Don't Manage Me!

The nice young man across the table was trying to help my wife and I renew our mortgage.  He had access to all of the transactions we had done at the bank, whether online, through the call center or through the branch.  It was clear that he was using a well designed Customer Relationship Management (CRM) package.   He had everything at his fingertips.  The problem is that CRM is no substitute for an actual relationship.

CRM started life as a Rolodex, a listing of the names and addresses of a salesperson's contacts.  Good salespeople knew they needed more than "tombstone" information about their customers, so they started taking notes on their customers.  When computers systems to replace Rolodex cards were created, they were called Contact Management systems.  Later on, it became clear that the sales team could benefit from knowing all of the ways customers interact with the company and Contact Management software morphed into CRM.  The problem is, CRM was built to support existing relationships, not replace them.

The nice young man we were talking about our mortgage a few years ago to was not actually a banker.  He was actually a high school teacher by day, working at the bank in the evenings.  His advice to us was to lock in the mortgage because, after all, how could rates go any lower?  (If you're smiling right now, you know where I'm headed.)  Well, rates did go lower.

Now, as my wife and I are planning our financial future, one source of information we will no longer use is our bank.  I have no relationship with anyone at the bank that I can trust.  I have nobody that I can go to who knows me well enough to advise me.  Each bank looks pretty much the same to me right now.  I feel no loyalty to the one I'm using.  This means it would be pretty easy for another bank to take my business by offering me a better rate.

But hey, my bank still has a good CRM system.

We're All In This Together

The first accounting system I had to supervise was an IBM product called MAPICS. I was an inexperienced newbie and knew nothing, so I joined a user group. Every couple of months we would meet at someone's office and someone would bring donuts. We would talk about our experiences with the product and try to answer people's questions. I got some excellent advice about how to handle program patches from IBM as well as where to go for programming assistance. Joining the user group was the best $25 I ever spent.

If there is one piece of advice that I can offer to everyone, regardless of the size of your company, your industry or the type of software you use, it's to join a user group. There is no better source of unbiased, practical information than other users of the same software. If there is a feature you would like to see added, getting a group of users together to request the change is the best way to get a developer's attention. If you are looking for trained staff, another user may be able to point you in the right direction. If you want to change your consultant, what better way than to ask for references from other users?

Many user groups are organized by software implementation consulting firms. I have heard these groups dismissed as being no more than upselling by the consultant. Of course consulting firms are interested in selling more software and services, but the ones I know go to great lengths to put useful content into the sessions. They know that providing practical, useful information is the only way they will get users to come back the next time.

Traditionally, however, user groups are started, organized and run by users. Vendors are often invited to make presentations, but user meetings are not about sales. When my Microsoft rep suggested I start a Dynamics NAV (Navision) user group in my area, my first thought was about all the administration of running the group. Then he told me about Dynamic Communities. They take all of the work out of running a user group, so you can concentrate on the meeting content.

All Dynamic Communities does is manage user groups, whether for Dynamics AX (Axapta), GP (Great Plains), NAV (Navision) or CRM. They just need one local person to lead and they will set up a local chapter. They will even give you a list of their members in your area. If you work through your local Microsoft rep, you can get help finding other users. Microsoft will also provide speakers if you give them enough notice. There is a sliding membership fee depending on the size of your business.

The typical local chapter has 10 - 15 members at any given meeting, with larger chapters averaging 30 - 35 members. The typical meeting goes from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm, with a networking lunch. The morning session is usually a formal presentation, with break out sessions after lunch. I asked about the split between technical and accounting members and Bonnie, the Member Services Manager, noted that chapters started by IT Managers tended to have more technical members, where chapters started by accountants had more user members. You need both.

One of the problems with user groups is their small size. A huge advantage of a centralized organization is that it's possible to put on a conference. Dynamics Communities is hosting a 2 day conference (The link is to the NAV conference. The others have similar pages.) in Las Vegas for $499 per person, with optional additional training either before or after the main conference. When you add that to the user forums available at mibuso and Dynamics' webinars, we've come a long way from a box of donuts after work!

Customer Relationships - Wide AND Deep

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software makes it easy to view customers as statistics. "How many calls have you made?" "How many answers to our email blast did we get?" Similarly, sales management software encourages pipeline analysis, e.g. "How many suspects, prospects, customers do we have?" "What is our conversion percentage from suspects to customers?"

Don't get me wrong. I'm in favor of tracking the stats. The reports are a good indication about whether things are going well or not. But quantitative analysis only tells part of the story. While it will tell you how many relationships you have, you have to dig deeper to determine the quality of those relationships. CRM software will give you some hints. If you see either old or a large number of unresolved issues with a customer, that's a sure indication of a deteriorating relationship. Similarly, if you see a large number of referrals you know your relationship is healthy. The problem is the 80% in between.

The older I get, the more I believe there is no substitute for human to human interaction. Human relationships are just too complex to be automated. You have to visit a customer to see what's going on. You find out things that would never otherwise come to your attention. Visiting a customer gives you a chance to celebrate with them, such as when they have just landed a huge new deal or your contact gets a promotion or achieves a higher level of education. It also gives you a chance to say, "Did you know we have a way of dealing with that issue?" about a challenge they didn't even consider asking you about.

How do you do this? Either you visit them or invite them to visit you. As I've said before, I never charged customers for phone calls or emails, because I WANTED them to call. Maybe I was giving up a quarter hour of billable time here and there, but I more than made up for it by being able to bill for a whole day when I visited them. But getting them to visit you is a whole other matter.

At my former firm, we struggled with getting customers out for events. Accountants can be a tough crowd! They shy away from anything that might be sales related. They tend to stay in their offices. You have to give away a significant amount of practical content to even get their attention. Charging them to attend a customer event is problematic at best. Then, when you finally get them to come, you have to crack the whip with your own staff to be sure they actually talk to the customers instead of to each other.

At the end of the day, there is no better relationship than knowing your customer so well that they view you as a trusted business advisor rather than just a vendor who uses CRM.