At this weeks Forrester Consumer Forum I attended the Customer Intelligence Leadership board and had an opportunity to hear Joe Stanhope & Suresh Vittal present a case for “Intelligence-Powered CRM.”  The central thesis is that applying Customer Intelligence (CI) to Customer Relations Management (CRM) increases the likelihood of successful implementation.
Forrester defines CRM as a program created to build brand value, identify the impact of key segments, and drive incremental volume.
The analysts identified five stumbling blocks affecting CRM success:
- Measuring skills
- Data disparity
- Organizational silos
- Splinternet
- Technology gaps
As a result of these obstacles, Marketers find themselves with multiple views of the customer and this hinders Marketings efforts. Joe outlined a framework for Intelligence-Powered CRM.
Four Cs of Intelligent CRM:
- Customer data – track customer interactions (online & offline) and build system to garner insights
- Culture – build a culture centered on CI
- Comprehensive Technology – partner with data management solution providers and internal IT
- Centralized processes – define goals & objectives and link efforts to business objectives
Forrester believes companies can use CI to transform raw data into powerful insights. In addition to a full report on the Intelligence-Powered CRM, Forrester also offers a short diagnostic that can help companies measure their own CRM program against the Four Cs criteria.
1 comments
Interesting to see how some of the data quality/customer intelligence leaders like Pitney Bowes Business Insight are building capabilies in the CRM space (i.e. with the acquisition of Portrait Software). This idea of intelligence-powered CRM seems very powerful. Thank you for the excellent summary, Reff.