Does your organization really need to conduct a CRM needs assessment (CNA)? What scope (and cost) do you need? Like many things, it depends.
Enterprises that have just started CRM will feel that the fruits of CRM opportunities are hanging low in front of their eyes and do not need to be explained and analyzed. Other enterprises wishing to reach a higher level will find that structured needs assessment is very important for optimizing their CRM investment.
Determine the time to implement CRM
The purpose of CRM needs assessment is to determine the relevant opportunities of CRM, formulate plans and projects that make use of these opportunities, and evaluate and determine the priority of their implementation, so that the delivery of CRM needs assessment is a prioritized CRM project or an implementation roadmap with a timetable.
"The most important thing is to determine the questions you want to answer in advance. For many organizations, the first question may be, "How can we get or save more money by improving the customer experience?" Irene Kinkin, vice president of Frest, said.
Along these clues, another important question CNA answered was "What do our customers really need and value?" A comprehensive investigation of CRM preparation and business, introducing the investigation level into the customer demand and driving demand of CAN, and deeply analyzing the internal customer interaction data, including historical records and customer service records, is very useful.
"In order to better understand your customers, don't ignore your own customer data. Many organizations already have raw data, but they have not studied these data. " Kinkin said.
Without analyzing the information of historical interaction records, external consultants and market researchers are often busy collecting satisfied and unsatisfied customer needs and the value behind them. The first stage of this discovery should be to collect opinions from internal employees facing customers, and the representative institutions are sales organizations and customer service organizations.
The role of external consultants
"Internal investigation is necessary, but it is not enough. I can't stop after the internal interview. " John Powers, the head of Deloitte, said that the second step is to meet or investigate several current, past and future customers (potential customers in the target market).
The reasons for hiring external consultants include their industry experience and professional knowledge, their objectivity and their authoritative methods. Other reasons include being able to find the root cause and driving force outside the prejudice and pressure of internal and external participants, rather than accepting artificial answers.
For example, the answer of "give me a lower price" rarely coincides with the real or main needs of a customer, and it needs constant communication to understand the deep value and motivation. Internal employees are usually too defensive to effectively guide customers to feedback information at this discovery stage.
In large customer samples and projects that value quantitative results, market research companies will use "we use 25% regulations to do this survey." Powers said that the reason why they paid less than consultants was because of the large customer sample survey conducted by application investigators.
Perform CRM needs assessment, solve the steps to identify CRM-related opportunities, start projects and planning procedures and use them. After the first round of in-depth data collection, we should put the information in a big background. In the next step of CNA, analyzing and evaluating improvement opportunities related to customers is the theme of the second part.
Carry out a major plan
Ralph, a senior partner of Deloitte, said: "The contrast between the customer awareness collected internally and the first-hand information collected by external surveys will open the eyes of management."
Considering that it is difficult to collect fair information about customer needs and values, it will be more difficult to decide which opportunity to follow.
"It's not easy, but as long as you go all out, big plans can be created," said Frest's vice president Ginkin. "How to do every opportunity should be compared with competitors, its cost and profit, the company's organizational structure and culture, and the company's strategic goals.
Similarly, the cost of sales opportunities generated by some CAN surveys is far higher than their possible benefits. Some may be too decentralized in organization and need too many cultural changes. Some may be inconsistent with the company's overall strategy, and some may not get enough support from the business departments that will be affected by it.
The final result of CNA's investigation, analysis and prioritization will be a list of CRM projects, and may be an implementation plan with a timetable for each stage. The results of CNA should be reanalyzed periodically, so that the customer drive can take effect again and the priority of the project can be confirmed or re-determined. According to different businesses and target markets, a new CNA will be conducted every one to two years.
Finally got the result.
One aspect that CNA often ignores is corporate culture, and insiders must participate in evaluating alternatives from the beginning. Kinikin said, it is challenging to find an insider who can get all the inputs (what customers want, what competitors are doing, what the organization is going to do and what the strategic goals of the organization are) and give him a plan.
At least 50% of CNA team members should be insiders, and at least 50% of these people should come from the business departments affected by CNA opportunities. Kinikin said that it is a common mistake to hand over all CNAs to external consulting teams.
It seems obvious to collect customer input information for CNA, but many organizations that may reach 50% are unaware of this need. "We know what customers need," they said, but "we suggest our customers do this survey," Deloitte John Bowles stressed. "When doing research, we often find some important, unexpected and unexpected customer drivers."
It is really difficult, time-consuming and expensive to collect and analyze the information input by customers. It will also cause what christie smith, a senior partner of Deloitte, called "the problem of quick impression time". She said that it may take six months or one to three months to conduct a series of customer evaluations for a long time to get an accurate trend forecast.
A blow to balance
Kinikin said that another common mistake is to collect too many opportunities and analyze and set too few priorities.
"CNA tends to generate a long-term wish list of CRM projects" rather than a short list, she pointed out, "For any organization, CRM activities that are helpful in the theoretical field are huge, but the parts that enterprises can do well because of budget and cultural changes are relatively few.
The cost of a thorough CRM needs assessment is only a small part of the whole CRM planning (2%-5%), but if it is done well, it will provide key information for the enterprise's efforts in the highest priority and maximum benefit areas.
Open one's eyes
Not all enterprises need CRM, and it is not advisable to blindly carry out CRM for the sake of window dressing or following other competitors. Starting from the long-term planning of the enterprise, it is the most critical to understand the real needs and problems of the enterprise itself. Many enterprises just ignore the evaluation of their own needs. Before clearly defining and preparing to grasp the real problems and needs faced by enterprises, anything related to CRM deployment is hasty.
External consultants can be effectively introduced when establishing CRM objectives and evaluating requirements. After all, it is not easy to comprehensively and neutrally analyze the needs of enterprises from an internal perspective, and the rational use of external consultants can avoid the confusion of authoritative people. Based on the comprehensive analysis of demand and data, a CRM scheme that can adapt to a longer period and accurately grasp the trend forecast can be established.
What needs to be seen is that enterprises are constantly developing and the market and business are constantly changing, so demand assessment is a long-term and continuous process, so long-term management consulting services are also needed.