Customer Relationship Management

This section of our technical library presents information and documentation relating to CRM Solutions and customer relationship management software and products. Providing timely customer service information is vital to maintaining a successful business. Accurate information provided in an organized and thoughtful manner is key to business success.

TELEMATION, our CRM and contact center software, was originally built on this foundation. The ability to modify Customer Relationship Management software is important in this ever changing business environment.

Telemation Customer Relationship Management solution and contact center software is ideally suited for call centers throughout the world.

By Teri Robinson

This case study is based on a presentation by Adrienne Dale at CRMGuru's annual conference, the CustomerThink Executive Summit 2003. The Business Case: MegaPath Networks delivers secure access and managed network solutions that enable businesses of all sizes to cost-effectively connect branch offices, mobile workers and home-based workers to centralized corporate resources. MegaPath wanted to get a solid fix on customer feedback and find a way to translate it into loyalty.

When Adrienne Dale joined the company, she brought with her a great deal of experience about establishing a formal survey process for gaining customer satisfaction data as well as processes for analyzing and acting upon the data. As a result, MegaPath has been able to tie customer satisfaction levels to things such as response time to queries and number of interactions with support—then take appropriate action.

In her previous job, Adrienne Dale worked at a company that religiously captured customer satisfaction data but did "absolutely nothing with it," said Dale, who is now senior vice president at MegaPath Networks, Inc. and who brought the lessons learned and programs established in her prior employment to her current work environment.

Before she started at MegaPath, Dale devoted considerable effort to "marrying the customer satisfaction data with transactions and other data that we had to make actionable, get actionable data and get results," Dale said. When she got to MegaPath, the company didn’t have a formal customer satisfaction program in place, but instead got feedback from customers in a more random fashion. "Because it was only random customers or those customers who felt so strongly that they proactively were going to contact us, either the feedback was diminished or it was inflated beyond its significance where we were jumping through hoops because of what one customer thought," she explained.

Develop a Formal Customer Satisfaction Survey

One of her first moves was to implement a formal customer satisfaction survey program that allows the company to put the information in context so the company response could be appropriate to the feedback. First and foremost, she developed a survey that focused "on the customers of the company as a whole, sort of resist the pressure or we’re being seduced, and we’re just going to survey this little bit." She needed to see how the sales operation was doing, so I’m just going to survey the sales operations piece, "When a customer’s giving you feedback, get the whole picture, understand as much as you can," she advised.

But, she cautioned, the information had to be linked up to transactions so it has meaning and is traceable.(See graphics below) Frequency of data collection is critical, too. "Something that’s once a month just feels glacial, and if it’s slower than that, gosh…again, in contrast, if you have very large accounts with really big relationships, once a quarter, twice a year is probably enough, and you need a little time, your changes, because you’ve got now your ocean liner, are going to be slower," Dale said.

It’s Not Just What You Do, But the Way You Do It

The mechanism, too, has an impact. Online surveys are fine though "it doesn’t work for every industry, but when it does, it’s the best way to go. The invitation is important. How do you solicit customers to participate?" she said. “And, it should be a very personal message over the signature of the highest level involved executive.”

Currently, MegaPath is using RightNow Technology Metrics and, Dale noted, "there’s a lot of great companies out there. This is a really cost effective way to go."

No matter what vendor solution is selected, Dale urged companies to look for certain features. "You want to look for are build-it-yourself questionnaires so that you’re not having to stand in line to get somebody to build it for you plus pay them for it," she said. "Online statistical and graphical reports, you should be able to get that out of whatever product you’re using, and the ability to download that data so you can do more with it, because you’ll find that once you get going, there’s more you want to do."

While granular data can let companies drill down to individual situations, it can be overwhelming. "It’s real easy to just get lost in those details, so an important balance is to look for patterns and rise up to say, 30,000 feet."

Analyze the Data

Once collected, a company can scrimp on analysis. "You have to commit resources to this," said Dale. "What’s the point of saying, 'Oh, our customer satisfaction is X, or customer loyalty factor is Y,' if you’re not tying it to things that you can then do something about."

And Dale cautioned that CVM is "a continual thing. With any kind of satisfaction or loyal improvement effort, it is continuous, it takes relentless effort and sustained focus," said Dale. "There’s no joke here, it’s just a lot of hard work, and you have to be ready for that. 'OK, we’re going to look at the data once a week, we’re going to look at the data every other week, we’re going to look at the trends, we’re going to roll things up.' And when these kinds of issues come to us, we need to develop knowledge so we’re handling it better, so that regardless who fields that call, who interacts with that customer, we’re telling them the best answer, the best solution, the first time, that may be a knowledge issue, so if you have a knowledge development team, that would be their baby."

Dale encouraged companies to coach and train employees so they are all on the same page when it comes to dealing with information and different scenarios. "What I’ve done and at MegaPath and at companies before, is that this is something that once a week, a group of people cross-functional looking at the data, with everyone coming back, 'Look, here’s my action,' and doing something where they’re putting that into action fast enough like tomorrow or the next day, so that by the time we meet next week or maybe if you’re in a slightly slower cycle, in two weeks, we can see, did what you do make a difference? Do we need to fine tune it? You know, that’s why I’m talking about that rapid response, rapid action, fast rapid feedback so you actually can make some changes."

Without rapid response, parts of the company can become frustrated. They will feel "like operations is dragging down all our efforts to increase customer loyalty and to increase our stickiness with our customers, why are they moving so slow, so it’s a real big imperative that you are getting the data fast enough, acting fast, and then getting that feedback on the impact of the actions that you were taking," she said.

Overall, though, relentless focus is critical. "It is just never ending, it can’t be OK, this quarter we’re going to do customer satisfaction, it’s week after week, and really, for your frontline people, it’s day after day, hour after hour. It has to be something that’s in their brains, that constant feedback, and it’s feedback as fast as possible, here’s what you heard, this is what customers are saying about you, really important for people to have that."

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