Using CRM Software to Put Customers at the Center of Business

My recent post about making customers the "fourth pillar" of CRM systems generated some interesting mail in my inbox. A commenter voiced their opinion that effective CRM systems put the customer at the center of a hub. Does viewing the customer as a spoke in the wheel of a process that is already supposed to revolve around them make the customer redundant?

Graham Hill explores that idea this week in an essay for CustomerThink. Hill asserts that too much focus on meeting a customer's needs can distract from an organization's true mission: to assist customers in reaching their intended outcomes. Instead of using CRM systems to track customer requests and company responses, Hill challenges business leaders to organize efforts around the net result.

Customers hire products to help them get jobs done more effectively. Think of Ted Levitt’s famous example of the job of drilling a hole in a wall. As Clayton Christensen writes, the customer doesn’t actually want a drill at all, he wants a hole in a wall.

Using Hill's methodology, and combining it with insight from the Lance Bettencourt article he references, prospective CRM software buyers can get a better sense of their own desired outcome. When selecting CRM systems, marketers often ask themselves one of three questions:

• How will this CRM software improve my company's ability to reach its own strategic outcomes?
• How will this CRM software allow us to meet our customers' needs more effectively, and more often?
• How will this CRM software help us become a customer's primary resource to reach their intended outcomes?

It's no surprise, then, that companies asking themselves the third question enjoy the biggest successes when rolling out new CRM systems.