Off vs Hard Stop 1-Hour Sessions

      For decision-makers and platform users instead of unproductive hard-stop one-hour sessions that concludes, inconclusively, the Agenda should be:

1. Platform Features Explained and Understood
2. Use Case Discovery Done and Accepted
3. Platform Features Reviewed in Context of Use Case Discovery
4. Custom Plan Developed (Suggestive or Final) and in-Principle Buy-in Sealed (plan to be refined and sent as a formal proposal, thereafter for final sign-off)
5. Report Summary / Dashboard Sign-off with Dummy Data Presented as per Use Case
6. Onboarding Custom Plan Discussed (not standard plan thrust on customers) and Costing Range and Milestones to Completion (including Milestone-Based Payment Schedule), Agreed
7. Support Video Case Studies Presented to Set Right Expectations
8. Consensus on Customer Success Description / Statement Frozen to become the North Star for the Assignment
9. At some point Procurement needs to be brought into the Process – not too late or too early – so that the deal is not lost because of price not value perception

6.      (If a) Listed Company with Pressure to Deliver Quarterly Numbers

      However, no excuse to pardon miss-selling as in insurance; renewal is at stake; for that matter, cancellation and suspension of quarterly payments are potential outcomes within the contract period 

Notes:

7.      How platforms make money: Billed on volume of marketing and non-marketing contacts; features suppressed in lower plans to gravitate to higher plans at escalating price points; slew of products that have to be individually subscribed to comprehensively address the use cases; and of course, some platforms are an amalgamation of bought out platforms and thereby multiplies their complications; and the BIG one, acting ‘duh’ about your use case to load on costs when the subscription is done and onboarding starts

8.      Truckload of Competition: Check https://tech.co/crm-software/hubspot-pricing; not sure if it is a plug for HubSpot, but highly informative with comparison with competing platforms https://tech.co/crm-comparison-table though not comprehensive enough; does not include Oracle Eloqua https://www.oracle.com/cx/marketing/automation/ or Adobe Marketo https://business.adobe.com/products/marketo/adobe-marketo.html or SALESManago https://www.salesmanago.com/ ; probably to do with industry definitions of what is CRM, CDP and MarTech; platforms tend to use one or all three for their offerings

9.      Internal Resource Platform Setup Malfunction: Knowing that you don’t know is the secret to a successful subscribing and onboarding plan; internal resources forge ahead with setup due to pressure from Marketing without guidance from Onboarding Partner [13-24-week onboarding timeline is dead on arrival with pressure on marketing to deliver MQLs]

10.   Caveat Emptor: Insist on use case discovery before subscribing and Total Cost of Ownership (TOC) that includes onboarding costs before sign-up; it’s about getting platform and partner to work for their lunch or tragically the customer will be the lunch

11.   The House Always Wins: The odds are ‘stacked’ against the subscriber and novice to the platform due to information asymmetry – ‘they’ know it all and the subscriber chances are knows little including how to explain the use case that makes sense to the platform vendor

12.   Two Most Used Phrases by Platform Vendor and Onboarding Partner: Out-of-the-Box (read: in the box i.e., what you get for the License Fee); Out-of-Scope (read: what you discover after you have paid the License Fee)

13.   Definition of a Masochist: Took on the task of subscribing and onboarding a MarTech Platform; Definition of an Individualist: Ditto (the feeling of loneliness that cannot be expressed except through flaying of hands and head movements)

14.   Hands-off approach of Principal-Agency viz. platform vendor and implementation partner; platform is responsible and yet not responsible; they have influence over partner (grading; starve the business flow) but no control over the partner to enforce adherence to commitments; and the partner gives a damn about the principal because of multiple platform vendor engagements with 100’s of customers to farm out work to their workforce (*hence 6-months onboarding proposal from platform vendors as no onboarding team is working fulltime on customer business)       Hint: Invest in a full-time campaign specialist with CRM/CDP/MarTech Onboarding Chops to              Onboard the Platform with platform 24/7 Support provided FREE with License Fee

15.   It Starts Badly: Payments have to be made upfront for platform and implementation partner, and then it is sink or swim, be ready to treat your investment as ‘sunk cost’ if you have not managed to ‘swim’ out of it to move on to a more palatable, low cost platform (in fact, Platform Starter Pack is a great place to Start), and hopefully learn from the experience, and start afresh scarred, but wiser

 

CRM implementation tips from the experts: part one

https://econsultancy.com/blog/64905-crm-implementation-tips-from-the-experts-part-one#i.1rs3mu34q7f29q

CRM (customer relationship management) is a strategy that enables companies to manage their interactions with customers or clients on a one-to-one basis.
Marketing messages can be personalised and automated based on user data, resulting in improved customer satisfaction, sales and retention.
An effective CRM strategy relies on clean data and synchronised digital channels, which isn’t an easy task due to legacy systems and contracts with different vendors.
So to give some insight into how businesses should approach CRM implementation, I asked three experts for their words of wisdom.
This is the first of two posts on this topic, but for more information download Econsultancy’s best practice report investigating CRM in the Social Age...

