ABSTRACT
Appropriate CRM Let’s talk about customer relationship management (CRM) and what I’ll call the price/value/service ratio and its relationship to the CRM process and technology investments.
But before we get to that, let’s agree that CRM is not technology, software, or “architecture”: CRM is a state of mind, a philosophy, and a business strategy. I cannot believe the number of companies I see-still-that believe that a CRM (in-house or hosted) application is the answer to their customer relationship problems. Successful CRM software applications that we buy (from Siebel) or rent (from Salesforce.com) assume a variety of things to be true before implementation (though the vendors tend to hide many of them in fine print). Newsflash: If your company isn’t customer friendly, technology will not change a thing (except the technology budget).