Why is CRM a failure?

When I first started getting paid to look at the future of technology, the very first conference I attended was about the glowing promise of Customer Relationship Management (CRM.)

It was in the spring of 2001.

Back then, CRM was as full of hype as Big Data is today.  CRM was going to give us that mythological end-to-end view of everything we knew or had done with our customers.  We would have purchase history, customer inquiries, account history and information, and all their preferences and favorite products--you name it.  If we had touched the customer or they had touched us, the CRM system would know, and would have our backs.  We would all be happy customers, enterprises would rejoice along with their newly empowered sales and customer service staff. There would be endless marketing and product information.

Put simply, it didn't happen.  It's 15 years later, and for the most part, CRM sucks.  We are a long way from "delighting the customer."

Here are some of the worst examples:

• The dreaded customer experience of trying to get help by phone.  It starts with "listen closely as options have changed," and may hit its peak when you are required to enter an account number by phone, only to finally reach a live human, who starts the conversation with "may I have your account number?"  That same human has a computer screen which rarely knows that you've bought the product you're calling about, has no clue if you've called about this issue before, or any knowledge whether you have spent $100 with them, or $10,000.
• There is a gaping disconnect between e-commerce and bricks and mortar customer knowledge.  As a customer, when have you ever experienced a company that knew your online purchase history when you walked into one of their physical locations? Or vice versa?
   
• The inability of sales staff to access useful information about the customers they are trying to serve at the point of decision.  I learned this horror story firsthand.  During my time in retail, I worked for a national upscale retailer.  They wanted--really badly--to market by e-mail to the prime existing customer base. To make that more likely, all sales staff were encouraged every day to link the customer to an e-mail address.  And since that same system was so limited in its customer search function (only by name and zip code,) the most usual result was  "I can't find you, let's just create you in the system right now."  Any associate at any POS terminal could create an entirely new customer record to add their e-mail address.
  
  The data was so littered with duplicates that it was essentially useless.  If I did succeed in finding you, it would only be one of the many versions of you. Customers' purchase histories might be under any one of a dozen versions of their name.  If they ever shopped online or at another bricks and mortar location, too bad. Each store only accessed records for the one store where we both stood, frustrated at our inability to find information that had to be in there, somewhere.
• Medical records, which are rigidly bound by rules and systems to make sure data is accurate, are astoundingly siloed and useless beyond the context in which they were created.  Your primary care physician may have a great end-to-end history of your office encounters, but if you go to a new specialist, or get admitted to an emergency room, how is that shared?  The patient hand-writes what he or she can remember.  For every single new place or practice.  

These are just the tip of the iceberg, I'm sure you have your own list based on your experience as a customer, and maybe upon your frustration at CRM efforts within your enterprise.  It's my opinion that the realization of CRM has missed the promise by such a margin that it is reasonable to say the idea has failed.  I think there are some systematic problems that make good CRM really, really hard.

• For CRM to work, you have to overcome a big problem; CRM is a genuinely vertical process, spanning almost every function of a corporation. But CRM's success depends on it working well across a range of processes, most of which are themselves internal vertical domains.  See this graphic I originally posted in 2011: most functions that form the core of a good CRM program live on the right--vertical--side. But some of the most CRM-critical are strategic horizontal processes, like marketing.
   
• Master Data Management (MDM) is excruciatingly difficult.  Talk to the data people at any enterprise and ask if they think they have it mastered.  MDM is not sexy, and it's not trendy.  The only thing is, it's just absolutely vital as a foundational element of CRM.  Circling back around to the hype on Big Data, we come to another idea: why are you worrying about big data when small data is still so underutilized, and still adding so little value?
  
• CRM succeeds or fails depending on the completeness and accuracy of information coming in as the customer does business with you.  That's not so hard during e-commerce, but in a face-to-face situation, customers have become highly averse to sharing information.  Until we find a seamless way to link the customer to their own records, and until we earn enough trust from customers for them to share willingly, CRM will remain a tough uphill slog.
• Even if you get data definitions and structure right, it is still bound to specific programs, hence badly isolated from all the necessary use cases.  If ever there was an argument that data should be offered as a service to be used in real time by different programs, CRM is it.  But that runs smack up against proprietary interests, and is not likely to change soon.  When systems for manufacturing, distribution, marketing, and point of sale are not drawing from the same data store, is it any wonder that so many enterprises have thrown up their hands and given up?
   
