CRM - August 2008 - (Page 36)

all ties back to listening to the customer,” Bois says, citing as an example communities run by companies (such as Dell) that involve consumers in the generation and development of ideas. He warns, though, that no company can simply bank on a single instance of having made changes based on customer feedback. There needs to be a continual conversation. 2. MORE LISTENING, LESS LIP No company will ever say it’s not customer-focused. But how do you tell if an organization really has the customer’s interests at heart? Bois points out that everyone talks about being committed to the customer experience, but only those who actually respond to com- Promoter Score, which correlates more accurately to business processes. (See Influential Leaders, September 2007, for more on the NPS and its creator, Frederick Reichheld.) According to Bois, sometimes all it takes is a sympathetic ear to increase customer satisfaction. In one case, he recalls, a disgruntled customer called a software company’s support line, complaining that a certain product was not performing the way he expected it to. A representative from the company’s product-development department returned the customer’s call, first listening to the man’s issues and grievances with the product. The software developer explained that the feature referred to by the customer was not intended for that spe- “When you have [sales and marketing] working together seamlessly, you have better feedback.” plaints and feedback truly are. Customer satisfaction surveys, he says, are an example of lip service and inaction. “Companies will administer customer satisfaction surveys on some ‘per’ basis— twice a year or once a year. They do this to satisfy their own consciences to reassure themselves that they’re listening to customers,” he says. “But very few companies actually do anything with results when they get results.” Many surveys, he says, are amorphous—simply measuring on a 10-point scale, making it difficult for companies to know what to fix. Once companies receive feedback, he says, “they only [act] when there’s [an] indication that there’s a problem. And the first thing they do is rationalize. That’s the first thing that shows they aren’t really customer-focused.” He recommends that companies turn to the Net cific use. He continued to explain that the company would soon be releasing a new product to better serve that specific need. The customer left the call with a changed attitude and restored faith. 3. ALIGN SALES AND MARKETING “The biggest mistake a company can make is not having enough open communication and not working together as a team,” says David Politis, senior vice president of sales at Vocalocity, an Atlanta-based provider of Voice over Internet Protocol equipment. Vocalocity uses Salesforce.com for the beginning of its sales process, but when inadequate lead generation forced a re-evaluation of its internal sales process, the company turned to Web marketing firm Marketo, which synchronizes with lead information embedded in Salesforce.com. “As soon as [leads] drop off the first three to four days, Marketo takes over,” Politis explains. “It’s a seamless process. Some of the leads we get aren’t buying right now. Instead of leaving [those as-yet-unconverted leads] in the sales pipeline and clogging it up, we let Marketo take over and nurture the lead until it becomes a hot lead again.” Phil Fernandez, chief executive officer of Marketo, says that he believes that sales and marketing departments must be on the same page for a company to be truly successful. “If you ask any CEO how they think of finances, they say sales puts numbers on the board,” he says. “We think that’s all broken—more broken than ever in a world in which marketing holds the keys to the kingdom.” Fernandez recommends having marketing representatives involved in sales meetings and making prospecting truly collaborative. The marketing team likely knows where the leads come from and can offer better insight. “You talk to so many [chief marketing officers] and they say, ‘I don’t get any respect. People don’t give us any credit,’” Fernandez says. “They’re concerned that their hard work isn’t recognized. On the sales side, they say, ‘We’d give leads to marketing, but they aren’t any good.’ There’s friction in the system.” “The big challenge…is that you have a lot of pushing back and forth between [the two departments],” Politis says. “When you have them working together seamlessly, you have better feedback. If marketing respects that, they can improve in the quality of feedback. You’ll be saving money and making better use of the budget.” 4. DEVELOP INTERNAL VISIBILITY The use of analytics is not new. In fact, companies have been involving analytics to boost and better understand sales for years. However, according to Karen Steele, vice president of marketing for Xactly, a provider of on-demand performance management solutions, analytics is only as good as the data you’re 36 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | AUGUST 2008 www.destinationCRM.com http://Salesforce.com http://Salesforce.com http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - August 2008

CRM - August 2008 Contents Front Office Feedback Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Maximum Security A Code Win Doesn’t Blow Forming the Platform CRM on Twitter CRM Class Is in Session Making CRM Mandatory for University Administration Required Reading Cover Story: Calling it Quits Wouldja Look at That? 8 Enterprise Strategies That Stick CRM Searches for Search All Lines Are Not Busy UC: As Easy as A-B-C Even Contact Centers Have Room for Improvement Money Lying Around? Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - August 2008

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