Maximize Your CRM Solution

-- By Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

So you’ve just put in place a fancy CRM solution, but it doesn’t seem to be working the way you thought it would! As you sit there wondering what could have gone wrong, did it even occur to you that the problem may not lie in the software but in the people who use it? Yes, your weakest and strongest links to your CRM system are the service agents who leverage the solution in their interactions with customers.

Gartner analyst Michael Maoz offers a few tips to maximize the potential of your agents, and as a direct result of this, to gain the optimum benefits from your CRM system and enhance your customer service:

• Use real-world scenarios to introduce and train new representatives to get accustomed to the way your customers think, and to gauge their expectations. Besides speeding up the learning process, this increases agent efficiency.
• Hire the best, not the cheapest, agents you can find. Remember Garbage In, Garbage Out? That goes for service personnel too. Spend money and time in providing the best training to people you hire. Just because some of your reps work from home, it does not mean that they do not need the same amount of training and pay as those who work from your office. Bad service from home agents is equally bad, if not worse than poor service from the office.   
• Ease your agents into the process of providing service. With the plethora of communication methods incorporated into a CRM application, it makes sense that they don’t try to master phone calls, emails, instant messaging, and live chat all at once. Getting them started on one interaction form and moving on to the others when they are well-versed in the previous, is the best bet for effective service.
• The success of a CRM solution depends on the acceptance of the people who use it – your agents – which is why you should emphasize the easy-to-use features of the system first before adjusting it to their needs as time goes by.
• Finally, invest in a CRM solution that offers easy shortcuts for your agents – unified desktops that include electronic notepads that absorb information typed into backend databases, and electronic business cards that stay on a corner of the display even as screens change.