• There's another silo issue that is external to your business. As it stands, CRM is not personal, it is bound to specific companies.  So if it would be useful to me to know that a coffee blend at the Peet's I'm visiting is similar to one I've bought at Starbucks, that purchase history is not one Starbucks is likely to share.  If I happen to book one day with United Airlines, it would be useful to me and to United if they knew that I've flown almost a million miles with American, and am a potential high-value customer.  But AA would definitely rather my flight history remain within the confines of their own systems.
  
  
  This suggests a big business opportunity for a digital personal assistant to keep my own records of my customer history to use for my own benefit, independently of all the siloes where my purchasing life now resides.  There is a huge need for consumer-centered CRM.  Stated another way, if my customer history is going to be bound to anything, it should be attached to me.   Startup, anyone?

Along with the fact that the CRM idea of 15 years ago is so badly implemented, newer technology adds the chance for a new generation of CRM that overcomes some of these obstacles, and adds real time integration with customer activities that happen outside your enterprise--social media mentions of your product, product reviews, store check-ins, and the like.  So I still have hope, and still believe that the CRM idea is worth fighting to get right.  Could this be a need where artificial intelligence (AI) could help solve the data integration and multiple-versions-of-the-same-customer challenges?

Share your ideas here in the comments, or drop me an e-mail.  Do you know examples of companies that are getting CRM right?  Do you see other issues or opportunities I should look at in a future post?  I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Stateless technology: #WIN, legacy customer service, #FAIL

Inflight miracle?
 It took me 20 minutes of customer service frustration to get here.

I'm at 35,000 feet, online on my Chromebook, proving that the technological limitations of the stateless future are falling by the wayside.  Reliable, fast internet access anywhere you are is growing fast, but no one would argue that we're all the way there...yet.

I began signing on from the airplane to write a "see, being on a flight doesn't limit your use of a stateless device, because you can connect to your cloud data and apps almost anywhere" article.  But something happened along the way that changed the direction of what I'm reporting today: Gogo, the inflight internet service provider, once again made my experience of buying their service so frustrating that it made me think the following:  all the improvements in technology in the world are useless until businesses recognize that things have changed, and deal with their customers accordingly.

Here's the story.  I fly American Airlines pretty much exclusively, and Gogo service debuted on their widebody coast-to-coast flights three years ago.  I know, because I checked my account history with them, and my first use was in 2009.  It's gradually expanded to more routes and more plane types, so that this flight, Fort Lauderdale to LA on a 737, is WiFi equipped too.  Despite all my hours in the air, I've only used Gogo 5 times, including this one, because every single time I've tried to buy their service, their billing system and my credit cards have fought a battle, ending basically with me getting the message, "computer says no."

OK, so I clicked the live chat.  Here is the transcript of today's session:

