I came across David Taber’s article in CIO titled “The CRM Talent Shortage: Here, Now” and agreed with some of his points, but there were some things he said that struck a chord with me. The article talks about how there is currently a shortage of CRM talent, and due to the fluctuating economy CRM professionals are hard to come by.
According to Taber, “there’s [an] increasing demand for external staff and consultants.” He also says that the vacant openings include “system administrators, operations types, data analysts, and power users.”
I have to say, I disagree.
Before you even look into outside support for you CRM solution, before you even consider implementing a CRM solution, you need to find a CRM that is easy to use. You can’t waste valuable time and money dealing with a complex application.
Ease of use allows for a smooth user adoption experience. CRM is all about having information available, easily, and right at your fingertips.
A point Taber mentioned that I do agree with is about growing your own talent.
“Grow your own talent, investing a junior technical person to give them CRM and business domain knowledge.”
I’m going to take this point one step further and say that not only should your CRM solution be easy to use, it needs to be easy to learn. Complex tasks should be limited. Yes, your organization should have a trained professional on staff or readily available for support needs. However, education should not stop with the initial introduction of the CRM solution. Your organization should provide ongoing CRM education to make sure the CRM application is being used to its fullest potential.
Make sure you review all of your options before selecting a CRM solution. Don’t just assume you need an entire team to maintain your organization’s CRM. Implementing an easy to use, easy to learn CRM will help you quickly and efficiently train your current team to help streamline your business processes, without wasting valuable time and resources.
Is Social CRM Necessary for Your Organization?
Social CRM (sCRM) is a-buzz in the marketing and software industries, and many organizations consider embracing it to become more involved with their customers. Although the media may make social CRM seem like a must-have, not every organization would benefit from that specific type of solution.
Since social CRM works by aggregating content about your brand or company from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and allowing you to respond through the CRM application, there is no definite benefit to using that type of CRM unless your customers are using these sites. While it is usually a good thing for an organization to have a presence on social media sites, it doesn’t necessarily mean it needs a software solution that heavily focuses on social media.
On the other hand, social CRM is worthwhile for organizations whose customers are active on Twitter, Facebook and blogs and who also publish any other social content. Since customers have more power than ever before to influence others’ opinions on an organization, it is important for a lot of companies to keep track of the conversations and engage in them. It allows them to participate in the discussion and address any concerns a customer might have. For instance, I went on Yelp the other night to look for dining suggestions, and I read a review from one girl who recounted her experience with a particular restaurant. She said she had a bad experience with the restaurant and wrote about it in her original review, but now she favors the restaurant and has changed her review. Why? Because after she posted her original review recounting her bad experience, the owner stumbled upon it and contacted her immediately to make amends. The owner changed what was wrong at the restaurant just because of her review. This is one example why it is important for organizations with customers active on social media sites to keep up with conversations. Organizations have not kept up with customers’ conversations in the past, but now social CRM allows them to address concerns by aggregating this content.
If you find that your customers are typically not on social media sites, but you still want to have an online presence and receive relevant information from these sites, it may be nice for you to have a CRM solution with web 2.0 integration. These CRM solutions allow you to access sites like Twitter or LinkedIn with the click of a button. This way, you can quickly gather information and stay in the loop about what’s going on without having to consume yourself with social media. This allows you to have social media as a small bonus to your CRM initiatives instead of being at the center of them.