I have previously shared my not so optimal experience installing Office365 from Microsoft, and raised my concerns on the status of customer service in this post. But the OfficeSaga Part 1 kept giving through the last week - so it compelled me to write a little more on the state of multi-channel CRM in 2013 - which seems to be pretty sad. Here is the new storify collection.
During the heyday of CRM in the late 90ies of last century, it was all about the chase to treat customers consistently across interaction channels and across organizational functions. The demo of the informed sales rep, who aware of a customer service / customer support situation, steers to a sensitive customer interactions, was seen at every CRM show / demo. Likewise the mirror scenarios - where customer service professionals are made aware of impending sales and treat the customer accordingly. Seen too often to ever forget.
In 2013 the situation has gotten a little more complex - as customers can not only be interacted with face to face and through the phone, but they may also show up at your web store and in the social media. But still the promise of multi-channel - or often as a buzzword now omni-channel - CRM is that the customer will be treated consistently across the interation channels and all actors on the enterprise side are informed across organizational boundaries.
The test: Install Office365
As mentioned I chronicled already my close to 24 hour challenge to install Microsoft Office. But the case was closed with my 3rd install - with the help of Microsoft 3rd party support. But in the week after the surprises started.
In-Function Disconnects
I was surprised when the first 3rd level support consultant was following up with me on the successful install of Office365. That would be great customer service if indeed I had not been successful installing Office365 - but I was successful. And I referenced the case number in the interaction with the second 3rd party engineer.
But ok - giving the benefit of the doubt I replied with thanks and good news. After all my lesson learnt from this is - get to 3rd level support asap - good to have a relationship with two 3rd level support professionals at Microsoft.
And then witness my surprise that the same engineer followed up again - a day later with the same question - if all was good with my Office365 installation... at this point I decided to no longer reply.
What should have happened in perfect CRM? The agents should have looped back with me if my Office365 is running well now. They also could have called me - as they have all my phone numbers - even more personal, but ok.
Surveys are great - they need to work
The OfficeSaga Part 2 got even more lively - when I started to receive links to feedback surveys.
Great practice - only the first two links didn't work. Using Chrome first I was suspecting a potential Mirosoft issue and tried IE - also no luck. Back to Twitter and tell @Office - and what do I get on Twitter - the next non working link. Than nothing.
The next day I get my 3rd request to fill out a feedback survey - which then worked - both in Chrome and IE.
And it sounds plausible to test links to sites / surveys before you send them to customers. And if you have a Twitter conversation - granted it's a challenged one due to the 140 char limitation - don't end it - drive it to closure.
More in function disconnects
The highlight and by now the last one I hope - was getting a call from a sales rep for the Small Business Division, if I wanted to buy the Office365 version for small business, as my free trial had expired.
Looks like a very good sales practice - only I had purchased one year subscription already when I switched laptos - pondering the eventuality that I was not allowed to switch machines during the free trial period...
And similar like the service rep who should have known that the case was closed - the sales rep should have saved the call to me as I had purchase Office365 already.
Advice to CRM users
If you sell and service customers across channels - do so consistently. If you haven't recently - test your systems from the outside - and hopefully you do not run into negative surprises.
Advice to CRM vendors
Check if you multi-channel story is complete and working. Do all users interacting with a customer have consistent information and access to the customer's past interactions? Check your timed actions - are they still in synch with business reality? Can users quickly validate the latest status of a customer before interacting with the customer?
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MyPOV
It looks to me that the state of multi-channel CRM is in a more dire state than I thought. If an enterprise like Microsoft, who is also a vendor of CRM systems, does not have a best in class implementation of CRM - hab bad may this be with regular end users?
And yes - consistent multi-channel CRM is hard - but what customers expect and deserve in 2013. Time to make it real.
