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
Kramer of the Fieldstone Hill Group. "And it is a debacle.
Less than half of the implementations are performing successfully."
Kramer joins
Internet Group (PInG) and
(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:
top down . "Companies in the first generation of E-commerce
thought they were getting ahead of the game by allowing customers
to communicate by E-mail. But they weren’t responding to E-mails promptly."
software . Such software as Blue Martini and PeopleSoft will analyze
website activity, and J.D. Edwards’ Siebel offers a marketing automation
model. But if the key people don’t want to share the data — or
don’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 most
of the time the transaction silo is in the sales silo, the observed
data, such as click through rates, stays in the marketing silo, and
the 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 desk
six times a month at a rate of $30 per service call. "Until they
bring the data together, they don’t know what the true profitability
is," says Kramer.
the cross-enterprise, cross-functional team should sit down regularly
to aggregate data.
behavior to predict future behavior. Clients are rated on a matrix
of five to one on how recently they purchased, how frequently they
purchase, and their total or average revenues. This analysis used
to be done by clustering clients in groups, but with the today’s technology,
individual client activity can be charted. "Your best customers
are in the top quadrant," says Kramer, "and 20 percent of
your customer base will make up 80 percent of the revenue. Look at
the activity and you may find that one of your best customers is purchasing
less frequently. You are watching one of your best customers defect
before your very eyes. There is no higher return on investment than
protecting a customer from defecting."
Kramer cites PiNG’s website for New Jersey Transit, which has a customer
loyalty module called My NJTransit. "In this password protected
section best customers can receive concierge level service — more
information, more access, more indepth contact info, message boards,
and surveys."
thinks 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 throughout
the organization. With an appreciative approach, rather than a directive
approach, we elicit benchmarks in the organization."
— Barbara Fox
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Donate Please
Thanks to a challenge grant, the American Repertory Ballet (ARB) and
its associated school, Princeton Ballet School, will have donations
matched up to a total of $50,000. Two anonymous donors have agreed
to match any donations that are made through June 30 up to that amount.
"Events of last fall caused the cancellation of a tour, a major
fundraising event, as well as a number of New Jersey performances,"
says
offered by this challenge grant is incredible. Our fiscal year should
end up looking much better than we had anticipated."
Tax-deductible donations may be made to American Repertory Ballet,
80 Albany Street, New Brunswick 08901.
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