Is CRM [Customer Relationship Management software] a
bridge too far for a firm? This question is probably a tar pit
from which one cannot emerge unsullied with a single, unitary correct
answer, but as both the power of CRM applications and the competitiveness
of the landscape grow, it’s none to soon to ask this question about
your firm if you haven’t already.
The goal of CRM is breathtakingly easy to state: To
make your business more client-centric. What does that mean in
reality? Among other things:
- that from the inception of a relationship as a prospect through
initial engagement and, we may hope, outwards to the horizon, information
about the client (both "soft" and "hard") is captured and available
to anyone positioned to deal with the client; - that fee earners see and understand with crystal clarity that their
return for getting information into the system is repaid multiple
times over once they have a deeper and more intimate view of the
client’s needs and history with the firm; and - that information is recorded only once and only in one place.
Undertaking a CRM implementation, particularly in the culturally baroque
venue of an "eat what you kill" firm, realistically means a few additional
consderations:
- keep it simple ;
- do not try to do everything;
- focus only on what key fee earners and decisionmakers need.
Typically, the key functionalities and pieces of information have
to do with the firm’s history with the client, who has interacted with
whom on what, and some rudimentary "segmentation" facility for assessing
at a very seat-of-the-pants level whether a client would be receptive
to an overture from another of the firm’s practice groups.
As I said, CRM—perhaps like KM—has a blindingly simple
appeal. So the devil is in the details. But how irritated
have you been to call your credit card company about a billing question,
dutifully punch in your 16-digit account number (and maybe your zip
code as well), to be delivered to a noxious numbered menu of irrelevant
choices, at last to get the ear of a human being, and begin at once
by starting all over with your account number? That system was
designed by a bank-centric, not a customer-centric, brain. Don’t
do as they do.
