A survey of some 300 companies using customer relationship management (CRM) shows how these companies implement such programs and what they are able to glean from them.
Sometimes called Member Relationship Management in the credit union industry, CRM allows organizations to develop deeper relationships with their customers/members.
The Harte-Hanks survey sought to define CRM and show how different companies are making use of it.
Credit unions are by no means the only ones who are turning to third parties for CRM: four out of five companies are outsourcing the construction or maintenance of at least some part of the CRM solution, Harte-Hanks reported.
"We define CRM as using technology as an enabler for organizations to initiate and to sustain a dialogue with customers in a way that makes it less likely the customers will go elsewhere," said Gary Skidmore of Harte-Hanks. "Yet CRM means different things to different organizations.
The survey found parameters vary significantly from one company to the other. For example, opinions vary as to what constitutes CRM, what types of customer and prospect information are involved, who has access to data and derived knowledge, whether or not the data delivery is web-enabled and how each CRM solution is championed.
Most of the survey respondents-70%- said inside sales people had access to customer data as part of their CRM solutions.
Among that other categories of employees most likely to have access to this information include: customer service and tech support, outside sales, marketing and communications, accounting/finance and call centers.
In some cases, the information is also shared with channel partners and suppliers, such as companies that support transactions or marketing partners.
One common reason companies cited for using CRM is to have a full view of a company's "touch points" with its customers.
That Harte-Hanks research found the top four such items included in this shared view are: client product purchase history with the company (71%), client revenue/sales history (69%), technical service and customer support history (64%) and external contact data culled from outside commercially available sources (54%).
Other findings Harte-Hanks shared:
* IT is still the department most likely to be "in charge" of CRM (the so-called "primary sponsor" of CRM), with 42% of respondents saying CRM is IT's purview.
Sales took second place at 31%, with marketing (9%), customer service (8%), senior management (4%) and other departments (6%) following.
* Some 59% of respondents said they put together cross-functional teams to develop CRM strategy.
* Most respondents (42%) had one to four people assigned to CRM development and maintenance, while 35% reported having no single person dedicated entirely to CRM. About 6% reported having more than 30 full-time staff dedicated to CRM.
* The top four challenges cited regarding CRM were: integration of different data sources into a single system, training users to effectively utilize the solution, participation of different departments within the company and integration with back-office applications.
The sites included in the survey were selected from the North American CI Technology Database based on their response to a general question about their current CRM implementation and represented a cross section of industries. Financial institutions represented about 10% of the respondents.
