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 Patty Anton, Quaero

Patty Anton is Vice President, Marketing Effectiveness at Quaero Corporation. Patty has over fifteen years of experience at helping clients improve the quality and profitability of their customer interactions. Her unique expertise combines direct marketing skills with an understanding of technology enablement and organizational alignment. Previously, Patty ran her own consulting practice, consulting with clients such as Time Warner, Microsoft, TV Guide, and Bank of America, and also served as Senior VP of Client Relationships at Digitas in San Francisco, a boutique marketing consulting firm focused on customer loyalty and most widely known for creating the American Express Membership Rewards Program. At Quaero, Patty has specialized in the development of best-in-class organizational effectiveness programs. Patty holds a B.S. from the University of Illinois and an M.B.A. in international business from the University of South Carolina, one of the most acclaimed schools for international business education. For more information visit http://www.quaero.com.

Recently, some colleagues and I were discussing downsizing and Mark, the more boisterous one of our group declared, “Hey, I actually wound up in business school getting my MBA because of downsizing.” Laughter from the group ensued, then he said, “But I wasn’t fired, I just quit.”

He went on to talk about his company where he had survived three rounds of lay-offs and happened to be earmarked as a future leader. “I just couldn’t take it anymore. In the five years I was with my company, I had five new bosses, each with his own set of initiatives that were going to help the company reach our goals. I watched our marketing group get re-structured three times and actually stopped and started the same project seven times in five years.

When I asked if it was hard to leave knowing that he was seen as a future star of the company, he said, “When boss number five enthusiastically started pursuing an initiative that I personally saw fail three years prior, I just had to leave, even though I was in line for a promotion. I found myself becoming one of those cynical, burnt out employees that I used to dislike working with -- honestly, it was a relief to quit.”

Despite the declarations of the previous decade which urged companies that “change is constant,” and that they must “change or perish,” what I have seen from first hand experience as a consultant in this field is that rapid and constant change simply tears an organization apart. It keeps a company from achieving strategic momentum and causes employees like Mark who were not inherently resistant to change in the first place to become so.

So what is it about organizations that have such a hard time getting aligned behind their strategic goals and as a result wind up losing the very employees they want to keep? And why is it that some companies are so successful at it when others fail?

Some of the most pervasive misconceptions about change management are that you somehow have to wipe out everything that’s not working properly, and start new – or if you’re shifting the strategic direction of your company, you simply must hire a great deal of new expertise from the outside to get you where you are going. In fact, most companies that have been successful at managing change do just the opposite. Rather than seek what they need from outside or totally reinvent how they do their work, they take a much more no-nonsense approach to getting their organizations aligned. Put simply, they work with what they’ve got. This is not to say that these companies never turn to new people or new ways to create the change they need, but rather than search for the magic bullet they work hard to create their own and bring in expertise as needed.

Regardless of whether a company is trying to radically improve its customer relationship management efforts or simply create a better way of measuring one component of performance, the answer to better organizational alignment seems to lie in how often a company induces change and how sweeping that change is across its organizational components. Companies that are effective at getting the organization aligned behind its goals do two things:

1. They tend to focus on moderate, intermittent changes that alternate between a period of disruption and a period of stability.
2. They look long and hard at their existing assets to understand how they can be redeployed or combined differently to meet the new goals.

1. Moderate, intermittent changes. When a company decides to undertake a disruptive effort, it needs to think through whether or not its employees are already suffering from initiative overload. Also, executives must honestly ask themselves if the focus is on key changes that will really move the company closer to its goal. Since there is usually a state of disorder between when the change is initiated and when it is completed, employees are in a state of flux and are doing things that require more effort and energy than usual. Launching another big effort before the previous one gets adopted creates exponential chaos and disorder. In fact, it is not the outcome of change that is not desired by employees, it is the disruption and uncertainty that require energy to push through – too many of these initiatives without a period of stability in between will have your best employees like Mark heading for the door.

2. Redeploying Existing Organizational Assets. Most companies that are successful at executing against their strategic goals not only focus on moderate, intermittent changes, they refrain from disrupting too many organizational assets at the same time. They explicitly seek to recombine or redeploy – rather than replace or eliminate – their organizational assets.

In order to understand the value of redeployment, a company must fully understand the different assets it can leverage as needed. The diagram below depicts the critical organizational assets that can be tapped for redeployment.



Vision. A compelling vision or outcome that is well-articulated, shared by senior leaders, and effectively communicated down through the organization is truly the most valuable asset from which all organizational alignment begins. A company vision must be “believable” in that employees perceive it as feasible and worthy of people’s time and effort, without seeming overwhelming. Companies with a well understood vision that is internalized by staff employees as well as managerial employees, have senior leaders who recognize that from their vantage point they cannot always see where the communication gaps are in the organization, so, they manage this explicitly. In organizations where senior leadership is not aligned around the same vision, this is felt throughout the organization and a company may find its key groups working at different purposes.

People. People are probably the most readily adaptable asset a company can have, yet companies often do not take the time to understand how existing resources can be redeployed to achieve desired outcomes. One reason for this is that organizations typically focus too heavily on whether or not an employee has the right “hard” skills to do the job, and not enough on how to leverage an employee’s “soft” skills such as demeanor, aptitude, and values.

