12 key tips to successful user adoption
User adoption is vital to any CRM project’s success and I’ve known plenty of highly qualified technical directors and CIOs that, though able to pull the system apart and put it back together with their eyes closed, have a failed CRM solution to their conscience due to the one factor they haven’t controlled – the users!
And, it’s not just high level technical staff that commonly overlook users – financial, sales and marketing senior management all regularly make the same mistake of implementing a perfect CRM system in theory, but forget to involve the people who make it work in practice.
So, to remedy this common pitfall, use the 10 tips below to help you achieve a fantastic rate of user adoption and a return on your CRM investment:
1. Get the actual users involved!
If the staff are happy with the software they’ll be using then you’ve won half the battle. To facilitate this you must ensure users are involved at every stage of the selection and installation of the CRM solution.
By doing this you are actively involving the people who carry out the tasks which make your business tick and which your CRM software will affect the most. If you rely on only senior management, then you may be omitting critical knowledge of your business processes’ finer details and how they function in reality.
2. Ensure all departments are equal
CRM has the ability to revolutionise the entire company, from finance, to customer service to dispatch and more.
When highlighting your key areas of improvement which inform your CRM software choice, reinforce the ideal that all departments are equal in their right to be heard and understood, regardless of size or revenue contribution.
It can happen all too often that a CRM software solution offers an amazing set of features for sales or marketing which can blind management to the fact it has little to offer those in customer service or dispatch.
A good CRM provider will not force you into disproportionate areas of functionality and should be flexible enough to provide all your departments with the tools they need.
3. Plan you data
Though all departments should be involved, be aware that they will all have their very own department-centric approach to CRM and may lack knowledge of the details of other department’s business processes. If you aren’t diligent this can lead to processes conflicting and data not being utilising properly.
A good way of avoiding this problem is mapping out the paths data will take through your various departments’ processes and more importantly how it will flow from one department to the next, in a way which allows everyone to utilise it properly.
4. Target proponents
Within your user groups there may well be people who have had experience with CRM before. Find out who these people are and get them heavily involved in the decision making and give them extra software training.
This allows you to install these people as proponents of the new CRM software, having been motivated by their level of engagement. In addition, due to their extra training they can act as local knowledge holders, speeding up the adoption of the rest of their department.
5. Future proof your system
There are few worse tortures than going through an implementation, which is successful, being adopted and is producing great results, only for a new vital application or piece of technology to come out which the CRM software doesn’t integrate with. Fine examples would be social media and the rise of the smartphone and tablet.
Though it’s impossible to know what’s around the corner, the functionality your CRM vendor can currently provide you with, how long it’s been established and how often they update their software, can provide valuable signs as to whether they are going to be able to keep up with what lies around the corner.
6. Make the sale to your users
Any CRM system you employ should make the lives of your staff easier. You can use time saving features, automation and new processes that make their lives easier as leverage to effectively ‘sell’ the system to users.
7. Training efforts
Don’t fall into the trap of attempting to teach your users everything your new CRM solution has to offer in one intensive burst. A top CRM system will offer a vast amount of functionality as standard, which I find is always much less daunting and easier to learn if the training is broken down into what they need to know and what they would like to know.
By covering the critical information first they will be able to carry out their everyday tasks with ease and by introducing the more advanced features of your CRM software at a later date you are making them far more receptive.
In addition, I promote the idea of producing your own instructional resources. Though all CRM software should have general help directories included, such material is generic and users respond to training material when it’s applied to how you want them to use the software. For example, good CRM systems will let you customise the functionality to fit around your own specific needs, including the changing and editing of labels, which make it more difficult for the user to compare the software’s original instructional materials to the system they use.
8. Keep the key entry points simple
In many cases users will be busy and possibly under pressure when entering data into the CRM. For this reason it is imperative that the initial forms needed for data entry are short and summarised. For example when qualifying a lead, a sales rep won’t take to the system if he or she has to hike through a 20 field ‘paxmanesque’ questionnaire of the lead’s entire history on this earth.
I find a good limit is 5 text fields with a further 5 drop-down, combo box, fields. This will give most departments more than enough data to utilise effectively and allows the user a relaxed amount of time to enter the data needed, plus good CRM solutions will have shortkeys to make life even easier.
9. Get what your company needs not what it wants
Bells and whistles can be useful but can complicate things, especially when included within your CRM software. If the system is too daunting, it will most likely sit unused, resulting in a very expensive waste of time and money.
A decent CRM vendor will allow you to add functionality as and when you have the need and most important, when your staff are proficient and ready to use it. The benefits of a staggered approach are two fold; a graduated introduction encourages staff to become comfortable with the basics before introducing advanced functionality and it ensures avoid paying for functionality you think you may need.
10. Lead by example
The entire senior management team need to be actively using the CRM system. In fact I would suggest giving them extra training and heavily encouraging them to champion the new CRM system, not only in what they say to staff, but through using it in their reporting, emailing, task setting, etc.
11. In it to win it
Combining staff targets with elements of successful CRM adoption act to reinforce the motivation already put in place via the methods outlined thus far.
12. Keep issues open and public
It can sometimes happen that despite participative selection, training and active championing of your CRM software, some will remain derogatory. This can originate from anything – a genuine bug-bear about a particular aspect of unsuitable functionality to resentment at a change of business process.
Regardless of the underlying reason, it’s critical to get these people coming forward openly. If you leave these issues to ferment they can influence new joiners to the company and spread across departments dragging down adoption. By bringing genuine issues with your CRM software into the light you can address it directly and everyone within the department or company can assess its validity, limiting any damage done to user adoption or motivation.
