Customer Centricity Introduces New CRM Assessment and Recovery Offering: CRM Rx^SM

Helps Companies Salvage Investments in CRM Projects

Hudson, New Hampshire, November 12, 2002: Customer Centricity, Inc. announced the immediate availability of a new service called CRM Rx^SM. The service was developed to assist companies that have already attempted to implement a customer relationship management (CRM) system, but have failed to achieve their return on investment (ROI) objectives. CRM Rx^SM provides a complete assessment of all areas affected by the CRM program through on-site observations and interviews with key customer service, operations, sales, and marketing staff. It examines the CRM program from three perspectives: people, process, and technology. The result is a report of findings and prioritized recommendations that can be used by the company to realize faster ROI from their existing investments in CRM.

Leading analysts estimate that over half of all CRM projects fail to meet their initial ROI targets. A recent study published by Nucleus Research, Inc. found that 61% of Siebel Systems’ reference customers reported negative ROIs from their CRM implementations after two years of use. Another report issued by The Gartner Group, Inc. estimated that well over 65% of all CRM 
projects fail.

“Many companies started down the CRM path thinking it was an IT project,” said Craig Bailey, President of Customer Centricity. “They believed that technology was the answer. Often, because of this, the CRM software was allowed to dictate how it would be used. In effect, the technology became the master rather than the enabler. With CRM Rx^SM, we set out to help companies to salvage the investments they have already made in CRM by devising an action plan to get back on track.”

The CRM Rx^SM assessment is based on proven methodologies and best practices used in a number of organizations to improve overall operations effectiveness and efficiency. It is designed to accelerate the payback of customer relationship initiatives. The assessment provides a snapshot of preparedness in four major categories:

• Executive vision and strategy
• People readiness
• Process readiness
• System readiness

The scope of the CRM Rx^SM assessment includes the following areas:

• Marketing and lead generation
  • Campaign management
  • Lead generation and management
• Sales
  • Sales Opportunity Management
  • Selling Methodology and efficiency
  • Sales management effectiveness
  • Competitive intelligence practices
• Customer Care
  • Call center / help desk management
  • Customer / technical support effectiveness 

The result of the assessment is a detailed report of findings that provides a view of what is working and what has been missed in the CRM implementation. It also includes a prioritized list of actions that the company should undertake in order to realize greater returns from their CRM investments.

“We believe that CRM Rx^SM is unique because it is not tied to technology. We’re not trying to sell the company another system or more system integration consulting,” said Bailey. That allows us to be impartial during our analysis and make recommendations based on where we think the company can make the greatest gains.”

The cost for the service depends on the size and complexity of the company.

About Customer Centricity, Inc.

Customer Centricity, Inc., is a business consulting firm that works with companies to unlock the value of their customer relationships. We leverage our real-world experience to help our clients deal with their customers in more skillful and satisfying ways. Customer Centricity delivers on this promise by optimizing the interaction between people, process and systems within the organization to achieve higher levels of customer satisfaction and greater return on investment (ROI). We do this in 3 ways:

1. Skills Training to enable customer-facing personnel to deliver exceptional levels of customer service; 
2. Design and Implementation of business process techniques to serve the customer in efficient, effective and consistent manners; and 
3. Identification of the appropriate business processes to automate, enabling companies to get the most from their investments in technology.

Our approach is to work closely with our clients to help them capture the knowledge of their team so that they can leverage it to build more valuable, long-term relationships with their customers. To learn more about Customer Centricity, call 603/491-7948 or visit our web-site, www.customercentricity.biz

Note: “CRM Rx” and “Customer Service Rx” are service marks of Customer Centricity, Inc.