20 Fundamental CRM and Marketing Lessons

Below, we list 20 important  CRM and marketing lessons that we believe many companies either ignore, overlook or miss the point about completely. We value your feedback. Why not drop us a line with your thoughts?

1. If the brand promise cannot be met, don’t waste money on branding

2. Without the right customer culture, any CRM programme WILL fail

3. Customer focus begins and ends with strong leadership

4. If companies spent as much money on selecting and training their customer-facing staff as they do on their advertising and promotions, they would be more profitable

5. Giving customer-facing staff the freedom to deal with customers as they deem appropriate will reduce costs in the long-term

6. Outsourcing of customer service teams creates bland customer experiences and reduces competitive advantage

7. CRM creates an over-reliance on customer data. Data alone will NOT provide the insight a company needs to innovate

8. Without an appreciation of customer context, companies will never understand customer behaviour

9. Most companies use CRM to improve their own profitability and productivity, not their customers’. If they did, they would be more profitable

10. When managers talk about a “single view of the customer”, what they really mean is a single view of their organisation, processes, systems and data

11. If you can't trust your customers, your customers will not trust you

12. Customer loyalty is built on emotions, not promotions

13. The most loyal employees can be the least customer-focused employees

14. Championing the customers’ interests always breeds trust and loyalty in the long-term

15. If you use the brand to set expectations without first assessing the customer experience, the brand will fail

16. Implementing a CRM system without changing employee behaviour will always lead to failure

17. Marketers rarely innovate marketing

18. Knowing when to silence the Voice of the Customer is as important as knowing when to listen

19. Benchmarking is the sincerest form of imitation and the fastest route to commoditisation

20. There are never any answers, just opinions…

Disagree? Email us at info@theomcgroup.com with your opinion! We'll be following up the lessons by explaining our logic as well as describing strategies and approaches for implementing or overcoming them.