With all the technological power packed into CRM software it has no capability in itself to improve the quality of status reports on complaints. It cannot make the report on pending calls look more pleasing. It cannot generate customer satisfaction. It cannot save the field engineers of the embarrassment they face, sometimes repeatedly. Only more effective and quicker corrective action to eliminate recurring quality problems, improvement in on-time-performance, more effective communication and more enabled and empowered employees can do that
Handling an entire gamut of after-sales customer support activities brings in a number of operating processes into play. CRM acts as the nucleus that receives and transmits messages either as request for action or filling an information gap. CRM software would have played its role well if data had been processed and transmitted speedily and accurately. But if the sub-processes fail to perform on time or to provide qualitatively correct and complete information, CRM will only keep churning out reports reflecting delays, failures to honour commitments and more escalations.
The foregoing paragraphs are quoted from the chapter ‘Complaints about Complaint Management’ in my book Organisational Schizophrenia: Impact on Customer Service Quality (SAGE 2013)[i]. The book www.gkgureja.com itself is based on targeted empirical research that was undertaken to explore why even well-intentioned and highly well-equipped companies fail to deliver the promised quality of service at the operating level. As part of this research, I met 200 customer service and other professionals in one-to-one interviews lasting 60 t0 90 minutes. Most of the answers to my research questions emerged from the candid and emotion charged opinions VOICED by the very people involved in the process of delivering customer service.
On the issue of complaint management–rightly considered by each company as the heart of the CRM–respondents’ VOICES clearly pointed out that the technology–supported complaint management system had been allowed to become a ritual because of lack of culture of discipline within the organisation.
Unless a review process is in place and it is followed with the rigour that raises the issues to the level of accountability no CRM software can ever deliver optimum results.
[i] The book, of course, deals with this and other issues that bring about policy–practice misalignment in much greater details and suggests ways how to check organisational schizophrenia creeping in.