Customer-Centric Process vs. CRM: Has the Battle Begun?

Posted by Dick Lee on July 14, 2009

14 comments | 3507 reads

Rare it is to see two completely separate professional groups with little to no connection between them fight over the same market. But that’s exactly what’s starting to happen. CRM/CEM has long claimed the customer-centric business space, with only weak challenge coming from the marketing/advertising folks. But now something more formidable is trying to move in.

Over the past several years, a forward thinking element of the process industry has “got religion” about the need for customers to drive process design. These folks, rapidly growing in number and influence within process, are moving past “inside-out,” manufacturing-based process approaches and adopting new “outside-in” methods that start with, guess who? The customer, of course. They’ve made thoroughly understanding customer perspectives their starting point for designing process–and then progressively work their way in through the front office to customer-related aspects of the back office. They even get involved in automation technology.

Sorta feels like CRM, doesn’t it?

In fact, from the perspective of someone having one foot firmly planted in each camp, the gap is winnowing down to very little separation. What makes this so unusual is having two professional groups with dissimilar training and backgrounds not only working much alike, but even coveting the same clients.

Only time will tell, but this could get really, really interesting.

(BTW, I’ve been told from the process side that HYM’s Visual Workflow, launched in 1996, was the first, formal, outside-in process method. Also, I manage the "Outside-In Process" subgroup on Linkedin. If you'd like to visit or join the link is: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2057992)

Dick Lee

Consultant, author and educator Dick Lee, founded High-Yield Methods in 1994. HYM helps clients build customer-centric organizations with process design, organizational design and enabling technology. Please visit Dick's Linkedin group Building the Customer-Centric Organization. For more information visit www.h-ym.com.

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Graham Hill

July 14, 2009

Processes Enable CRM/CEM

Dick

A challenging viewpoint.

Most business people would see process an enabler of CRM/CEM, not a competitor to it. All of the business managers I work with in blue-chip mobile telcos, banks, automotive companies, etc, see processes as just one of a number of factors that together build their CRM capabilities. It is exercising those capabilities that enables them to create value for their customers and shareholders. None of them see processes (or BPR/BPM/BPMS) as an alternative to CRM/CEM.

PS. It is interesting that at a recent IIR Telecoms BPM conference in Amsterdam that I co-chaired, the household-name mobile telcos are all using lean and six sigma approaches driven by a deep understanding of what customers value to improve their competitive advantage.

Graham Hill
Customer-centric Innovator
Follow me on Twitter

Interested in Customer Driven Innovation? Join the Customer Driven Innovation groups on LinkedIn or Facebook to learn more.

Bob Thompson

July 15, 2009

What battle?

I agree with Graham. I don't understand where the conflict or competition is here.

Maybe it's true that the process types are now becoming more customer-centric (outside-in perspective) and if so that's great. But it's always been the case that customer-centric management (CRM/CEM) has included process.

Eventually all roads lead to the customer.

Bob Thompson, CustomerThink Corp.
Blog: Unconventional Wisdom

Mike Boysen

July 15, 2009

I agree that process has

I agree that process has always been a part of CRM, I just don't know that we haven't been working with broken processes. Actually, I do know that I have :) We've tended to rely on "our" customers to tell us what processes to support. If you think in terms of concentric rings, we've missed the outer ring, our customer's customer.

I hope to see more partnerships between CRM technologists and the outside-in process groups in the near future. I don't believe any single group can do both well; at least not the smaller firms. It will be interesting to see if I'm correct.

If we can just fend off the "social" media crowd on twitter who are claiming twitter and Facebook are the new CRM, we can start working on those partnerships.

Mike Boysen
Effective CRM Consulting

Dick Lee

July 15, 2009

Dick Lee: Graham & Bob, I

Dick Lee: Graham & Bob, I may not have articulated the issue well enough, so let me try from a different direction.

Process has (almost) always been an integral part of CRM. However, only a small minority of people developing process for CRM have formal process training (obviously, you're among those Graham). Hence there's been very little cross-pollination or even interaction between the CRM professional community & the process professional community. As an example, I never once saw anyone formally trained in process present at a DCI CRM conference or other CRM trade meeting. Graham, I know you have in Europe, but I believe that's an anomoly more than a pattern. Nor have I ever seen a CRM person (other than myself) present at a process trade meeting.

Conversely, the burgeoning "outside-in" and customer-centric contingent of the process industry has not tapped into CRM resources to any noticable degree. I'm an anomoly in this regard, because I have one foot in CRM and the other in "pure" process (HYM term for not CRM-related), although Andy Rudin is also getting involved in the process space.

Take Steve Towers, a very high profile thought leader in process, founder of the non-profit BP Group that issues more process certifications worldwide than any other entity, and the "father" of the customer-centric, outside-in movement. Steve wrote a book in '06 named, "Customer Expectation Management: Success without exception," by which he means something considerably broader than what CEM means when used on CustomerThink. Steve uses the acronym CEM, either unaware or not caring that the CRM industry has prior claim on it for customer experience management. He may have Googled the term, but even today the only thing CRM-related that pops up even now is a RightNow ad.

