Michael MaozSo many of the calls that I receive that start something along the lines of, “What are the top five applications I should be considering for my customer service contact center?” That is a little like asking for the price of the average house in London – it depends where. For CRM applications the answer is a question: what are your goals for the center? The challenge is that clients are usually going to be looking at a Magic Quadrant. When I tell them that the best way to approach a short list is to put aside the Magic Quadrant and instead work with me to 1) first lay out what are the key processes that will be supported, 2) tell me what the legacy back end systems are, 3) describe what the current CRM solution is, 4) say how complex will be the workflow that is required, and how much business process modelling will be required, 5) describe the language and unique requirements/functionality, 6) tell me if this is a single physical center, single logical center with distributed physical centers, work-at-home agents, or third party outsourcers, and 7) outline how many simultaneous users will be on the system.
Those are just for starters. The point is that there are very few packaged CRM applications for customer service that are exactly alike. The market is full of unique solutions. Some are SaaS service center solutions for small to midsized centers, while others are uniquely for consumer relations. Some are only appropriate for large telecommunications, and others for insurance payer centers. Others are Oracle-only products, or SAP-centric, or Microsoft centric and require partners to complete the solution.
The amount of misinformation in the market can be astonishing, which in a way is good for our business, though very frustrating to you, our clients. Our best way of separating what is real in the software suppliers’ offerings and what is hyperbole, or hype, is to dig into references – to have conversations with the IT manager and business manager running a new version of the software or solution currently for sale. It is also one of the most enjoyable parts of the job, because not only do you get to speak to some of the brightest IT and business people in the world, you also get to see solutions put to work to solve problems. You also see where projects slip up, go off track, and then, with good guidance, are successful.
So the next time you speak to me about your technology needs, you’ll understand why I ask a lot of questions. You’ll also know why Gartner analysts are so tuned into the reality behind the hype: our secret sauce is direct access to real life software deployments around the world, and our ties to the experts who toil to make them work. These best practices are what make the research come alive, and we thank all of you who share your experiences – it is a form of social networking that yields mutual benefit to you, and to your IT or business cohorts who benefit from this sharing, our analysis, and synthethising of information back to you.
The solutions are out there, and we can help you match your needs to the best possible approaches or shortlists. But we do ask a lot of questions.
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