The first word in customer relationship management is customer. That should go without saying, but unfortunately many CRM implementations focus almost exclusively on usage of the software over improving customer satisfaction. Integration with current systems, data migration from old platforms, software training for the end-user, and analytics development quickly take priority. While these are essential elements for succeeding with CRM, none of them matter if the relationship with the customer is not improved by your CRM initiative.

Understanding the customer experience is key to increasing revenue with CRM. Experiencing firsthand your sales process can reveal problem areas and highlight areas of excellence, all the while providing you with a better understanding of your customer. If someone intimate with your business experiences any hiccups along the sales process, you can imagine how such difficulties would be intensified for a new customer. The knowledge you gain will help you to integrate and maximize your business processes within your CRM system.

You should already know what questions you want answered about a customer, so be sure you have developed a profile of an actual customer of your business. By developing a full profile, you will be able to see areas where you may be losing sales by not asking the right questions or not recommending the right products or services. If you can identify lost opportunity with a fictitious customer, you can be fairly certain there is revenue being left on the table with actual customers.

After creating a full profile for your fictitious customer, you should analyze the most common point-of-entry into your sales process. If most of your customers are contacted initially by your sales team, for example, it will not be of very much help to be in the small percentage of customers who initiate contact. In this case, you will need to generate a lead which gets into the hands of your sales team and begin the process from there.

If your customers purchase directly online, by phone, or in-person, you should test all of these points of entry. Take note of the differences in the customer experience, if any important steps are left out of an individual method, which point of entry moved along with the least resistance, and the method you would prefer if you were an actual customer of your business.

To gain the full benefit of this exercise, you must simulate the process as authentically as possible. By engaging in the full experience of a customer of your own business, you will gain valuable insight which can be used to enhance the customer experience and improve the effectiveness of your CRM implementation.

After your experience, you should be able to identify:

• Any points which can be consolidated or eliminated, shortening the time it takes to close a sale.
• Opportunities for upsell.
• Opportunities left on the table.
• Points where customers can easily exit the sales process.
• Potential roadblocks to closing the sale.

Whenever possible, you should try to recreate the exercise and see if the same problems or strengths recur. This exercise builds a strong foundation for improving your customer relationships and provides valuable data on improving the ROI of your CRM implementation through increased revenue.

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