Corporate Training Specialists

CRM is more than just an IT solution. CRM is a business model and strategy, combined, of course, with IT solutions. To be successful, a good implementation needs the right people to drive the change through an entire enterprise.

But as the CRM movement gains momentum, the skill shortage is increasing. Enterprises must now ensure that they have the right strategies, tactics and processes to find or train the right employees to make their CRM implementation a success.

In this article we look at three roles imperative to the success of any CRM implementation. The roles of Project Managers, Trainers and Recruitment Specialists.

Project Managers are one of the very important cogs turning the CRM wheel. These are people that can manage the project from inception to completion or various aspects of it.

Because the success of CRM projects is crucial, companies tend to employ people who possess very strong project management experience who have worked on such projects in the past. The most important skills are the ability to communicate the needs of different facets of the business.

One of the key strengths of a good trainer is their ability to train anyone – from the end user on how to use the solution to resellers on how to implement and configure their products. To be a success in the CRM process trainers do not often require experience in CRM, but must have experience in training at a high level in enterprise-wide applications.

If a company is capable of finding the right employee, with the right skills and experience, it is one step closer to ensuring the success of their CRM projects.

Excerpt from CRM Magazine March 2001

The call centre industry continues to be one of the fastest growing industries in the world. The cue has been given for management to maintain and keep pace with this growth with Best in Class (BIC) performance.

For an organisation to maintain a competitive edge, to maximise profitability and efficiency it must be up there with the best.

When an organisation measures its own business processes against those that have been identified as BIC it can readily identify opportunities for improvement.

Whether large or small, old or new, in the competitive call centre industry it is vital for an organisation to know where it sits with regard to world’s best practices.

Benchmarking is the comparison and measurement of the four P’s; practices, policies, philosophies and performance measures against those of high performing organisations world-wide.

Through benchmarking an organisation’s management team is able to clarify the organisations strategies and objectives across a broad range of call centre operations.

Benchmarking coaxes managers into regularly reviewing all areas of performance and not just productivity outputs.

The qualitative nature of benchmarking surveys and reports make them particularly beneficial. Dennis Sanner manager of benchmarking services with the AQC, told Telcall magazine in May 2000, ‘The benchmarking studies and networks that AQC run are more qualitative in the sense that we’re really benchmarking processes or methods that other organisations are using rather then just the end results.’

More and more organisations are seeing the real benefits of participating in benchmarking activities and credit it’s existence for helping them to not only see the ‘bar’ but to jump over it to success.

With a 22% turnover rate across the call centre industry signifies the high levels of job dissatisfaction with working in call centres. This can be linked directly to poor performance appraisal and measurement systems and HR policies that fail to address the roots of high staff turnovers.

Gone are the days where a call centre was seen as an overhead that simply takes orders and handles complaints.

Call centres are one of a company’s greatest assets. Maximising the potential of your call centre significantly increases its ability to reach its true profitability.

Traditionally performance measures have been based on quantity such as call volumes, this results in reduced staff empowerment, quality and customer problem resolution issues.

The call centre of today needs to focus their key performance criteria on quality allowing empowered employees to maximise the value of every customer interaction, ensuring the call centre becomes a profit making asset. So how can we turn it around?

Companies should undertake a staff diagnostic survey to uncover weak HR and performance management practices.

The survey needs to be tailored to individual companies but in general cover the following issues:

• Leadership and management styles
• Communication and the flow of information
• Organisational commitment
• Work stress and work load
• Internal customer service
• Job satisfaction

Trust in management

A management consultant can help you on the road to maximising your call centre profitability and remember, a satisfied CSR creates hundreds more satisfied customers than the company had before!