It’s time to set CRM free

Nobody puts CRM in the corner, or indeed, no brand should.

Customer experience is the new battleground for brands. And loyal, repeat customers are the prize. Yet all too often, once someone has made that first purchase, communications are relegated to shouty broadcast emails that languish unread in inboxes.

It’s time to unshackle CRM from its current tight spot. Instead connecting it into the whole brand experience and with its customers.

Four out of five customers consider the experience a company provides to be as important as its products and services, according to a Salesforce report from 2020.

So, it's no surprise that our research, Brand Fractures impacting Customers 2022, found that two in three people stop using brands because of poor customer service. In fact, a third of those people stop using brands specifically because of poor communication.

Understanding customers and connecting with them in meaningful, relevant, and timely ways means going beyond the dry, functional sales emails that have become the norm for CRM. All too often, brands ignore why people fell in love with them in the first place, and it probably wasn’t being ‘messaged at’ or arm-wrestled into a sale via generic email…

We’re working with Brands right now to unleash their CRM. By fusing Data, Technology and Creativity, we’re creating CRM experiences that do measure up to customers’ ever-higher expectations of Brands’ experiences because they

a) Talk to (or, rather, with) the whole person

b) Exhibit authentic brand behaviours (letting the brand be itself, sing!)

c) Are doable! Despite their fluidity, our CRM experiences are easy to orchestrate and deploy

So remember these three things.

Firstly, CRM is more than just an email. Secondly, we need to unshackle CRM from being seen by the Brand as their sales ‘solution’ – embodying instead, what got peaked their interest or sale in the first place. And finally, we mustn’t let CRM ‘do’ broadcast.

This. This is how we’ll get CRM out the corner. Only when it’s considered part of the whole brand experience will it be released from the shouty, one-way sales pushy email it’s become.

Instead, we can let CRM can connect with real people, in ways that are also authentic to the Brand, providing both powerful and often (whisper it) subtle reminders of what turned their head in the first place. If it worked for them once, chances are it’ll work for them again. And again.

Katy Nyman is the global client partner at Wunderman Thompson.