CRM and Six Sigma (Again, Data Is Critical)

It may be more appropriate to start with details behind actual customer interaction.  As Six Sigma emphasizes, intuition is not data.  Customer Data, how it's collected and how it's managed could be one of the most critical components of a true CRM project.  Many people implement a CRM Software package and never give the right consideration to the information that the solution is dependant on.  For example, how many times and how many different ways has an individual customer been entered into the database?  What about nicknames, aliases, mis-spellings, changed last names, new addresses and so on?   One of the first questions that should be asked, is do you have standards for you data - do you have some words abbreviated while others are spelled out, or abbreviated differently?  How many ways can you enter Pittsburgh?  Software exists to help you create and manage these standards, identify and scrub errors and duplicates, and identify different names that may actually be the same customer (ie: same company or houshold).  If you want to get deeper into it, you can also find tools that will help you identify complex relationships that exist within your customer database.  These types of things will help you to ensure less customer contact errors, omissions of some customers by mistake, or duplication of effort in managing relationships with several different people who may actually all be the same customer.  In short, there are powerful tools out there that help you be more certain that, when dealing with a client, you are dealing with the right person and actually improve your ability to manage the interactions and the relationship.  There is an excellent article at this link:

http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=2177&ml=3

And, there is more good info at http://www/innovativesystems.com

Best of luck!