Readying the workforce for CRM

Computerworld - The stakes have never been higher for executives with "chief anything" in their titles. And if they have customer relationship management (CRM) in their job descriptions, it must often feel like a pure crapshoot.

Not that CRM isn't getting plenty of executive attention. Take any study you like, the predicted spending on CRM is astronomical: IDC says $60 billion two years from now; AMR Research says $17 billion.

But take a look at the results. For many people, they paint a picture of job insecurity. In a recent survey, only 20% of the respondents claim their CRM solutions increased customer profitability. Question: who's worse off -- the 4% whose customer profitability decreased or the 63% who couldn't tell?

But that's not the real question. The real question is: Why are we getting so little after trying so hard and spending so much? The germ of the answer can be found in a report by Saddletree Research: "Workforce management software, which enables efficient scheduling of multiskilled agents ... has become a high-profile market segment as the value of human resources in the evolving customer care industry has continued to increase in importance. It is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 74% through the year 2004," according to Saddletree Research. (Business Wire, Feb. 6 -- our emphasis added)

More and more, companies are remembering what their customers and shareholders never forgot: The workforce has a profound influence on customer satisfaction, loyalty and profitability. Sure, IT is vital in terms of enabling the workforce. But while customers have a big appetite for sales and service innovations, they also take them for granted. "Twenty-four-hour telephone access to my account? OK, thanks. Web site with full interactive capabilities? Nice, I'll use that, too. Keep it coming. Oh, by the way, I still want to visit your store -- don't you have one closer?"

In fact, the workforce matters now more than ever in terms of influencing customer behavior. After all, if busy customers can take care of most of their transactions electronically, it stands to reason that when they take the trouble to seek out a personal interaction, they need a knowledgeable, informed and empowered individual.

And yet, as one of our clients ruefully acknowledged to me, "We spent the past few years dumbing down the workforce, hoping that we could get the job done with better information and technology."

So now, the best companies in the world are acting on the growing and indisputable evidence that the key to increased