Sarah: Welcome to Gogo. My name is Sarah.
Sarah: Hello Donald. I'm sorry to see that you are having trouble purchasing. Are you receiving any error messages?
Donald Ham: Hello.  Can you help me figure out why Gogo is so determined not to get my business?
Donald Ham: I haven't even tried for over a year because this has happened EVERY time I try to use Gogo on a flight.
Sarah: Are you receiving any error messages?
Donald Ham: First it declined a credit card, despite the card being fine and the data accurate, then when I tried a second card, it said something like, "we cannot log you on, try again later."
Sarah: Okay. This may take a few minutes to fix, but please stay with me and do one step at a time. First, please redirect a browser to http://air.gogoair.com. Let me know when you are able to access that page.
Donald Ham: It is open in another tab
Sarah: Does it say to Sign In, or Sign Out, at the top of the page?
Donald Ham: "sign out"
 Sarah: Please go into the 'My Account' section and delete the saved credit card information. Do not re-enter any information. When you have deleted the information, please log out of your account and close all open browser windows except this chat. When you have closed them, please let me know. 
Donald Ham: Done.  Card deleted, logged out, you are the only tab open.
Sarah: Next, please open a new browser window and manually enter http://air.gogoair.com. From there, please log back into your account and try to make the purchase again. Please let me know if you receive another error message.
Donald Ham: It worked.  WHY does Gogo do this to me every time?  As you can see, my first access was in 2009; I was one of your first users.  But I avoid it almost every flight because I am so tired of fighting Gogo's efforts to make this awkward and time consuming.  WHAT is going on?
Sarah: I'm unable to view credit card information for security purposes, so I cannot verify what the specific issue is.
Donald Ham: Who can?  I am a tech blogger, about to go on my blog and Twitter to talk about this experience?  Does anyone at Gogo care about customer experience?
Sarah: I'm sorry, but we none our agents have access to credit card information for security purposes. It may have been an issue with how the information was entered, or that they system was unable to recognize the information. 
Donald Ham: I heard that the first time.  Who in your organization has the power to respond to my concerns? How do I contact them?
Sarah: The only information that I can see regarding your payment issue is that it says 'Do Not Honor'.  Since after you deleted, then re-entered the information, the card was processed, there may have been a discrepancy between the information on your card and what the credit card company has on file.


Donald Ham: That is no longer my question.  Who at Gogo has the power to respond to an upset customer, one who is about to use the power of social media to share his bad experience with thousands of people?  Give me a contact e-mail or phone number.


Sarah: You can contact Steve Vair at svair@gogoair.com.


Donald Ham: Thank you.  I will do that.  I appreciate your time, and will now close the session.


Sarah: Thank you for choosing Gogo. Fly classy.


Sarah has disconnected.


At this point, Infrics.com themes have just merged. The initial effort was to use a tech advancement (inflight WiFi) to show the brave new tech world of stateless computing. But the "era of you" part of the future stepped right in and hijacked the dialogue. Gogo, for all the magic bringing the ability to go on Facebook while high in the air, does customer service like a company in 1999. "LOOK! We have live online chat!" At the point "Sarah" entered that gratuitous "fly classy" remark, she cost her company a fortune in lost good will and future business.


By thinking they will save money with level one customer support, and make unhappy customers go away by offering boilerplate responses, Gogo and many others fail to understand the growing expectations of consumers to be treated individually, and their (exponentially) growing power to share their experiences with the world. My conversation with Gogo is "United Breaks Guitars" writ small, but it reflects the same head-in-the sand business attitude. Remember, the youTube video about United's bad customer service has been viewed nearly 12 million times, and is estimated to have cost the airline one billion dollars in lost revenue and goodwill. 

Like United, Gogo is far from alone. Soon I will write about my customer experience with Samsung could have gone wrong, but that had a better outcome. And I will share with you what svair@gogoair.com has to say. Here are the bullet points, takeaways from the collision of emerging tech social abilities with legacy service attitudes and marketing:

• Social business behavior needs to extend down to your lowest point of contact with your customers, or it's mostly worthless.
• A new "digital divide" is appearing, in which one class of tech-savvy customers knows how to create impact on your company through their social networks, and another is stuck with IVRs (Interactive Voice Response, the dreaded "listen carefully as options have changed" systems.)
• CRM (customer relationship management) must be pervasive, accurate, highly granular, and central to your dealings with customers. You have the power to know them as individuals, treat them as valued assets, and put them to work as your greatest marketing agents. If you fail, they can easily become your biggest enemy.
• Customer service is a field just begging for the implementation of AI (artificial intelligence) to replace level one support with a computer interface that is heuristic, has access to every customer interaction, and escalates quickly to the right live human. The day is coming--trust me on this--when you will far prefer a great experience talking with a computer intelligence to one with an entry level person with no power beyond looking up canned answers in a book.
• I still believe it's totally cool how pervasive internet access is already. But when it comes to airplane service, I sure hope Gogo learns to treat customers better. Or that they're put out of business by someone who does.