Customer Experience Management’s Achilles’ Heel is making Change Last

Louis Columbus, Cincom

From my experience working in companies who have launched customer-facing strategies to working with clients to launch CRM initiatives as an analyst, the issues of making people change consistently surfaces as the most time-consuming and often the most problematic area of rolling out any new system. CEM strategies supported by state-of-the -art software are only as effective as the people using them.

Changing a strategy requires a change in attitude to make it successful; all the best software in the world will for example not turn an introverted accountant into a stellar salesman. Yet attitude can do that – and that’s where I think it’s important to re-visit the most expensive area of any CEM and CRM strategy – getting people to change. Here are some lessons learned:

Killing risk and fear with open communication. By far the biggest stumbling block is people seeing their jobs going away as a result of a new process or system. Tell the truth and get right to the heart of the matter here. If a new system is going to lead to lay-offs then own up to it – lying about it will just crater morale in the long-run. If it’s not true then manages can step forward in perfect confidence and tell their employees the system is there to make the entire company more efficient – make it easier to do their jobs so they don’t have as many headaches getting tasks done.

Involve those most affected early and often. Too often companies rush to complete process re-engineering to become more customer-centric or plan out elaborate new processes using CRM systems yet forget to get those most impacted by the system involved first. Dial these people in early and often so they can own in the solutions defined.

Managers must learn to use their computers, especially if this is a CEM or CRM system. There are those managers who don’t know how to use their PCs or laptops – and everyone on their companies know this. It’s far better, if you want change to stick – for the senior managers to change too and use the systems, changing their way of working. In one instance this was the difference in a system being seen as credible by the rest of the company.

Set realistic guidelines and timetables for change. I recall one company that turned to a new client/server CRM system and the CEO told the sales force by Friday everyone had better be on it or they would not get commissions. This was a small software company that did lots of selling via telemarketing and through a small network of dealers. The Director of Sales, by the afternoon of the announcement, had already signed up for salesforce.com and moved his sales manager onto the system as well. By Tuesday everyone was on salesforce.com. They went to the CEO and had a meeting, explaining the client/server system was a dinosaur and would be impossible to get to in the modestly-priced hotel rooms they stayed in when traveling (not reliable dial-up connections) and that they could go to a Starbucks and check sales status through T-Mobile. The CEO relented and salesforce.com is still in use. What happened? Unrealistic deadlines forced a revolution.

There are many other lessons learned from seeing change work and not work in companies trying to become more customer-centric. The bottom line is that any change management program must respect and give dignity to those most affected if the goals of the system implementation to support strategies ever hope to succeed.

Comments

[Lisa]

Totally agree that the less change we impose on users, the better CRM is adopted. And the minimum change is no change at all! So if we incorporate CRM strategies with natural user applications such as Outlook, CRM ROI will skyrocket. Check out www.invisiblecrm.com that claims to integrate one with the other.