VIEW 360-DEGREE IS YOUR STANDING IN THE WAY OF NEXT LEVEL CRM?

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1 IS YOUR 360-DEGREE VIEW STANDING IN THE WAY OF NEXT LEVEL CRM? WHY YOU NEED TO REGULARLY REVISIT YOUR 360-DEGREE VIEW TO IDENTIFY AND ELIMINATE BLIND SPOTS, PLUS HOW TO DO IT

2 CONTENTS Building Your Next Level CRM Program? Remember the Fundamentals Revisiting the 360-Degree View of Customers Does Your 360-Degree View Have Blind Spots? Operational Considerations Technological Considerations Keeping Your 360-Degree View Complete by Eliminating Blind Spots 3 Steps to Eliminate Your Blind Spots Always Keep Your CRM Program Moving Toward the Next Level 2

3 BUILDING YOUR NEXT LEVEL CRM PROGRAM? REMEMBER THE FUNDAMENTALS How mature is your CRM program? This question should always be top of mind as you regularly seek to take your program to the next level. This next level-approach stems from the idea that the more you expand your adoption and the reach of your CRM program, the more value you attain. For example, as you move from having CRM in one or two functions to having it spread throughout the entire business, you ll begin to benefit from numerous synergies (e.g. improved quality leads from marketing that pave the way for higher close rates for sales). But as much as the next level-approach is about expanding into new areas and evolving how your CRM program operates, it s also about ensuring you have the fundamentals in place. Without those fundamentals whether they re non-existent or simply outdated you won t have the foundation on which to build a best-in-class program that truly takes what s possible to the next level. As a result, it s critical that you continue to keep an eye toward evolving the foundation of your CRM program alongside any other advances. 3

4 REVISITING THE 360-DEGREE VIEW OF CUSTOMERS As we move deeper into the digital age, operating models are changing and new channels of engagement are emerging at a breakneck pace. And these evolutions make it extremely important to revisit the CRM program fundamental of the 360-degree view. Having a 360-degree view of customers epitomized CRM efforts of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The thinking back then still holds true today: The more complete picture of your customers you have, the better your interactions with them and their overall experience with your business will be. After all, no one wants a situation where the left hand doesn t know what the right hand is doing. 4

5 In fact, the 360-degree view is even more imperative in the digital age due to all of the different channels we now have at our disposal. Keeping track of customers across phone calls, in person interactions and perhaps a web visit or here or there was one thing back in 2004, but keeping track of customers across mobile, social, communities, phone calls, in person interactions and so on not to mention allowing for seamless switching from one channel to the next is quite another. Today s channel proliferation makes having a 360-degree view of customers as relevant as ever but has your CRM program kept up with all of these changes? 5

6 DOES YOUR 360-DEGREE VIEW HAVE BLIND SPOTS? Unless you ve revisited your 360-degree of customers on a regular basis, it s very likely that you have blind spots thanks to changes in business operations and/or channels of engagement. However, it s critical that you eliminate these blind spots in order to provide the best possible experience for your customers and continue to move your CRM program toward the next level of maturity. The best way to evaluate your blind spots (and evolve all other foundational aspects of your CRM program for that matter) is through a dedicated Center of Excellence (CoE) comprised of representatives from both IT and the business that oversees and makes decisions about everything from CRM strategy and governance to application selection and development to capability delivery and improvements. As your CoE begins to evaluate potential blind spots, there are a handful of places where the group should start, as these are the most common areas where blind spots develop. We can break these instances into operational and technological considerations. 6

7 OPERATIONAL CONSIDERATIONS ACQUISITIONS: Has your company experienced an acquisition since the last time you revisited your 360-degree view? If so, you likely have a blind spot due to the presence of new products or even disconnects in CRM-related systems and processes. CRM EXPANSIONS: Every time you expand your CRM program by adding a new application to your CRM technology stack, you open the door for a potential new blind spot. For example, if you add CPQ or field service to your CRM stack, you also need to add relevant data (e.g. price history or field service requests) to your 360-degree view. 7

8 TECHNOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS DATA FROM NEW CHANNELS: From social media and customer communities to the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), the number of new channels that have emerged over the past decade is nothing short of astounding. Whether a channel is older like social media and communities or brand new like IoT and AI, if you re using it to engage with customers, the data from it needs to be included in your 360-degree view. NEW TYPES OF DATA: In addition to collecting data in existing categories from new channels, you also need to consider entirely new categories of data that emerging digital channels have created. For instance, social media and communities have created a new category of user generated content (UGC), which is extremely important to capture, as your customers might share different data when speaking peer-to-peer than they do when speaking directly to your company. 8

9 KEEPING YOUR 360-DEGREE VIEW COMPLETE BY ELIMINATING BLIND SPOTS Once your CoE identifies any blind spots in your 360-degree view, you need to take action to eliminate them right away. That s because eliminating your blind spots keeps your foundation strong as you implement more mature efforts, for example by providing the information you need to deliver a seamless, omnichannel customer experience or by allowing you to sell into an account more intelligently. Consider the case of a customer who speaks with a service agent on the phone after engaging in a live chat or posting on social media about an issue isn t that information critical for the agent to know? Or what if your sales team is trying to expand an account that has recently had a series of issues requiring field service? Those issues might impact satisfaction, which means now is not the best time for your sales team to make a push. Or perhaps you have a new IoT solution that can fix those issues before they arise, meaning now is a good time for your team to push an upsell offer. These are just a few examples of many that illustrate how having a complete 360-degree view creates an enriched customer profile and allows for more intelligent action. 9

10 3 STEPS TO ELIMINATE YOUR BLIND SPOTS So how exactly do you eliminate any blind spots once you uncover them? It takes a three step approach: 1. Ensure data collection: First, you must ensure that you re actually collecting the data. This might seem like an obvious step, but with new channels and/ or new types of data, it s not always as obvious as it sounds. Just think about the early days of social media when activities went unmonitored. Fortunately, there are numerous applications available today to help collect data of all types from all channels. 2. Integrate the data into your CRM: Second, just collecting the right data isn t enough on its own. You also need to integrate it into your CRM program. If the data comes from an application that sits on the CRM stack, it s likely already available within your system. Otherwise, you will need to develop an integration to make the data available. This integration becomes particularly important in the case where a blind spot develops due to an acquisition, as you then need to make sure everything integrates into the same system and everyone follows the same processes. 3. Adjust reporting and consumption: Finally, you need to filter the data so that it presents users with the relevant information (no more and no less) in the appropriate place. Simply having all of your data available within your CRM system won t do users any good if they have to go searching through various pages just to find it. You need to make this data easy to access and understand by putting the right pieces in the right places via reports and dashboards. 10

11 ALWAYS KEEP YOUR CRM PROGRAM MOVING TOWARD THE NEXT LEVEL In order to expand the value your CRM program provides, you need to expand your program itself its footprint within your business and the maturity of its operations. And achieving those expansions requires a mix of entering new territory and securing your fundamentals to make sure you have a strong, up to date foundation. As the digital revolution, and with it evolving operations, channels and data, continues to take hold, one of the most important fundamentals to revisit is your 360-degree view of customers. Establishing this view is not a one-anddone activity. Rather, it s something that your CoE needs to consider on a regular basis in order to properly identify and eliminate any blind spots. Taking action accordingly will ensure you always have the most complete view of customers possible, which will pave the way for informationrich interactions and a truly next level CRM program. 11

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