The Philosophy of SOME
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) ushered in a new era of customer interaction - that of customizing marketing to each person to suit some aspects of their individuality. It has been instrumental, when successfully implemented in increasing conversion and increasing customer loyalty and overall satisfaction.
Implementing CRM however, has not been an easy task and only a relatively few organizations have risen to the challenge. Part of the reason for this failure has been technical - relating to the ongoing gathering of massive volumes of data and the ability, or inability to make that data available to the right persons in the organization.
The task of organizing, understanding, and being able to react to the information in an effective way has also been a major challenge. As a result the overall organizational landscape is strewn with many examples of CRM failures.
Although I'm an advocate of the ultimate CRM objectives, I believe that the majority of organizations can attain impressive conversion gains through what I call the philosophy of SOME.
The concept of MANY is extremely well articulated in James Surowiecki's book Wisdom of Crowds. His horse race example is a perfect case. If you place a bet just before a race begins on the horse most favored to win as voted by the bets placed by the crowd, your chances of winning are the highest. His argument being that the wisdom of those who are the very knowledgeable professionals mixed with those who have some knowledge, mixed with those who bet on instinct, etc., in summary will select the horse most likely to win most of the time. He quotes success rates exceeding 90%.
But how do we apply this thinking in a marketing environment within a business? It works quite effectively if we apply standard marketing segmentation rules to the totality of the crowd. How women react versus men; how single women react versus married ones; how single women between 18 and 25 react as compared to those between 25 and 40. Understanding the differences within these segments and building strategies to address segment differences is the challenge.
In the Hospitality sector for example, the issues that drive customer satisfaction are very different by segment ie. Business Travellers vs. Leisure Travellers. Also significant is the differences in factors driving satisfaction for male and female business travelers. By being able to listen to a statistically valid number (the SOME) within each of the various customer segments, hotel executives customize services and marketing strategies to increase that particular segment’s satisfaction and increase loyalty.
It is my contention that the technical and human effort, the ability to react, the ability to monitor and track marketing successes is easier and faster to obtain and analyze by targeting a segment rather than by targeting individuals within the segment.
For those organizations that have effectively implemented CRM - ONE to ONE systems, the added value of the knowledge of the SOME could enhance their conversion capabilities. And for those that don't have a CRM system and either cannot or do not want to, or have tried and failed - think SOME instead of ONE.
