Bu yazı dizimin 3. ve son bölümü daha önce bahsettiğim problemlerin çözümüne yönelik olacak. Aşağıda maddeler halinde sıraladığım çözümler, ancak kurumiçi çalışanların; her müşterilerinin özel, birbirlerinden farklı ihtiyaçlara sahip olduğunu, yani CRM yapılmadan onların isteklerine tam olarak cevap verilemeyeceğini kabul etmiş ve inanmış olmaları şartıyla uygulanabilirler, aslolan budur. Eğer kurum buna hazır ise bu durumda aşağıdaki çözüm önerilerimi rahatlıkla uygulayabilirsiniz:

1) İş (ticari) stratejinizi CRM stratejinize göre gözden geçirerek yenilemelisiniz
2) CRM’e uzun soluklu ve sürekli gelişerek değişen bir süreç olarak bakmalısınız
3) Müşterilerinizle sık sık ve düzenli olarak  iletişim kurmalı ve bilgilerini tazelemelisiniz
4) Belli aralıklarla performans değerlendirmesi yaparak hedefleri yenilemelisiniz

Dört madde ile özetlediğim sorunları yine dört madde ile cevaplayarak karşılamaya çalıştım. Aşağıda, tezimden orjinal alıntıyı sizinle paylaşarak biraz daha açıklamış olacağımı düşünüyorum. Ayrıca en sona eklediğim tablo ile de sorun ve çözümler arasındaki ilişkiyi de grafik olarak anlatmaya çalıştım.

The Suggestions to Solve the CRM Problems

I) Change business strategy depending on your CRM strategy
Customer should be placed tin he center of business. The model of business and also CRM software should be rearranged according to this instead of using ‘ready-made’ CRM software. It is necessary to differentiate from others, and provide custom service to customers. Your method of relation with customers should be unique. That is, ‘tailor-made’ CRM software will be more useful than ‘ready-made’ CRM software with this point of view.

As you understand from the name, ready-made CRM applications run with implementing ready module after determining the customer needs. It is a must to follow standard tool applications. Naturally alternatives are limited. However sectors, sub-sectors and also organizations have their own work and customer relationship approach. Therefore expectations should have definitely unlimited possibilities. In these circumstances, it is very hard to satisfy the organization in this limited condition. If you assume to succeed in satisfaction, there is also risk of facing with uncomfortable situation likewise not fitting shirt we try to wear. Eventually application could fail. At this point, Tailor-made CRM software is going to be the accurate solution.

On the other hand, ready-made CRM software, at first sight, seems more effective regarding the cost of implementation. However with developed server application technologies, cost concern is no more a critic aspect. Let me explain this issue with some details.

From technological point of view (IT), CRM consists of 2 basic software elements which are CRM application and SQL server application. These two aspects strongly integrate to each other. SQL server applications have been improved and now have advanced aptitudes for new trends. For instance; Microsoft SQL Server 2005 software can store the frequently used SQL scripts inside. After constructing scripts one time, you can use it many times in CRM software. If updating of this script needed, there will be no need to change in CRM software scripts repeatedly. By using this option you can truly save time and decrease the risk of making mistake. Such stored procedures, triggers, view and functions in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 software you will have continuous flexibility while developing the application. So, as it can be seen with this technological progress, developing “custom made” CRM software tools now has become equally economical in comparison with the “ready made” CRM software tools. Thus at present crucial point has shifted to the implementation factor.

II) Look at CRM as a long-distance and evolutionary process
According to CRM, rearranged business strategy determines how to develop your organization in a sequent way. It is not easy to implement directly. It needs some time to construct process and relate it with the employees. Since CRM will be applied with the people of the organization, developing process should be shared by all employees in your organization and the necessary feedbacks should be gathered from them. This will reduce the possible resistance against a change in the corporation.. To understand the exact situation, you should realize that implementing CRM software has a vital effect for the organizations.

There are two main aspects that must be considered while selecting CRM software. One of them is that it should be user friendly and the other one is appropriateness of the software. These items definitely influence the adaptation of employees’ or the software users directly.

Naturally all organizations have different structure and employees in their organizations. The computer using skills may be at various levels. CRM software must have user friendly interface in order to adopt quickly and easily. Additionally functions and tools that are default in the software should be as easy as possible or should not be complicated more than the needs of organization. If not, all of the implementation and training activities will take longer. Moreover this may cause increasing user resistance. Employees will get confused with the new work processes already; it will be useless to bother them with the use of complex CRM software tools. In other words it will directly affect the resistance of employees to integrate CRM to system of organization.

The implementation could be divided into phases. With constructing the basic CRM software modules, “start to run” should be the first stage. After this phase digested, you could gradually upgrade and develop the software by getting the feedbacks from users. At this point you can easily realize the key point that is flexibility and interchangeability properties of CRM software. Organizations create active processes that develop automatically. Some of the needs will not be estimated at first. With creating active processes, expectations will increase compared with previous condition. This means that organization claims to be the owner of CRM applications.

III) Contact with customer continuously
Customer contact information is the basis of CRM processes. If you don’t have right contact info, other data turns into passive status. In addition, even you have right contact, it will rapidly transform to old one. Therefore, you should continuously renew contact information and also other customer data. CRM software can help to obtain new customer input. For example, alerts that are given a particular time period can remind you the old data to be replaced with new one.

By assisting CRM software, furthermore, if you see the customer as both a company and a person, you should separately acquire contact information of them. When the person leaves from the company, you can easily alter it with a new company or turn into unemployed person.

IV) Measure and manage performance and upgrade processes
In order to improve a process that will have positive effect for the organization, it is a must that you record every parameter at the process. If a process is not standard, you can not improve it.  Likewise, CRM applications are not exception to this concept. Defined metrics and objectives are mandatory to follow the improvement of CRM processes and to achieve customer satisfaction. Additionally having reduced cost is another result of them. You might measure performance in every period of CRM processes by assisting CRM software. Then you can develop them through improving expectations and objectives. This is a ‘plan-do-act-check’ cycle that must continue over and over to keep improving trend.

Problems and Solutions Table

Indicators: XX is more interested in the relation among problems and solutions than X

Yukarıdaki tablodan da göreceğiniz gibi sorun ve çözümler birbirleriyle farklı düzeylerde karmaşık bir ilişkiye sahiptir. Bir çözüm birden fazla sorunu etkileyebildiği gibi tersi de mümkündür. Örneğin çözüm I (solution I) tüm sorunlara etki ederken problem A sadece Çözüm I (solution I) den etkileniyor. Bunun gibi birçok çıkarımda bulunabilirsiniz. Umarım CRM çalışmalarınızda faydası olur ve bu yazı amacına ulaşmış olur.

Yeni yazı dizilerinde görüşmek üzere…

Yazar Hakkında:  Crema'nın kurucu ortaklarından biriyim.