The Next Generation of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Metrics

Abstract

Adopting a focus on CRM has been an industry standard for nearly two decades. While evidence exists that a majority of the attempts to implement CRM systems fail, there is a surprising lack of understanding as to why. The authors contend that the limitations of mostly internally-focused, marketingbased, efficiency-oriented CRM metrics has hindered both the understanding of why CRM systems often fail as well as led to the perception of failed CRM implementations. Only through the development, application and use of CRM metrics can organizations hope to better understand CRM implementations or achieve their CRM goals. To make matters more difficult, the growing capabilities of CRM applications over the past few years has been raising the expectations and sophistication of customers. A new generation of CRM metrics is needed—a generation of relevant, enterprise-wide, and customer-centric metrics. This next generation of CRM metrics is discussed in detail.