CRM needs a Customer Relationship Manager

The Jet Airways pilots "strike" is in its third day. I am currently at the airport for my flight back home. And I am happy I did not opt for Jet Airways flight this trip. I am in all support with Mr. Goyal. The airlines exists for taking people from one place to another, always closer to their destination. By calling for a mass sick leave, the pilots have violated the basic reason for an airlines existence. I hope the government stays out this time and let Mr. Goyal run his business. It it means shutting down the airlines, so be it. This action of the pilots have hurt Jet badly and its going to take a looong time for it to get back on the market share. (And the Jet Airways counters is diplaying a panel that reads "Jet takes you places after you have flown with us".. pooh atleast they should have covered the panel till people could actually fly with them). By the way, all flights are on time ... now what are the chances of that happening on an ordinary day.

For those who have not noticed, I have a poll running on your right side of the screen. For those who have notices, I have received queries on what the query mean.

A lot of companies talk of customer relationship management and customer centricity. However, the organization structure and business process remains untouched. At most a lovely (costly) CRM application is purchased and implemented. The implementation team is asked to map the CRM application to the business process. The implementation is done, some customizations are deployed, t-shirts get distributed, go live parties are celebrated and users are forced to use the new application.

Lets break down CRM... The first word says there has to be a customer. Well, if the company still runs then obviously it has customers. So that is addressed. It was a easy one.

The next word is Relationship. Here is where a clear cut definition of what is the relationship with a customer does not exist. There are often a lot of marketing statements and marketing vision/mission statements. Somethings on lines of providing comfort to users, providing transport to users, elimination worries of customers and so on. But what exactly is the relationship. Is the customer just an acquaintance, a person known, a friend, a good friend, a best friend, a fiance, a spouse (or an ex). Most companies don't know what relationship they want to build with their customers. They have excellent order and billing systems. Customer records get created, a customer id is allocated, sales order generated and payment booked against it. Beyond this there is no definition of how a relationship with the customer should be envisioned.

Discussion on the third and last word - Management - does not make sense. Most, infact all companies, I have interacted at has failed at the second step. They do not know what relationship they enjoy with their customer. For most a customer is a consumer of their products and a consumer of their CRM processes. So they focus mainly on improving the consumption of products and the consumption of their CRM processes.

Banks have started defining GOLD or PLATINUM segments. The high net value individuals. They have clear cut definiton of the relationship with this segment. There was lovely advertisement depicting a financial advisor on her morning jog and constantly thinking of what her clients need would be. One advisor with a american bank in India once stated to me that he is expected to be part of the customer's life in any way possible... even if it means turning up at his customer's place at 6 in the morning to walk his dog. But beyond this high value segment, there has been no attempt to define relationship with the other customers.

The reason is very simple. This is because there is no "Customer Relationship" manager. A profile whose job will be to define the relationship with each segment of customer. In the case mentioned above, the bank allocates the high value customer to a dedicated group and bars all the other departments to contact this set of customer. This dedicated group is responsible for the ownership of the customer relationship. However, in these cases also, the relationship is crudely defined as "turning up ... to walk the dog" attitude to customer service. The other customers are not owned by anyone in particular. Whenever a customer buys a product, the respective product group thinks they own the customer. Thus over time there are multiple group who each think they individually own the customer and devise their own strategy to deal with the customer. A classic case, I saw at a telco, where the landline department debarred the outgoing of a customer whereas the sales person from the mobile department was in the waiting area of the same customer with a "preferred" deal for the mobile service.

Companies on the route to CRM should first appoint a Customer Relationship Manager. This profile will be responsible for defining how a customer enters the companies records, what processes touch the customer, how the relationship should be built and also how and when should a customer be eased out. All other groups - service or product - will align themselves to the definition established by the Customer Relationship Manager. A lot of culture change is needed for this attitude to set in. Especially in cases where a product sale dominates the revenue of a company as in such cases this product group tends to muscle its way to access the customer and keep others away.

So.. go ahead and set up a "Customer Relationship Manager" profile.

Now the poll question should be clear, so what is your answer?