Five Reasons for CRM Failure

CRM failure

Five Reasons for CRM Failure

The main reasons for CRM failure are overly complicated software, only single-user-oriented access, lack of transparency, and poor design. A question often asked about CRM failure is how could it be prevented, and which are the bad strategies to avoid? There are at least five aspects of the software that could lead to CRM failure, which every business should be aware of.

CRM Failure No. 1 : Complexity

Traditional CRM solutions are overly complicated. The user is often overwhelmed by too many features that make it difficult to capture and track client data. This eventually leads to gaps in the information flow and misanalysis of customer data; hence, lost sales opportunities. These complex CRM solutions also result in an equally complex, bloated and sluggish user interface, preventing the full potential of the system being utilized. More features don’t necessarily mean a better solution and may, in fact, backfire.

CRM Failure No. 2 : Limited Data Access

Another shortcoming of some existing, popular CRMs is data access. These CRMs are single user oriented, which means any captured client data is only visible to the user who entered it. If different users have to step in to take a client call, they would have no access to the data captured by their colleague. This would look particularly unprofessional as the existing client would have to wait, feeling like a stranger, during this time. The next challenge arises when the company prepares a marketing campaign. Without anybody having full access to the entire data, there is no way of analyzing all existing clients in aggregate, which would otherwise provide valuable insights into what customers want.

CRM Failure No. 3 : Lack of Security/Visibility

No matter how much the sales representatives are trusted, it should be the company that owns the client data and not the sales representatives. Otherwise there would be nothing to stop the sales representative making malicious use of client data, such as deleting it or emailing it to external parties.

This could result in a loss of sales representatives and clients to competition. All such challenges could be solved by giving a supervisor all-encompassing access to all the available data on customers. A sales representative may only delete a customer after retrieving an electronic approval from the manager. As simple as it seems, the majority of entry- and mid-level CRMs don’t have this functionality.

CRM Failure No. 4 : Lack of Social Media Integration

According to the latest Gartner analysis, social media integration (such as Facebook or Twitter) may bring many advantages to businesses. Considering how marketing may benefit from direct input of customers or how sales may get a boost by exposing, reviewing and discussing a product through social media channels, it becomes clear that social media integration simplifies the interaction between the company and the clients considerably, which is exactly what customer relationship management is all about.

CRM Failure No. 5 : Technical Limitations

Other shortcomings of traditional CRM software are its technical limitations, lack of scalability and non-centralized approach. The majority of CRM solutions are Windows applications and require installation on each user’s PC. Each of these CRM clients in turn needs to communicate through a middleware to the back-end server. The implementation, maintenance and running costs for such systems are high and not easily scalable. There is an increasing dependence on hardware performance as the number of users increases, and beyond a certain point, it can become unmanageable, resulting in a slow, unresponsive application.

The latest cloud-based CRM solutions are far more cost efficient, highly scalable and without any integration issues as they run outside the company’s limited IT infrastructure.

Summary

Every business should keep these five reasons for CRM failure in mind when choosing a CRM software. We have been analyzing the CRM market for a while and have been listening to customers’ opinions and then came up with a new idea that could revolutionize the CRM market.

Read Next: Our vision for a better CRM and how you could benefit from it.