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How Lack of True Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Shrinks a Company
Our Home grown companies have dropped true customer appreciation like a bad habit. It’s a gold rush, and the customers (the gold) have forgotten what it means to be a true valued customer. Customers are somehow coerced (marketing, standard of living and ignorance) into the zombified purchase of goods and services, and companies could care less of customer allegiance once their profit quotas are fulfilled.
I remember when Marpin Telecoms and Broadcasting would send out Christmas Cards to it’s customers (I think DOWASCO and DOMLEC too… you think? Come on man, give us something concrete, you just dissolved any real credence to that first sentence). Those of you who received those sentimental tokens over a decade ago may not have bothered with it (very much like all the Christmas, Easter, and whatever holiday marketing material that the UK companies would send to me during my studies – I just shoved that in the bin – “You trashed yours ibrahim, but I appreciated mine and got a good season bonus”), but for some it felt like appreciation and companies were reaching out.
New rules, shrinking budgets and big show-offs, one only has to look at the news paper to find the well wishing terrain of public ads to customers. Extending such sentiments are supposed to be personal, its an intimate gesture between company and customer, where they are addressed by their names of Mr. So and So (amazing how all our companies can afford the monthly mailed bill and 2-4 telephoned reminder of an overdue payment, but can’t even muster sending well wishes once a year). But it gets worse on a totally different point, because, every company has to let the entire population know the grief we share by the untimely passing of So and So. This is not an international phenomena but a regional one that’s shaping company to customer personalized processes (Wrong!).
Managers sit in their fortified castles (to get a meeting with them you have to get pass schedules, secretaries, lower management and the excuses), with little knowledge of a growing/shrinking empire (customers). Customers are the company’s loyal subjects, and if the Manager (King) neglects mingling with the peasants who have kept profit quotas fat thus far, then slowly customers rebel (20% drop in customer purchases, a steady 5% decline in new customers over a 5 year period, reports on bad service and products – in the end the company’s think tank blames it on the economy).
Business is about people, it’s about the relationship and how cozy it’s kept. Customers have names and have a lot more money that you can trick (hahahahaha) them out of. It immortalizes a manager when he can listen (not solve but listen) to all 500 customer complaints, remember each customer by name or at least pretend to, and on the rare occasion share a smile with customer Bob.
Our Managers Manage, well that’s what a manager is suppose to do. I have heard about great managers, but I have not seen the exceptional; one that neglects the office and roams the outskirts of their castle, a manager that dirties his hands, one that accepts blame, a manager about the customer, one that the people talk about and always with the best of attributes.
Your marketing campaigns are weak, how can your strategy be about being number one when you know nothing about those who are shifting the number one position to anyone who wants it. Customers are lost, felt unwanted and looking for salvation, that salvation is in the hands of your competitor.
This is Dominica, how well do you leverage beff (gossip), how much about you is bad and on the street, how much can you find out about your customer and you haven’t. This is a population that knows everybody’s business, and yet still companies don’t know their business (sorry they don’t listen).
