The Top 10 Questions to ASK your customer relationship management (CRM) System

Originally Submitted on 7/14/99.

When designing systems that create perpetual flows of new customers and more profitable customers, we have to ask the following ten questions. These questions are created around the context of "generative" business principles.

1. Are we satisfying urgent needs?

Self-explanatory. 95% of purchase decisions are made impulsively to satisfy a perceived urgent need--most often justified by logic afterwards. To be effective, our CRM business design can become leveraged by meeting urgent customer needs.

2. Does the system lead to future needs satisfaction?

So we meet present needs, yet does the system adapt and create future satisfaction opportunities or a "reason to return?" For example, we sold someone a cold drink, will they come back to satisfy a future need? Integration of brand strategy and CRM links the present and the future.

3. Does the CRM System lead to discovery of underlying needs?

These are needs that are not conscious but driving behavior one or two orders away. Is our system capable of learning these underlying needs and creating opportunities for us in the future to create new experiences for our customers based on these discoveries? Example: Sony developed the walkman--unknown need, yet why do they make them in yellow? The color addresses a need under the surface for identification with something having nothing to do with the ability of the walkman to play music, yet Sony and Yellow create a differentiating strategy. A CRM System must be designed to gather, analyze and feedback data--often disrelated--from the original purpose.

4. Are impulse wants generated by the system?

In order to generate a want, you have to understand needs. In order to translate an unknown need into favorable behaviorial responses for your company, you have to link the communication of the satisfaction of these unknown needs to specific targets at precisely the right time. If I would buy a yellow Sony but I have just purchased a Panasonic, the window for generating the want has closed. So we have to be aware of the precise buying cycles and lifecycles of our customers and their experiences. This can be done by knowing when customers might want to buy--thus creating the opening or window for generation of the want. In banking, would it be a good time to send out mortgage information from a wedding announcement? In insurance, the birth of a new baby might generate a number of insurance "opportunities."

5. Does the system exploit current trends?

Pretty simply, if you understand your customer base, you may understand how a socio-economic trend might generate perceived needs in your clientele. How might dropping consumer confidence spur a money-market account, a bond service or a new savings account with a "gift" for starting one now--work? How would you modify a coaching service based on a new report by the government on the new digital economy?

6. Does your CRM System open the doors to progressive purchasing?

Insurance, banking, dry cleaning, coaching, home improvement, auto dealers all have vested interests in understanding how customers move progressively deeper into services. If your CRM System is efficient, it will automatically remind you or the customer of progressive opportunities. From savings, to checking, to loans, to mortgages to CDs to Trusts; from a well-timed tip, to a coaching conversation, to a coaching relationship, to referral, to lifelong partnership?

7. Does the CRM System identify innovative channels?

This is closely related to progressivity and unknown needs, yet is distinctly different. In ALL business, innovation in product, service and experience is required to keep the business fresh and to keep customers involved in continuous purchasing activity. In order to do so, the business/practice must continuously innovate. A well designed CRM System is constantly vigilent of "new" developments and feedback among the customer base. By "listening" and recording, cataloging and analyzing data, we can uncover trends and important issues that create innovative opportunities.

8. Is the CRM System Interactive?

Most old systems are designed around a one-way database. Interaction is limited to data entry and reporting. A day is dawning where customers themselves will both input and query the database interatively in order to customize their own experience in real time. Databases that have the opportunity to include and remove feature sets--simply--with easily understood, user-friendly interfaces like Amazon's "1-click ordering" create the opportunity for each experience to be customized. The time is coming when your customer will "do the work" in your database and create a unique experience with a customized set of features. Yet, you will be able to learn from these "experiences" as if you created them yourself--they will hold the keys to creating new feature sets in the future. Example: I want to give information about what I am doing to a search engine so that for the next week, anything meeting the feature set I select will be automatically sent to me as a condensed digest. The CRM system is designed to recognize the "use" of this particular feature set, compare it with the use of all feature sets and determine a popularity graph, indicating a movement towards or away from current business strategy--thus creating a continuously monitored and adaptive system.

9. Does the system link an effect to emotions?

This is pretty esoteric (way out) but remember the movie Top Gun? Sometimes, when there was a significant change in "context" there was a corresponding "chime?" Recently I have begun to notice that a "chime" effect is being added to some promotional messages to indicate the existence of an emotional sound trigger. In some cases, that trigger--depending on how the person/target associates the context--may create an emotional hook; a subtle NLP type of thing that "connects" the two experiences! Therefore, if you are a big Top Gun fan and remember what I said about the chime and the chime occurs to draw your "emotional attention" to a promotional message, the two experiences may be connected--rationalizing the purchase decision. In the future, so much more will be recorded about our transactions that certain emotional triggers will be added to link corresponding emotions (memes!)--solidifying the emotional permission to buy. Pretty far out, huh! *grin*

10. Are knowledge opportunities at every touchpoint?

You can't manage what you can't measure! Neither can you analyze data you don't have! Every place the business interfaces with a customer is an opportunity to gain knowledge about customer behavior, especially non-customer and best-customer behavior. Sometimes not buying information is just as good as buying information. The challenge for business is automating these functions and creating transaction learning histories that don't reside in a non-reachable, non-deployable format. It is not enough to have a database of customers! You have to know what they have done and are doing to create adaptive responses in real time!

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