Without a concrete definition of what a customer is, your CRM strategy (processes, people, culture, technology), will always have the deal with the "definition of the day". Every employee will have different perceptions of what customer is, affecting the overall customer experience.
Our definition of a customer is:
A customer is a person that has many roles, that can influence (or not) a buying decision, as a consumer or a contact in an organization (i.e. a business partner, a company, government, etc).
The characteristics of this person are based on contact relationships, accounts, transactions, and organization the person belongs to. These characteristics are then classified by data attributes in the database and/or different systems and most be part of all business rules regarding people, processes and technology. These attributes are divided in 5 major sections:
- Demographics: age, sex, hobbies, preferences, dislikes, etc
- Deterministic: title, name, roles, address, email, mobile, phone, etc.
- Inferred: customer value, sales, complaints, satisfaction, segment, etc.
- Relationships: accounts, family, friends, organizations, social media, etc.
- Interactions & Transactions: emails, phone calls, purchases, cases, collections etc.
This definition needs to be implemented in all your processes and CRM technologies, and most be part of your CRM change management.
By Jesus Hoyos
