ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a deeper dive into user involvement not only in the requirements process but throughout the entire customer relationship management (CRM) implementation. It understands the importance of user involvement throughout the CRM implementation process. The chapter also explores in the design section about users versus experts driving results, users have important contributions but they should not be conflated with CRM or design experts. Striking the user-involvement balance is especially important given our need to guard against the dangers of Parkinson's law of triviality, which states that when groups come together to evaluate a problem, they tend to spend most of their time on the most trivial matters. The chapter shows the extant literature and heard from CRM experts that user involvement is an indispensable part of CRM initiatives. It explores factors which, if not understood and taken into account when engaging users, may yield less than desirable outcomes.
