What must CRM do today and in the future?

CRM is a management approach – not a pure technology and not a pure system. This is the key message of the MUUH! Consulting Group in the tenth edition of its annual CRM study. It also shows that every third company is thinking about replacing the CRM system used so far.

Since the beginning of the study ten years ago, it has long since developed into a directional guide for successful customer relationship management and investigates the question: What must CRM do today and in the future? This year, more than 830 CRM decision-makers and users in German companies were surveyed.

CRM is more than just a technology
For more than half of those surveyed, CRM is today a customer-oriented corporate strategy, which is mainly associated with non-technological terms such as customer journey, customer loyalty and transparency. However, the participants are also convinced that the topic must be clearly anchored in management and pushed forward in order to ensure acceptance in the company and thus success.

Availability of data is often still missing
There is also agreement that data is the basis for information-based action and thus crucial for targeted customer engagement within marketing campaigns. It is therefore all the more astonishing that only one in two companies believe that the customer data they have is up-to-date and almost half believe that customer information is not being exchanged optimally between sales, marketing and service.

This is partly due to the fact that some customer information is simply not available, but also to the fact that employees still lack the understanding of how important data availability and quality are for sustainable business success. However, it is often the case that the data is available, but it is hidden in the silos of the different business units and a structured analysis is simply impossible. The fact that the subject of data is still difficult for many is also evidenced by the fact that one in two companies states that they are still working on the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), despite the fact that the new version has already entered into force over two years ago.

Presence and use of CRM are two pairs of shoes
In the meantime, 9 out of 10 companies have a CRM system in use, which is mainly used by sales, marketing and service departments. However, there are significant differences in the use of the systems. While almost 80% of sales employees use the CRM appropriately, marketing and service with just over 50% make only moderate use of the existing potential of the CRM system. This shows that CRM systems are often only introduced with a purely sales focus, without taking into account the possibilities of use for marketing and service. However, in order to achieve acceptance throughout the company, it is imperative to consider intensively before selecting and implementing a CRM system how a complete customer journey and thus all touchpoints relevant from the customer‘s point of view can be mapped in the CRM. And this is best done while taking into account the usage requirements of all areas involved in the internal process.

CRM-in-house developments perform poorly
The CRM market is still highly fragmented. Among the respondents, more than 70 different systems are used – solutions from SAP and Microsoft are at the forefront. Particularly in the financial services sector, self-development is widespread due to the complexity of the regulatory framework.

Nevertheless, these solutions perform very poorly in terms of user satisfaction. A Net Promoter Score (NPS) of –48 shows that the expectations of being able to better reflect one‘s own requirements with a CRM solution developed in-house compared to a standard solution were not met.

However, it is also clear that many companies are not satisfied with their current CRM system and would not recommend it to others. Every third company is even planning to replace the system in use. It is noteworthy that the NPS value varies considerably between the different participant groups. While the average NPS value for top decision-makers is +10, it is slightly to significantly negative for project managers with -6 to –22. This in turn proves the thesis that CRM systems are often introduced without the needs and requirements of the actual users. It is therefore all the more important to carry out an intensive requirements analysis with all parties involved before selecting and implementing a CRM system.

Conclusion: CRM projects are change projects and not pure technology projects
The clear conclusion of this year‘s study is that the overall package must be right. In addition to the pure functionality of the software, its flexibility and usability, this also includes the strategic anchoring of the project in the company itself. The project must be driven by top management – as a change project and not as a pure technology project. Nevertheless, all subsequent users must be involved in the decision-making process as early as possible in the evaluation phase in order to achieve the greatest possible acceptance within the company. This also contributes to the mapping of your own customer journey – i. e. the touchpoints and processes that your own customer goes through. There is still a lot to do here: only 7% of the companies surveyed have already fully mapped the customer journey in CRM. This is despite the fact that the customer journey is one of the most important tools for anchoring customer orientation in the company in a targeted and sustainable way.

We used the CRM study 2020 as a source for this summary | CRM-Studie 2020 | MUUUH! Consulting GmbH, itdesign GmbH, MaibornWolff GmbH, SIEVERS-GROUP.

The detailed study can be downloaded here.