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Relationship Management: Focus on Outcomes in Your CRM Solution

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I once received some valuable advice in the form of a simple question that changed the way I approached many things — “Can you control it?  If you can’t, why worry about it?”

 

CRM is all about relationships, but the idea of relationship management can often be mistaken with control.  Similar to a personal relationship, not all interactions and activities can be planned out rigidly, but they also can’t be random and without context.

 

Take a simple example such as two people going on a blind date.  If one person arrives with a list of written questions, a minute-by-minute schedule, and an activity checklist, it could be pretty awkward ─ and probably a bad date.  But in CRM, too often strategies are built on this same premise – that relationship management is done through borderline authoritarian control, and results in positive business benefits.

 

I’d therefore like to challenge two tenets of CRM: first, that a relationship can be managed; and second, that relationship management can be done by tracking activities or interactions.

 

Interaction-Based Relationship Management

Outcome-Based Relationship Management Model

Traditionally, customer relationship management has been done through the management of interactions.  But why isn’t this interaction, or task, management on its own enough?

 

Simply put, interactions on their own do not necessarily align to an objective or an outcome.  An interaction may be measurable, but not always aligned to the desired outcome. For example, you can measure whether or not an email was sent to a prospect, and even if he or she read this email.

 

However, if that content is unrelated to their interests, the value is limited and could potentially create a negative effect.  Plus it’s unlikely that this aligns to your sales objectives.

 

Rather than focusing on individual interactions, let’s focus on managing the outcome that needs to be achieved and develop a method for leveraging the right interactions at the right time to meet this outcome.

 

Outcome-Based Relationship Management

The alternative to interaction-based customer relationship management is outcome-based relationship management – identifying the outcomes the business wants to drive with the customer and then tailoring interactions, and by extension, the experiences to achieve that outcome.  And just as importantly, to continue to observe and learn from our interactions and experiences to ensure the desired outcomes are reached and our relationships made even more valuable.

 

By taking this outcome-based approach, instead of trying to just manage tasks or factors beyond our control, we are managing a complete interaction, with a specific goal of creating an experience that will lead to the outcome that we (the business and the customer) want.

 

Now this model works perfectly for a service oriented business, but what about a “product” business?  The same principle applies.  The product is designed to meet a specific need (the experience) by performing a desired function (the interaction).  The difference is that the relationship with the customer isn’t influenced as much by an experience they will have through human interaction, but rather through the use of the product for its intended (and sometimes unintended) purposes.

 

Critical Factors That Need to be Addressed

At the core is a collective set of tasks necessary to ensure that the interaction creates the correct experience that will result in a relationship which ultimately achieves the results that we want. So does this still mean we’re talking about task management?  Yes and no.  Task management isn’t just a list of things that need to be done.  A number of other factors need to be considered.  This is where a solution based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM can really provide significant value by addressing the following areas:

  • Who is performing the tasks?
  • Who is accountable and/or responsible for the tasks, interactions and experience?
  • Who is delegating tasks to whom?
  • What is happening across all interactions and associated tasks?
  • How successful has an interaction been to achieve the desired result?
  • What is the current status of the interaction?
  • Are the interactions creating the desired outcomes?

 

The above areas are pivotal, and management needs to invest time and thought into designing the larger outcome goals. Thankfully, that upfront work can lead to a mutually reinforcing lifecycle. Better interactions lead to better experiences which lead to stronger relationships that in turn produce valuable insights that allow a business to create even better interactions.

 

In my next post, I’ll take a more detailed look at how the outcome-based relationship management lifecycle is connected, as well as start differentiating between controlled and uncontrolled interactions.

 

NOTE: A modified version of this article was also published on MSDynamicsWorld at http://msdynamicsworld.com/story/cxm-through-xrm-focusing-outcomes-when-modeling-relationship-management-your-crm-solution/


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