Why run customer service in the cloud? Well, let’s rephrase the question in terms of business results. Namely, doesn’t every top-notch call center want to improve:

• Growth by cross-selling and up-selling customers with relevant offers?
• Efficiency by providing service representatives with a better picture of the customer?
• Customer satisfaction by talking with customers more knowledgeably, as well as with greater empathy and intimacy?

For example, you call to renew your car insurance policy. In the call center, the service representative sees not only your account history but also your current Facebook profile picture—a family photo—and notices you have a teenage son. He asks if you’d like to add him to the insurance policy as well.

Or say you’ve been in a fender bender and need to get your car fixed. When you phone your insurance company to locate the nearest auto body shop,  the service agent notices—again from your Facebook photo feed—that you have small children. She asks if you need car seats with your loaner, or if you want to use the ones you have.

As the cloud expands, it's extending SaaS to even the biggest businesses. Photograph by doug.siefken.

Large + Complicated = On-Premise CRM?

Why not run CRM in the cloud? In other words, why not use software-as-a-service (SaaS) CRM applications, provided they deliver—as they typically do—more rapid procurement, easier manageability and a lower total cost of ownership, compared to on-premise CRM applications?

Well, size may be one factor. Many people’s perception is that SaaS doesn’t work well for large enterprises. But in fact, we’ve found that SaaS solutions are quite a good feature and functionality fit for many organizations, large or small. Many heavy hitters are devoted SaaS users; just scroll the list of salesforce.com testimonials.

Whatever your strategy, put it in lights. Photograph by L. Marie.

What’s your marketing strategy? For direct marketing to be effective, you must define your strategy in advance. Many organizations, however, neglect this crucial step.

For example, one of our biotechnology clients excelled at marketing and selling to the third-party distributors that sold its products. The company ran top-notch campaigns to generate leads and managed those leads extremely well. But then its market shifted, and instead of selling through suppliers, the company wanted to sell directly to customers. As the firm shifted its approach, however, it didn’t pause to define its new marketing strategy. Instead, the company assumed that all of its indirect marketing knowledge and expertise would work just as well for direct marketing and sales. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. As a result, the company experienced a painful transition as it was forced to rethink its entire marketing strategy mid-campaign and on the fly.

CRM: A History of Failure?

Are customer relationship management (CRM) projects prone to failure? ZDNet reviewed analyst firms’ reports to chart general CRM failure rates for 2001-2009:

• 2001 Gartner Group: 50%
• 2002 Butler Group: 70%
• 2002 Selling Power, CSO Forum: 69.3%
• 2005 AMR Research: 18%
• 2006 AMR Research: 31%
• 2007 AMR Research: 29%
• 2007 Economist Intelligence Unit: 56%
• 2009 Forrester Research: 47%

Failure is defined broadly, covering projects that didn’t meet expectations (at best) or failed outright (at worst). Because these statistics come from different research firms using dissimilar research methodologies, you can’t accurately compare year-on-year trends. But to pick just about any given year, my immediate reaction is: There’s no need for CRM failure rates to be this high.

Are you inciting people with a clear call to action? Photograph by Shemer.

What does it take to help your marketing group operate more effectively?

Based on our numerous marketing engagements, we’ve found that making your marketing program excel requires mastering five capabilities: marketing strategy, lead management, campaign management, event management and marketing measurement.

Best Practices for Campaign Management

Of Innoveer’s marketing effectiveness framework, here I’ll touch on campaign management: the step at which your organization must present prospective buyers with a call to action. To increase your campaign management proficiency, focus on these four best practices:

Are you still using ACT, Saleslogix or some other type of technology developed in the 1980s or 1990s? We often hear from sales VPs in that position who say they’re thinking of doing something different. Specifically, they’re wondering if it’s time to embrace SaaS-based CRM in the form of Salesforce.com or Oracle CRM On Demand.

This is a good question, albeit with one caveat: The most important success factor for CRM is not your technology. Nothing is more important than having a good plan, knowing your desired business outcomes in advance and then vigorously pursuing each one in phases.

CRM: Only 3 Choices

On to software: What should you select?

If your organization is not in the pharmaceutical, medical device or biotechnology industry, then there are only three names to consider: