Feature Article: The Powerful Combination Of CRM & EFM

By James Martin, chairman and CEO, Inquisite

Readers of CRM Marketplace likely have a full understanding of the value CRM software provides in gathering and organizing customer data, including purchasing history, preferences and other trends. But what may not be as widely understood today is the complimentary role EFM can play. Think of it this way, where CRM tells the business executive "what" customers have done, EFM uncovers "why" customers act a certain way. It's a powerful combination that helps identify the business operations responsible for creating the highest-levels of customer satisfaction and generating the greatest revenue. Additionally, EFM applications can be a critical early warning system, alerting you to any situation in which a customer is less than happy, providing valuable time to remedy the situation and save the customer relationship.

EFM applications trace their roots back to paper surveys, which evolved to diskette-based survey delivery and finally to online, Internet-based survey software. This evolution was driven by the shortcomings of the ad-hoc, one-off manner in which organizations historically used surveys. Too often, one division inside a company would be ignorant of the survey efforts being undertaken by another division. The result was an over-sampling of customers; the creation of silos of information, with various departments unaware of the existence of valuable customer data in the possession of other departments; an inability to correlate employee performance with customer satisfaction; and the total lack of integration between survey data and other business application data, such as that delivered by CRM software.