1. What processes do you need to have in place before you can implement a CRM system?

Ben Barrass, Data and Digital Marketing Manager at Econsultancy

The processes that need to be in place should be driven from business objectives – what are you trying to achieve with any CRM implementation?
The business will have existing ways of dealing with customers and therefore any CRM implementation will tend to build on this previous experience. This should then be mapped together with defined objectives as to what they want to be able to achieve.
Often overlooked are people issues as you dive into process, such as clearly defined roles and responsibilities for an implementation.
Also, is there a customer champion, are staff motivation and change issues considered, is there a process to manage the change within the organisation no matter what size?

Andrew Campbell, CRM Consultant and Econsultancy trainer

Successful CRM implementations are built on total clarity regarding what the value creation priorities are for the consumers and the brand, and how they can be addressed.
You will always make more money from doing the right CRM things than from doing them right!
CRM programmes should be viewed as a business strategy to meet customer and organisational goals. Integrating these with the broader business, brand and channel strategies will deliver high payback on CRM investments.
CRM success starts from the top with executive sponsorship and direct involvement in the strategy, planning and programme design processes is vital.

Matthew Eccles, Managing Partner at Matthew Eccles Associates

Before talking about process I’d say that the critical elements to have in place are:

• An acknowledgement by key stakeholders of why a CRM system/focus is needed. What business problem is it going to help fix?
• A clear set of objectives and associated business case.
• A roadmap for the marketing activities that the CRM system will enable – i.e. what new and more efficient/effective customer communications the CRM system will enable and in what order they will be implemented.

Following this, you need processes for vendor selection, implementation and system management.
Typically organisations don’t put enough effort into creating effective processes across these three areas. In my experience the problems arise because they fail to manage responsibilities between marketing users and IT project owners.
Too often IT has control of CRM implementation projects and the marketing (user) requirements are lost.

2. How do you work out which data channels can provide valid information and which are the most important?

Matthew Eccles

For an organisation to get the most from any CRM programme a test, learn, and deploy approach is key. That’s why data analysts are a critical function in any CRM team.
There are three things that can inform a test and learn development plan:

• Looking hard at where customers engage with the brand and to what degree in each channel. Social CRM is a hot topic in the CRM world and for some categories and brands this strategy makes sense as many of their customers engage with them through social channels. However that’s not the case for all brands.
• Reviewing what has worked in the past. Another task for the analysts. Data can tell us which channels have historically been effective sources for driving customer engagement and value historically. These are good places to start in testing data sources for new CRM strategies.
• Understanding the potential value of new data sources. Over recent years CRM has been energized through access to new data sources that have enabled CRM managers to create more relevant and timely communications. 

We can reasonably expect that new data sources will continue to become available and that CRM managers will need to use their knowledge and experience to decide which have potential value and should be mapped into a test and learn programme.

Ben Barrass

I tend to start with the outcomes – whether that be customer scenarios or marketing plans for example, map the ‘ideal’ customer relationship management program based on the evolution of the existing processes in order to achieve objectives.
Then just work backwards. Figure out what data flows are required at each step, and then audit whether this is in fact possible.
It's also important to review the data quality:

• Is it linkable with other sources?
• Are customer iterations from touch-points tracked?
• What system does it appear in, can this be moved (and how easy is that)?
• What are the consequences and risks of failures in processes feeding a CRM system and how can they (if at all) be mitigated? 

You’ll then have a pretty clear idea of what is possible, what needs work, and what is required against your business objectives.

Andrew Campbell

To determine the optimal data strategy you have to work backwards from the value-adding actions you want to take and the insights that will underpin them.
For example, if the priority is to maximise cross-sell at point of purchase you will want to know what product customers are most likely to buy as a cross-sell, what price to charge/terms to offer and whether they will purchase the cross-sell immediately or after the event.
To create these key insights you should collect and test data from:

• The customer at checkout that will indicate likelihood to cross-sell to them.
• The web logs to analyse immediate cross-sell patterns and A/B test results e.g. offer tests.
• The product system to analyse after the event cross-sales.
• Social media platforms to see if social interactions correlate to cross-sales.
• Email platform to see if email interactions correlate to cross-sales.
• Mobile app and web site platform to see if mobile interactions correlate to cross-sales.

