Measuring performance

Whether you're an IT professional or business professional charged with implementing a Customer Relationship Management solution in your organization, the ultimate measurement of your performance is how successful your CRM solution is. Measuring the success of your CRM project, though, requires the consideration of many factors, ranging from call center and sales metrics to the impact CRM is having on customers, employees, and the enterprise.

"Traditional metrics for evaluating a CRM professional include number of calls taken, hold times, lead turnaround times, average amount of time to complete each selling step, average order size, etc." said Mark Christiani, Director of Customer Care for TouchScape (www.touchscape.com), a Web-hosted CRM service. "However, a more important part is customer satisfaction, customer retention, average sales volume, employee satisfaction, and turnover."

In addition to measuring call center and sell-cycle-related data points, you also need to examine the impact CRM tools and systems are having on non-sales activities: dealing with customer service issues (warranty, accounts receivable, order fulfillment, shipping, etc.), sales force turnover, and sales rep training time, as well as intangibles, such as sales rep confidence levels, call center morale, and the satisfaction of distribution partners and customers.

TouchScape Sr. Solutions Consultant, Dave Stempien adds, "A good CRM professional�IT

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or business�needs a healthy dose of empathy for customer support personnel, sales reps, and the people answering the calls. It's important to allow them to vent and recommend solutions and tools that will make their jobs easier and more productive. If the people dealing with customers on the front line don't like their jobs, the company soon will be in trouble."

All this to say that unless you benchmark where you are before starting your CRM initiative, it will be difficult to measure how your CRM professionals perform�impact customers, employees, the enterprise, and the bottom line.

Linda Christie is a contributing editor based in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

This was first published in October 2000

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