Forgotten fields: overlooked data types that can jumpstart your CRM

(Feb 8 2010)

Categories:
Technologies: Cloud Computing, CRM, CRM Blog, ERP, ERP Blog, Green IT, on-demand, SaaS, web-based

Quotes

  1. “ Customer satisfaction reviews or surveys are easy to incorporate in a CRM but are often not implemented. ”
    By Jeff Lionz
  2. “ Rarely does marketing spend enough time capturing all the data points associated with their campaigns in the CRM, like original response date, number of responses and number of download requests, or capture useful profile data on the prospect or firm. ”
    By Jeff Lionz
  3. “ Almost never do companies have a mechanism to see when potential customers are looking at their website and then link that engagement back to their CRM system. ”

Authors


  1. Forgotten fields: overlooked data types that can jumpstart your CRM

    By Chris Bucholtz, editor in chief

    Anyone familiar with CRM technology knows that it can be a tremendously valuable tool for aggregating key information about customers. After all, modern CRM systems grew from contact management software, which organized sales contact data, and then expanded to encompass marketing, service and sales data to try to build a picture of the behavior of customers and potential customers.

    Toward that aim, vendors have set up their systems to capture the data that forms the foundation of understanding customers. While most systems come ready to capture the basics, this represents only the lowest common denominator for customer data.  Every organization is different, so the data collected and correlated within CRM ought to vary from company to company based on its unique circumstances.

    Sadly, in many cases this is never considered, and CRM is allowed to work on autopilot without consideration of data that could mean significant competitive advantage.

                                                                                   

    Sometimes this is the result of a misalignment in business processes. For example, “Customer satisfaction reviews or surveys are easy to incorporate in a CRM but are often not implemented,” said Jeff Lionz, president of California CRM consultancy Lionzforce.  Most often, this happens not because the CRM platform in use can’t accommodate the data but because no one has championed the idea of integrating the survey data. Without that champion, a good idea simply remains an idea and the effectiveness of the CRM effort will suffer.

     

    Other data is lost as the result of misaligned motivations among the users. One area where this rears its head is the “Lead Source” field, said David Taber, CEO of consultancy Saleslogistix and author of the book “Salesforce.com Secrets of Success.” “Often, there’s a reflexive action to input a new lead source in this field every time you contact that lead,” he said. That overwrites information on previous contacts, thus effectively starting the relationship from the ground floor every time contact is made. “Not only do you end up losing valuable data about the customer’s history, but we’ve seen sales people change the lead source on purpose. Suddenly, all the good leads came from sales and none of them came from marketing or from references.”

     

    Taber says this data should be collected in campaigns. “You want to know every ad, every Google ad word, every contact you’ve had so when that person comes up to you at a trade show, you have his full history.”

     

    Unfortunately, campaigns are also the victims of costly omissions. “Rarely does marketing spend enough time capturing all the data points associated with their campaigns in the CRM, like original response date, number of responses and number of download requests, or capture useful profile data on the prospect or firm,” says Lionz. “This data, when tracked not only by web managers but in the CRM, provides important insights on the genesis of the prospect, and measures his profile value (lead score) against the company's ideal customer/prospect profile.  When missed or ignored, marketers cannot establish a seamless chain or ROI value to their work or efforts, and sales – both management and frontline staff –  can't know for certain how prospects were created or what their original motivations were.”

     

    Another of Taber’s most-hated data omissions is the lead role. “When you convert a lead to a contact, that’s when to assign a role, but way too many organizations look at that field and say, ‘who cares?’” he says. “They should care! If you don’t know what that contact’s role is politically in the deal – a project leader, someone to overcome, a champion – you really can’t do a coherent pipeline analysis.”

     

    Astonishingly, Taber says, less than 20 percent of the CRM users he talks to record lead roles. “Apparently, it takes too long to spend a second and a half clicking a role from a pull-down menu,” he jokes.

     

    While data like lead roles is simply not entered, other aspects of customer behavior manage to escape the awareness of companies at times when they could directly affect deals. “Almost never do companies have a mechanism to see when potential customers are looking at their website and then link that engagement back to their CRM system,” he says. “At the very least, you can drop off a cookie while they’re browsing, or you could tune the website so they have a better and more personalized experience if they log in.” There are also products like Demandbase which track visitors to websites and send alerts to sales in real time. Unfortunately, says Taber, many companies still remain completely ignorant of who visits their sites and what information they look at.

     

    “What users don't know about a prospect, customer, account or support case is a huge reason firms lose key clients. Knowing what a client thinks about the firm in terms of some objective measurement criteria and making that data known and available is a missed opportunity and a reason why customer loyalty is much desired but not earned nearly enough.”

     




     

     

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