Data is cost and so any data collection and management must have a business case that demonstrates that the insights it provides delivers incremental sales or reduced costs that make for a positive ROI.

3. What does great CRM look like?

Matthew Eccles

Great CRM is evidenced by the customer response. It delivers measurable incremental value to the organization across sales, brand engagement and brand affinity.
CRM justifies the resources invested in it by understanding customers and delivering relevant and timely messages to them.

Andrew Campbell

Great CRM is a seamless blend of sales, marketing and service messages that combine to surprise and delight the customer with a timely, personalised and value adding experience.
When a brand proactively predicts future needs and delivers to these or reacts instantly to customer actions in a relevant, personalised manner you know that not far beneath the surface of that customer experience is a well planned and executed CRM system.  

David Moth is Deputy Editor at Econsultancy. You can follow him on Twitter or connect via Google+ and LinkedIn. 

Six ways to find out if your CRM system is really being used

http://www.mycustomer.com/feature/technology/six-ways-find-out-if-your-crm-system-really-being-used/167168

istockphoto_thinkstock

If you’re not sure how well your CRM system is being used, here are six ways to find out:
1. Look at usage stats
If people aren’t using the system, it’s not going to be adding any value, so a good starting point is to understand usage patterns. Most CRM applications will allow you to query the data to determine key usage statistics, such has how many records have been created or edited by a user, or when a user last logged in. Reviewing these usage patterns against a list of users that are expected to use the system will give you a very quick view on how well the system is being used.
2. Check what is it really being used for
List out the business processes that the system has been set up to support (for example, lead management, pipeline management, customer support, etc.) and review any associated documentation that describes how each process is managed in the system.
Armed with this information, ask users to describe how they use the system. This sort of assessment will determine if all the expected processes are indeed being managed within the system, flag where usage patterns fall outside documented procedures, and starts to identify where usage varies between individual users. There can be surprisingly large gaps between what organisations think their CRM’s are being used for and what they’re actually used for.
3. Is there friction?
Sitting down with users, and following a process through its path in the system, can often highlight ‘friction’ where things don’t flow smoothly, require excessive amounts of mouse clicks, or aren’t intuitive. Friction can have a big impact of usage patterns and productivity.
4. How well is it being used?
Take a sample of records from the system. Analyse that data in terms of the key supported processes. Are users updating the system in line with defined processes, or are there omissions and inconsistencies of use between different individuals?
5. Data quality
For key record types, form a view on what on what constitutes acceptable data quality for each step in the process. For example, if the system is being used to manage customer support issues, what fields are expected to be updated, at what level of quality, at each stage as the issue progresses from initial logging through to resolution. Now take a sample of records and score them as pass or fail against that quality standard.
6. How is reporting performed?
Identify the key system reports used by the business. Is the data they return complete and meaningful? For the processes supported by the system, look at how reporting data is compiled. Is it generated from the CRM system, from data derived from the system, or is reporting a standalone external activity? Reporting can be one of the biggest indicators of a system’s health. If users don’t trust the data for reporting purposes, then it’s generally a sign of significant usage issues.
The results of this sort of analysis can be quite eye-opening. The good news is that most issues can generally be fixed – the key is to understand if there’s a problem in the first place.
Richard Boardman is founder of Mareeba CRM Consulting.

Rebranding CRM as customer experience management: The road to ruin?

While some firms are rebranding CRM operations as customer experience, there is also misappropriation of CEM by CRM software vendors. Colin Shaw believes it will only end in tears.

Many firms consider customer experience management (CEM) the successor of customer relationship management (CRM). One of the most dangerous pitfalls of this assumption is that senior leadership simply rebrands preexisting operational functions as paradigmatic of CEM. Because the 2011 Beyond Philosophy Global Customer Experience Management Survey uncovers that most 'CE' professionals lack any formal background in CEM, it’s time to clearly distinguish CEM from CRM, discuss some of the key drivers of CEM and offer suggestions.

 

In order to properly understand CEM, however, you must first truly understand the definition of what a customer experience is. In our last book, Customer Experience: Future Trends and Insights, we shared our definition:

 

"A customer experience is an interaction between an organisation and a customer as perceived through a customer’s conscious and subconscious mind. It is a blend of an organisation’s rational performance, the senses stimulated and emotions evoked and intuitively measured against customer expectations across all moments of contact."

 

As you can see, to manage a true customer experience management program is a cross-functional role that requires the following elements to be included and addressed:

1. Implementation of organisational transformation.
2. Engagement of corporate culture, especially at the senior levels.
3. Fostering a customer-centric philosophy from the top-down.

