It’s not obvious to many of us that there is a change in the medical profession. However, I believe that this change will affect nearly all aspects of our lives, including CRM.
In medicine, there is a lot of talk about the transition from Medicine 2.0 to Medicine 3.0. A paradigm shift occurs when you go from X or Y to two, three or even more generally. It’s not surprising that there is a new paradigm shift in CRM. Once you understand what it means, it makes perfect sense.
It doesn’t matter if it is medicine, CRM, or another field, the shift is from a fix-it mentality to a focus on root causes. Peter Attia’s book “Outlive: the Science and Art of Longevity”, by Peter Attia M.D., got me thinking.
Attia says we’re good at setting a broken bone or eliminating an infection, and we are even getting better at eliminating cancer — and for some cancers and chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes, various interventions and drugs are giving sick people the chance to continue living a normal life. Great.
It’s important to note what is not said about Medicine 2.0. We should be able prevent chronic diseases, rather than treating them after they are fully developed. Accidents happen, so it makes sense to treat a broken bone. Wearing a helmet on a bicycle or a seatbelt is not enough. Medicine 2.0 will always be needed. In order to treat chronic illnesses, it is best to eliminate the causes. This is Medicine 3.0.
Unintended Consequences CRM 2.0
Today, CRM is dominated by a 2.0 mentality. Not always, but largely. We are always looking for ways to reduce churn, and increase retention. Too often, CRM is used to ignore customer issues. I’ve noticed, for example, a disturbing trend where we use our technology to reject customers who don’t want the standard.
We’re already doing a great job at pushing customers to our website, where there is no help available, or leaving them on the phone. We also survey customers, but I’ve found that the bad reviews don’t get followed up.
Recently I found out that it is not possible to cancel certain subscriptions Unless I complain to my credit-card company, who then claws back the payment that a seller prevented me from cancelling. You may have noticed that many car dealers raise their prices beyond the MSRP and that they often forget to return phone calls that could threaten their bottom line.
Salesforce’s Push to Ethical CRM
Salesforce is promoting a CRM culture that promotes ethics.
Salesforce has three main axes for assessing customer health: product adoption and expertise. They also consider technical health. And their innovation is to break these down into smaller areas and score them out of 10. Salesforce presented this approach at Dreamforce. The company now promotes and adds detail.
Adoption involves more than a simple enterprise license. Are people actually using the products? Can you still benefit from the products if half of your sales team still uses spreadsheets at a basic level?
The ability to use apps to create reports, add fields and change functionality is what makes your team experts. Is everyone properly trained?
Technical health is a broad term. How optimized is your implementation in its core? Sometimes we use tools in an unoptimal manner. You might find that a bottle-opener is a good screwdriver when you need it, but not for the whole company. Periodic technology audits can be a great idea. These audits help you ensure that you are doing things the right way.
The CRM system is responsible for much of the bad 2.0 behavior, at a moment when we want vendor relationships 3.0. AI won’t solve the problem. AI can be used in a positive or negative way, say some of my coworkers.
Upgrade to CRM 3.0
To put it simply, I believe that a new ethical approach to business will be required in order to reach CRM 3.0. CRM vendors such as Salesforce are trying to spread the idea.
It is possible that an ethics module would be added to Trailhead. Or, an ethics movement based on the 1-1-1 charitable model might take root.
A pledge to be ethical could influence purchase decisions in a world where basic technology is increasingly commodified.