Steve and almost all others in this movement have deep process roots, but only minimal knowledge of the CRM industry and virtually none of CRM people. But they are starting to court the same clients CRM professionals court. So it's not "process against process." It's one trade competing against another for the same space.

I've been around for a long time, and the only time I can recall seeing this before was the stagehands union and the IBEW (electrical workers) competing over who got to set up lighting for touring bands.

Esteban Kolsky

July 15, 2009

CRM and Customer-centric as opposites?

Dick,

I am sorry, but you are way off in this assertion.

I have been doing, researching, and consulting in CRM for over 12 years (plus 10+ more in Customer Service before we tried to change names) and I have to say that Customer-Centricity has been a core concept of it from the time I started with it.

I wrote many research reports for Gartner, strategies for clients, and white papers with partners that worked around that theme -- and we always, always looked at process management as one of the sine-qua-non activities for success in customer service.

I know that I am not the only one who feels this way, all my colleagues have similar opinions. Process management (or whatever you want to call it, reengineering, architecting, or other word) is the basis for CRM implementations, and customer-centricity is one of the core concepts surrounding CRM (actually, the idea of 360-degree view of the customer - one of the promises of CRM - relies on customer centricity).

CEM (which I researched while at Gartner) relies on two disciplines, feedback and process management, to deliver to the client exactly what they want and need.

Did I miss something on the way you explain it?

Dick Lee

July 16, 2009

Customer-centric process

Sorry for the multiple posts. Exlorer 8 is doing funny things.

Dick Lee

July 16, 2009

Customer-centric process

Dick Lee: Esteban - yes, you missed the central point. I've been in CRM for an even longer time, and I totally recognize that process as practiced in CRM has been customer-centric all along. The point I'm making is that while customer-centric process was being practiced in CRM, those designing CRM process (including me) did not come from the mainstream process industry, which was still manufacturing based, with forays into the office/service (O/S) space supported by manufacturing process methods.

However, the mainstream process industry is now being forced to focus more on the O/S space - and even when they enter customer-related process, they they view their work as doing "customer-centeric process," not "CRM," and more importantly, there's virtually no cross-pollination between mainstream process professionals and CRM practitioners who design process. We have two separate groups of professional doing the same work but calling it two separate names and not referencing each other. Very unusual circumstance.

Dick Lee

July 16, 2009

Customer-centric process

Bob Thompson

July 15, 2009

beyond lip service in CRM process design

Dick, I think I understand your point a bit better.

I've always had the sense that although CRMers talked about process (e.g. CRM = people, process and technology) in most cases process design/redesign was just lip service. (Actually, the same could be said for the people stuff too.)

Instead of taking an in-depth look at processes, too often technology is applied to automate what's already there, or to create new processes (embedded in the technology). Processes are not necessarily developed with an outside-in perspective.

I think it's healthy if the process heavyweights are taking an interest in CRM, and will apply more rigorous process methodologies to move it beyond lip service.

However, I still don't see a battle or any real conflict. Deeper process thinking and methods should be a welcome addition to any serious CRMer.

Bob Thompson, CustomerThink Corp.
Blog: Unconventional Wisdom

Graham Hill

July 15, 2009

More Process Thinking, NO THANKS

Dick

Thanks for the clarification.

Having spent much of the past 15 years involved in customer-centric process redesign, the prospect of more process thinkers getting involved in CRM fills me with dread! It isn't that process thinkers are wrong-headed about what they do, far from it, just that they only see one small part of the much bigger experience picture. My own experience is that most process thinkers can't see the experience wood for the process trees.

As I wrote in an earlier post on CEX: Goodbye Process-Thinking. Hello Design-Thinking, we need people who can bring together all of the complementary factors - process, technology, data, work routines, pyhsical environment, etc -that result in a superior experience, not blinkered process thinkers. We need design thinkers today, not process thinkers.

Graham Hill
Customer-centric Innovator
Follow me on Twitter

Interested in Customer Driven Innovation? Join the Customer Driven Innovation groups on LinkedIn or Facebook to learn more.

Dick Lee

July 16, 2009

"Process" people in the CRM space

Dick Lee: Graham, thanks for your comment. I hope you'll read Bob's as well. While you're 180 degrees apart on the potential impact of "mainstream" process consultants designing customer-centric process, I believe you're both right as well. Hopefully, we'll figure out a way to have the best of both worlds.

Dick Lee

July 16, 2009

Bob Thompson's comment

Dick Lee: Bob, I totally agree with your comment. I would add that while "Deeper process thinking and methods should be a welcome addition to any serious CRMer," they may not be to a CRM generalist who gets paid for providing "lip service" process and does not welcome the competition.

Mel

December 6, 2009

BPR with CEM as the focus

Hi,

Are there case studies where CEM (pure CEM, not just improved customer service) was the focus of a major BPR? And formal documented process redesign undertaken (from the industrial/process engineers perspective)to ensure the sucessful CEM implementation?

Thanks
Mel

Dick Lee

December 9, 2009

CEM/BPR

Mel - every Outside-In process engagement falls with this parameter. Unfortunately, rarely do inside-out process implementations (including LSS, Lean & Six Sigma)meet this criteria.

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