As a concept, CRM is over 30 years old, and during that time there have been many variations on what it entails. With such a broad definition of CRM, there’s almost a limitless amount of functionality you can get from CRM solutions in the market. But, in a strange way, that’s the problem. It can become too complex and unwieldy before you know it. More feature creep and complexity is not what CRM needs right now. It’s more usability and simplicity.
You’ve got to be in it to win it
Despite CRM becoming the technology platform of choice for customer centric businesses, adoption rates can be low when it comes to sales teams. Research shows that more than half fail to fully adopt their CRM and, as a result, customer records become outdated and unusable.
While the Big Tech firms constantly configure ingenious ways to capture data for commercial gain, the business community has been less energetic at mining their own profiles of customers. Part of this is due to a lack of adoption and an element of CRM phobia from some users. With that in mind, it’s worth taking a look at our latest article about CRM adoption. If you’re looking to make the most of your investment in this technology, our hints and tips will go a long way towards that aim.
The beauty of simplicity
We know from experience that many users find some CRM tools incredibly complex and frustrating to deal with. Businesses of all sizes often switch platforms for this reason alone. But the problem is arguably more acute for smaller businesses where it’s difficult to dedicate more resource to the problem, or deal with the hassle of migrating to another vendor altogether.
An article in Forbes magazine highlights the issue: “When CRM becomes over-customized it also becomes overcomplicated. Instead of making it easier for people to do their jobs, it requires additional manpower just to operate the system. Once you’ve created enormous complexities within your CRM, most often the only solution is to rip the Band-Aid off and start over with a more efficient model that makes customer data actionable in its simplest form.”
Is the answer more training and education? We say, yes. User adoption is one of the things that businesses struggle to maintain beyond the initial honeymoon period when a CRM is introduced. You can read more here about best practices when choosing a training program that suits your needs for now and in the years ahead.
In the future, let’s hope that CRM complexity isn’t a lingering issue. We at Capsule will be doing everything in our power to ensure that every feature release on our own platform is purposeful and user friendly. That’s our (not so) secret ingredient…and we protect it fiercely.
