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Do you have the proper people with the proper knowledge and skills?
Are you including people across the board, not just in your customer service and call centers?
The bottom line is that folks skill sets got to be almost like the technology they're using -- information sharing must be fast, focused, integrated.
Let’s Start With the Leaders
For CRM to become the strategic engine, not just a tool that folks prefer to use once they choose, managers and leaders got to demonstrate the new vision through their day-to-day actions. Leadership is about making a vision happen. If you would like your CRM strategy to be the engine that drives growth and profitability, take a glance at what your leaders do and the way they're behaving.
The heart of strategic change is when the leadership makes the conscious option to specialise in actions that matter. When a corporation undergoes significant and fundamental transition, leaders must be teachers and role models of the new actions and behaviors. Leaders who successfully transition to new operating values and practices are those that recognize they're on a steep learning curve and adopt a private learning ethic that others can model.
What About Everyone Else?
Just as any change needs good leaders, making CRM the strategic engine requires good followers. People got to have the knowledge and skill sets which will translate the vision to a seamless customer experience. Having the skill to create personal and professional networks of data and knowledge will allow managers and employees to think and act in less linear ways. there's a requirement to find out to behave as integrated teams, not individual contributors or functions.
Teaming, problem-solving behaviors across job boundaries, knowledge-discovery skills, personal networking outside the department, and building relationships to share knowledge and knowledge are rarely seen metrics on employee performance evaluation forms. Yet these are the talents required to drive the CRM strategic engine. Those skills got to be valued, encouraged, and rewarded by the organization.
Don’t Take New Roles without any consideration
To move CRM deeper into the ethos of the corporate culture, clear and unambiguous roles for leaders and employees got to be communicated. When people have a task beyond that of being a private contributor, accountability, involvement, and interest in making CRM the strategic engine all increase.
The key's communicating what new roles leaders and employees are expected to fill. As social scientists and consultants, it's been our experience that there's always some of leaders and employees who can't or won't adopt the new vision. this is often why there are always tough people decisions involved during a large system change initiative.
Copyright 2002 Dailey & O'Brien, Inc.