Here’s a summary of an article by Barton Goldenberg, President and Founder of CRM Consulting firm ISM Inc. that offers two best practice suggestions for preventing — permanently –user-adoption disappearance, A CRM Initiative’s Bermuda Triangle:
You think you’ve done it right–you spent the money, time, and effort to secure and configure state-of-the-art CRM software. You incorporated valuable customer-facing business processes into the CRM application. You integrated the application with relevant back-office and e-customer systems, and you completed what you thought was excellent application training.
After system launch, usage grows for three straight weeks; high-fives abound. But then you notice a few user-adoption early warning signals: less daily updating, incomplete customer profiles, few report requests. You quickly poll users online to determine the problem. They confirm that the system works just fine, but that it’s just not relevant to their day-to-day efforts. One person even says, “The value add just isn’t there.”
You’ve realized your worst fear: The initiative has entered the user-adoption Bermuda Triangle and is vanishing fast. Here are my top two suggestions for securing high user adoption.
Ensure the 3X Factor – For every one piece of information that you ask users to put into the system, it must return at least three pieces of valuable information to the user. Deliver fewer than three and your CRM initiative is doomed to failure. Deliver three pieces of valuable information or more, and you’re well on your way to success. What constitutes valuable information? Ask your users–they’ll let you know.Get Your Communications and Training Right – Too often companies think communication happens at the CRM initiative launch and that training happens just prior to the launch of the CRM system. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Successful CRM initiatives include a communication plan that describes which users/influencers will eceive what types of information about the CRM initiative when, and in what format. This means you need to take the time to think through where user hesitancy and even esistance is most likely to play out, and turn this around.
It’s plain to see: High user adoption results when users find value in a firm’s CRM systems and processes.