The threat to customer experience management is obfuscation in the fields of CRM, customer service or marketing.

 

As our definition shows, CEM is an eclectic discipline: it draws upon work in consumer psychology, experience management, customer delight, brand association and even neuroscience. Specifically, we argue that CEM is a project-based framework to productively manage the holistic customer experience.

 

So while CEM draws upon techniques and methodologies from marketing, customer service and customer relationship management, it alone engages inter-functional integration between these disciplines. For this reason, it makes sense that the most commonly asked question in our survey of CE executives is “how should we implement customer experience?” One of our survey participants speaks to this point, when identifying the endemic nebulosity of CE:

 

“There is major confusion…so CE=CS. [There also is] confusion with user experience, so things about web, user interface, design and user experience. Techies think [CE is] user experience, and business professionals think [it is] customer service, meaning survey tools and workforce automation.”

 

As this expert’s quote shows, the understanding of exactly what customer experience is varies greatly according to department. The risk this incurs is a fragmented adoption of “CE” initiatives, lacking a cohesive, unified vision. Secondly, CEM means engagement of corporate culture.

 

Rendering CRM obsolete

 

The trend to rebrand service and marketing operations as CE occurs side-by-side with another issue: misappropriation of CEM by CRM software vendors. CRM creates a data deluge of discrete, statistical information about customers. However, when CEM is properly understood, it entails a qualitative, rather than a purely quantitative, approach to customer metrics.

 

Without a strong holistic customer focus within an organisation, CRM and other operational initiatives are simply rebranded as CEM. This misunderstood effort, which proves uneven and ineffective, thus renders CEM obsolete. Our survey results are in line with this point because the second most commonly asked question by CE executives is “how can we measure the financial return of CE?”

 

Returning to our original definition of CE, this question 'answers' itself. Customer experience appeals to the rational, emotional and subconscious elements of all moments of contact. It is possible to prove ROI against all these measures.

 

Customer experience, by definition, requires qualitative measurements. Experience itself is multi-dimensional and situation-specific. In fact, research shows that the 'numbers' alone don’t tell the full story of the customer experience. Meaningless differentiation in consumer products shows that frequently the trivial, non-utilitarian features of a product can and do determine real outcomes. Procter and Gamble, for example, sells Folgers’s Instant coffee by advertising 'flaked coffee crystals', implying that the flaked crystals improve taste. In reality, the shape of the coffee particle only matters for ground coffee and is irrelevant to instant coffee. As this example and many others show, the subjective aspects of experience carry a tremendous amount of weight and force in the decision-making process.

 

A CE expert in the US told us that:

 

“Most [members of the senior leadership] would not go to emotions. Most people come from an analytical service management route rather than a brand emotional viewpoint. No more than a handful use the language of emotion (e.g. by employing anthropologists to look at user experience).”

 

Facing a lack of CE training, more and more CE executives reach their positions unprepared to collect the relevant types of data required for a customer experience project.

 

A final consideration is that CE initiatives are successful when they develop as a customer-centric philosophy realised from the top-down and across the board. Since customer experience is an organisational strategy based on a holistic approach to the customer (where emotion is a key differentiator), successful CE means the organisation must become more customer-centric.

 

Customers interact with firms via more channels than ever before: on the phone, in person, by email, using instant messaging and even via social networking – and they even switch back and forth between these channels to address a single concern.

 

While leadership can see 'customer experience' as a component of CRM, contact centres, marketing or the customer service interface, customers see one thing: the organisation. As technology allows more companies to expand globally, customer experience is likely to fall through the cracks if it is not treated as a valuable constellation of strategy, integration of technology.

 

The greatest single threat to customer experience is the trend to rebrand it as 'customer service' or 'customer satisfaction'. In order to be successful, customer experience change initiatives need operational synergy created from the culture within a company.

 

From the customer’s point of view, a company’s mistakes measure its worth, so inconsistent CE policies mean failure, plain and simple. Since CE utilises a full, rich and holistic understanding of the customer, it is critical to have properly trained staff in the positions critical to CE transformation. A faulty definition of CE will create company-wide vulnerabilities with respect to customer experienced-based initiatives, engagement of the senior leadership team and establishing a customer-centric corporate culture.

 

CE is more important now than ever before. With the increasing commoditisation of products and services, even traditional B2B industry verticals are seeking ways to differentiate themselves from competitors. The stakes are high for the CE industry, but the opportunities are priceless. Developing a clear understanding of what CE is and what it isn’t is the first step to launching a successful initiative. Putting the right people in place to follow through on it will drive high quality standards for your program and will steer the CE ship away from the iceberg just as it’s beginning to set sail.

Colin Shaw is founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy.