Why does dissatisfaction with CRM arise?

Provided by: Aina Neva Fiati

It’s a major conundrum that’s a favorite with research firms – CRM spending continues to rise but so do the failure rates of CRM implementations. Why does this happen? Probably because the promise of CRM is too strong to resist. Most companies get into CRM deployments promising themselves that they will follow the recommended best practices and due diligence measures but fail or falter due to some reason or the other.

The advent of SaaS has only complicated the picture in some respects, now cost effectiveness has become a major factor in preparing a business case for CRM and it often obscures other important points to consider such as expectations from the CRM system and preparedness of the company. One of the major reasons why CRM systems fail is lack of employee co-operation, employee participation is often taken for granted and when a deployment drags to a compromised completion the morale sags. This is followed by a delay in generating ROI and that’s like the final nail in the CRM coffin.

As a system, CRM has some drawbacks that businesses would love it to overcome. These include reducing cost per call, database integration with legacy software, accurate customer satisfaction assessment, and better campaign management responses. A 360-degree view of the customer is still quite far away and without that happening, a business has to work with a combination of past experience, intuition, and information provided by the system. The optimum fulfillment of business goals is the objective of CRM systems or to put it more pithily, CRM has to add to the bottomline; instead it adds to the capital and operational costs. Thus, the disillusionment and dissatisfaction with CRM.