Customer Relationship Management

With oceans of customer information threatening to drown even the most savvy of business managers, questions surface such as:

How are top companies implementing new CRM technologies to best effect?�
How can you be sure of which strategies are a good fit for your organization?�
How do you get the most customer value out of limited CRM resources?

As you vie with your competitors to capture customers from one another, customer relationship management bellwethers are developing initiatives that not only retain current customers but also increase per-customer value. By determining CRM tools and processes that increase per-customer revenue and extend the lifetime of the customer relationship, organizations will be able to boost profit margins by maximizing the lifetime value of each customer.�

Some of the customer-centric topics Best Practices, LLC is pursuing include:

Developing a CRM strategy to drive increased customer loyalty and sales growth.�
Establishing cross-functional management teams to implement CRM programs.�
Managing organizational changes so that productivity is maximized while conflict is minimized.�
Training sales and marketing representatives to utilize CRM technology.�
Integrating CRM tools with other technology solutions such as data warehouses, SFA, marketing analytics and knowledge management tools.�

Our Methodology

Using our proprietary Best Practice Blueprints for Excellence methodology, Best Practices' analysts first help our clients assess their existing processes and performance systems. Following the completion of internal practice collection, Best Practices, LLC and the client team members confer to prioritize the issues and areas that will have greatest economic and operational benefit.� An action plan is then developed and used to guide the benchmarking project.

Featured Research

A Step-By-Step Guide to CRM Implementation

The Best Practices, LLC research team created a detailed roadmap for rolling out customer relationship management programs as customer loyalty becomes more and more difficult to secure. In-depth interviews with seven benchmark partners and secondary research on dozens of companies yielded key information on effective CRM operations, including: the most useful performance metrics and how they are used to build support, ramping up CRM programs from pilot stage to global rollout and ensuring company-wide support for the program.

This project was conducted on behalf of a diverse consortium of businesses seeking to improve customer loyalty as globalization and the Internet make that goal more challenging. Study findings determined concrete steps for companies to make sure their CRM teams focus on real economic returns instead of theoretical results, and communicate those gains throughout the organization.

Achieving World-Class Customer Service: An Integrated Approach

Best Practices, LLC identified and analyzed the most effective practices that dozens of highly regarded companies use to create superior customer service. This report contains qualitative and quantitative insights divided into four areas: customer focus, human resource management, process management and leadership.� This study was conducted on behalf of a financial services company looking for ways to differentiate its customer service as part of its overall strategic plan. With practices culled from a benchmark class of more than 95 companies, this report is the most comprehensive outline for creating a world-class customer service process.