Take for example two large entertainment companies. During the internet boom each company created independent online divisions that were branded separately from their parent divisions. Like many companies during that period, the intention was to incubate the online business, then spin it off for millions of dollars. When the tech market tanked in 2000, one of these entertainment companies decided to cut their losses entirely. They fired everyone but a bare bones team of six people, lost ten million dollars and got out of the game almost entirely. This company remains gun shy about investing in online efforts even today. Their website is content-shallow and they do not use the online channel for commerce purposes or to build one-to-one customer relationships.

On the other hand, their competitor quickly shifted their business model from building websites for external entertainment clients, to building websites for other divisions within their own conglomerate. They re-branded the group under the parent name and worked hard to redeploy their employees. They took the most entrepreneurial and visionary leaders from the online group and put them in their strategic planning group to focus on emerging markets. In short order these individuals found international licensing opportunities for their animated properties in countries like Japan where wireless technology was more advanced and popular American culture was in demand. Even today, they remain the undisputed wireless licensing leaders in these international markets. The remaining employees were redeployed as “online consultants” who became billable advisors to their sister divisions. Today, this entertainment conglomerate has over 2 million registered online users and sells more movie-related consumer products online than any of their competitors.

Knowledge Sharing. Sometimes instead of paying for a new IT system to manage the firm’s knowledge assets, it pays to leverage the social networks through which knowledge already flows. One large petroleum company based in the UK decided that it was not worth it to spend millions of dollars to create a huge knowledge database which would require disrupting processes, people, and structure all at once. Instead they created a peer-to-peer action review, where they pulled people together from around the world on a quarterly basis to share solutions to critical strategic issues. By facilitating the expansion of social networks of key employees, they were able to achieve high quality knowledge sharing without the disruption that a huge technology effort would have required.

Rewards. Of course tangible rewards such as compensation and bonuses are a good way to get a desired shift in behavior from employees, but more often than not, companies overlook how much “good ol’ recognition” works. As one executive from a large investment company put it, “Contrary to popular belief, I don’t think people resist change. We hire smart people and know that smart folks actually want to be part of building a better organization, even if it means things have to change.” This same executive said that he goes out of his way to acknowledge an employee’s desirable behavior in front of the employee’s peers. Furthermore, he tries to acknowledge positive change as a group effort, “If you reward individuals too often it can make them less willing to share information. It creates a tendency to hoard what they know in order to set themselves apart – and that’s the last thing we need around here.” So, before launching a new compensation plan, which tends to cause anxiety and stress for many employees, companies should consider whether or not “soft” rewards such as recognition in front of peers, will get them where they want to go.

Process. Much of business process re-engineering has traditionally focused on documenting the right way to do something. However, one of the dangers is that it is easy for a process to become repetitive as the focus is always on “know-what”, rather than “know-why.” Consider taxicab drivers in the UK. Unlike cab drivers in the US, they go through rigorous training to get their taxi licenses. They are taught not just “know-what” which one might define as the shortest route on a map for getting someone from point A to point B, but they also develop “know-why” which might mean that when it rains it is better to take the longer route that doesn’t have the sewage backups that create traffic delays. “Know-why” breeds innovation and adaptability which is exactly what companies need when they face shifts in strategic direction. Some process re-engineering projects run the risk of throwing out the “know-why” along with the old processes. Successful companies with strategic momentum have a healthy respect for traditional processes and innovative ones at the same time.

Structure. Identifying key influencers may be equally as effective in getting an organization properly aligned to its strategy as a major restructuring. Key influencers are employees who may not have formal authority or an official title, but they do have the ability to greatly influence their peers. Yet, time and again, when change is at hand, senior executives often keep these same employees “in the dark” because they are not part of the official hierarchy of the firm. Given the amount of productivity that goes by the wayside while employees hold their breath for the new org chart to be released, companies may want to consider the more practical approach of giving key influencers access to vital information and decision-making rationale before undergoing a major restructuring.

The table below re-caps the hard and soft characteristics of the organizational assets reviewed above.



Redeploying assets and pursuing change in a moderate, well-paced way allows companies to continue operations with more stability and less stopping and starting that usually goes along with throwing out the old and inventing the new. This is not to say that a company should never disrupt any organizational assets – but it does point out the need to make conscious choices about just how many assets should be altered at the same time and whether or not those alignments need to be hard or soft in nature. By working with what they’ve got companies can shift strategic direction and develop strategic momentum at the same time – and keep employees like Mark from heading out the door.

About The Author

Patty Anton is Vice President, Marketing Effectiveness at Quaero Corporation. Patty has over fifteen years of experience at helping clients improve the quality and profitability of their customer interactions. Her unique expertise combines direct marketing skills with an understanding of technology enablement and organizational alignment. Previously, Patty ran her own consulting practice, consulting with clients such as Time Warner, Microsoft, TV Guide, and Bank of America, and also served as Senior VP of Client Relationships at Digitas in San Francisco, a boutique marketing consulting firm focused on customer loyalty and most widely known for creating the American Express Membership Rewards Program. At Quaero, Patty has specialized in the development of best-in-class organizational effectiveness programs. Patty holds a B.S. from the University of Illinois and an M.B.A. in international business from the University of South Carolina, one of the most acclaimed schools for international business education. For more information visit http://www.quaero.com.