Gravity Workplace: The Account Management Experience
When we talk about Account Management and the handling of the business processes around it, most of us are instantly drawn into thinking about Sale and CRM systems. And today most of us would be right.
Personally, I started working on CRM systems as both concept and technical adoption within SME’s in the early 2000’s, not least as part of my MBA Dissertation paper. Back then CRM was seen as a future organisational panacea for client maintenance and retention.
Ultimately though its advantageous usage in driving new business opportunities took strategic hold over the more organisationally holistic approach, and as such CRM has now become a generic, catch all term for all things Business Development related. What this does mean is that to a great extent ‘Customer Relationship Management’ has now become a misnomer, since it’s designed specification has become focused upon achieving one very clear and obvious end goal i.e. a new business sale. For the pioneers of CRM (of which I place myself in the very loosest of loose respects) this is a distinct deviation from original intention, and whilst I can have no argument with its impact from a strategic business perspective, indeed CRM is now considered a critical part of most Sales and Marketing strategies, more often than not these sales systems do not manage, enhance or even consider the customer relationship experience.
At this juncture were I to be indulged, I would like to suggest that the CRM systems of today are very much akin to online dating apps. Indeed, what else is a dating app other than an information store for all your potential ‘customers’ basic and core key personal data information. At least everything that they are willing to give out to a stranger. And so begins the buying and selling process of each ‘Customer’ as they look to promote their wares by outlining USP’s whilst filter searching for suitable suspects (Please note that I mean this as a Sales term!).
Hopefully, after a time the process is a success and we achieve a first date, and on that first date we can now take with us all the personal ‘relationship’ information that has been gathered to date through the dating app process. If we are lucky this gives us enough to talk about to avoid any awkward silences and we hope on nervous arrival that any obvious incompatibilities and/or mistruths have already been raised and considered. Regardless, the goal and focus of the first date is simple; to achieve a second date (I’m actively discounting the unscrupulous here).
All things being well we achieve a second date and (again discounting the unscrupulous) we discontinue, or at the very least, begin to consider discontinuing, our use of the dating app. And so it has become with CRM. The irony here being it is once we reach the staging post of any future relationship that our first course of action is to begin removing ourselves from the relationship management process and begin flying solo. The reason for this is of course obvious, because like a dating app, we view and use CRM in a goal orientated manner such that once that goal has been achieved then its perceived value rapidly diminishes. That is until we are required to move onto the next.
All of this then brings me back to Account Management, because this is how we take off again when current CRM tools land. When we talk about Customer Accounts, we are drawn instead into considering revenue streams and key clients, and this is where we find the foundation of all successful business. It’s a well reputed statistic that for most organisations 80% of all revenue comes from 20% of Client Accounts. Certainly, whenever I have run the numbers on my own company over the past 20 years this has miraculously always come out as such; and understanding this simple ‘rule of thumb’ returns us to the importance of CRM in its original concept, as a tool for managing and enhancing Customer Relationships.
Like all developing relationships we look toward a positive customer experience of trust, cooperation, shared success and of-course shared pain. This is where we find our stability, and only through stability can we access grow.
At Gravity Business Solutions we believe that how your Customer experiences your Account Management process fundamentally underpins the success or otherwise of your organisation. With it you can build a marriage. Without it out you could find yourself on a merry-go round of first dates, time and again covering the same basic relationship information and never being able to move on to the next stage.
Gravity Workplace was built from the ground up with the Customer Relationship Experience placed at the very centre of our solution. Finding new partners is a hard and often painful road, so we believe in helping organisations to walk the path of nurturing and expanding the customer relationships that they already have. Our Account Management software facilitates customer information sharing across your organisation, and when we talk about Customers, we don’t just mean paying clients. We consider Suppliers, Contractors and Employees as equally important. Indeed anyone who has a touchpoint with your organisation will have an experience of it and the more positive that experience the more likely they are to want to build a lasting relationship with you; and that can only lead to positive outcome.
Luke Bolt, Director, Gravity