Planting and Replanting the CRM Seed

Regardless of the business, business problems often can be solved by improving communications. That is certainly true in my business, the information-distribution business. It is also true in the complex world of BSS/OSS, your business.

In my business, when a significant effort suffers from flawed communications, the result is usually frustration, finger-pointing and anger. Yes, emails fly that would have been better left unwritten. Then, when enough of us have calmed down, we look at process, make a few tweaks, clarify responsibilities and try again. Usually, we can fix our problems without too much damage, at least damage that the outside world would notice.

In your business, the consequences of flawed communications can be far more serious. Communications problems lead directly to revenue leakage or to customers heading for the exits.

As bad as revenue leakage is, unhappy customers are the third rail of the BSS/OSS profession these days. Touch that third rail, and you’re fried.

B/OSS discusses the latest ideas, developments and challenges in CRM in a special digital issue. The digital issue is free, requiring only a few seconds to register and download.

B/OSS Editor-in-Chief Tim McElligott, who wrote most of the issue himself, notes in his Editor’s Letter that network engineers and call-center supervisors historically did not communicate.

As McElligott, a fine writer who takes his prose dry, wryly notes: “It’s an old and seemingly insolvable conundrum that the two most important operational elements of a service provider’s business are controlled by people and systems that don’t talk to each other. For a long time, it didn’t really matter…. Well it matters today."

The digital issue is devoted to an exposition of why CRM matters today. In fact, the digital issue makes a powerful case that CRM is more important today than ever, and that it is getting more important by the day. But the coverage is not just descriptive. There are solutions and the issue compiles prescriptive ideas well worth your attention. McElligott’s reporting points the way to a better future for an industry that, for too long, has not paid sufficient attention to CRM.

CRM is to the service provider industry what seed is to the farmer. The farmer reaps what he or she sows, not something else.

McElligott argues that the time has come for the BSS/OSS profession to re-examine CRM and take another look at the quality of its seed – or needlessly risk a harvest of nasty consequences.

Download your free copy of the digital issue entitled “CRM’s Second Act" here.

Email me at llannon@vpico.com or click on the Comment button below.