Corrections or additions?
This article by Barbara Fox was prepared for the June 12, 2002 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Internet Wisdom After the Boom
“The customer relationship management
(CRM) technology being sold as a silver bullet is only 15 percent
of the solution, yet it is a $22 billion industry,” says David
Kramer of the Fieldstone Hill Group. “And it is a debacle.
Less than half of the implementations are performing successfully.”
Kramer joins Mark Meara of the web development firm Princeton
Internet Group (PInG) and Niki Fielding of Digital Brand Expressions
(DBE) for a one-day E-strategy workshop, “After the Gold Rush,”
on Wednesday, June 26, 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m at the New Jersey Hospital
Association conference center at 760 Alexander Road. Cost: $395 at
the door, including lunch and materials. Preregister for $345 by calling
Kramer at 856-642-1724.
Using role playing, case studies, and studies of organizational change,
the workshop will tell how to improve on-line customer loyalty, interactive
sales/marketing, and longer-term account profitability. Who should
attend: Salespeople, marketing people, service professionals, and
technology experts. “The workshop is based on the premise that
the Internet boom has just gotten started,” says Kramer. “The
frenzy is over, but the boom has just started.” Kramer will lead
the morning sessions on relationship management — how to enhance
customer loyalty, develop accounts for profitability, generate quality
leads, and improve sales force effectiveness and contact management.
Though a company’s website can be the most cost-effective channel
for building customer loyalty, only about 10 percent of companies
polled actually have a business strategy for enabling this type of
longer-term retention, says Kramer. His CRM suggestions:
Make policy changes to be more customer direct, from thetop down . “Companies in the first generation of E-commercethought they were getting ahead of the game by allowing customersto communicate by E-mail. But they weren’t responding to E-mails promptly.”Work as a team to make maximum use of your data analysissoftware . Such software as Blue Martini and PeopleSoft will analyzewebsite activity, and J.D. Edwards’ Siebel offers a marketing automationmodel. But if the key people don’t want to share the data — ordon’t know how to share it — they don’t use the data effectively.Only 25 percent of the time, Kramer says, are the sales, marketing,and business people working together. Data resides in silos, and mostof the time the transaction silo is in the sales silo, the observeddata, such as click through rates, stays in the marketing silo, andthe results of satisfaction surveys stays in the service silo.So the sales department might think that particular customer is profitable,but the service department says the customer is calling the help desksix times a month at a rate of $30 per service call. “Until theybring the data together, they don’t know what the true profitabilityis,” says Kramer.Meet to compare notes. . With or without expensive software,the cross-enterprise, cross-functional team should sit down regularlyto aggregate data.Identify your best customers by looking at historic clientbehavior to predict future behavior. Clients are rated on a matrixof five to one on how recently they purchased, how frequently theypurchase, and their total or average revenues. This analysis usedto be done by clustering clients in groups, but with the today’s technology,individual client activity can be charted. “Your best customersare in the top quadrant,” says Kramer, “and 20 percent ofyour customer base will make up 80 percent of the revenue. Look atthe activity and you may find that one of your best customers is purchasingless frequently. You are watching one of your best customers defectbefore your very eyes. There is no higher return on investment thanprotecting a customer from defecting.”Build a customer loyalty module onto an existing website.Kramer cites PiNG’s website for New Jersey Transit, which has a customerloyalty module called My NJTransit. “In this password protectedsection best customers can receive concierge level service — moreinformation, more access, more indepth contact info, message boards,and surveys.”Benchmark the best company/client relationships . Kramerthinks consultants should take what he calls “appreciative”action rather than directive action. “We find pockets of excellence,identify what works, and help the company seed and grow this throughoutthe organization. With an appreciative approach, rather than a directiveapproach, we elicit benchmarks in the organization.”— Barbara FoxTop Of PageDonate PleaseThanks to a challenge grant, the American Repertory Ballet (ARB) andits associated school, Princeton Ballet School, will have donationsmatched up to a total of $50,000. Two anonymous donors have agreedto match any donations that are made through June 30 up to that amount.”Events of last fall caused the cancellation of a tour, a majorfundraising event, as well as a number of New Jersey performances,”says David Gray, executive director of ARB. “The opportunityoffered by this challenge grant is incredible. Our fiscal year shouldend up looking much better than we had anticipated.”Tax-deductible donations may be made to American Repertory Ballet,80 Albany Street, New Brunswick 08901.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
