Lavendar keeps it simple in new CRM product launch Maria Nguyen
A constant criticism of customer relationship management (CRM) systems is that they fail to live effectively outside of the IT department.
Now, direct marketing agency Lavender has launched a new system it says will close the technology and marketing gap that has long been blamed for the failure of many existing CRM systems to live up to their promises.
Called Simplicity, Lavender’s CRM product allows marketers to keep track of all customer interactions—whether via phone, email, SMS, fax, online, mail or face-to-face—through a single web-based interface so marketers and sales staff can instantly pull up a comprehensive view of all customers’ activities and how they were followed up. If a customer gets a quote over the phone and then turns up at an outlet the next day, for example, the branch staff can immediately pull up their details and know exactly their interaction record.
According to George Patterson’s managing director of Direct and CRM, Douglas Nicol, current CRM systems fail to operate effectively in a business context and also fail to deliver consistently measurable results.
“Separate divisions in an organisation—like the IT, marketing, and sales departments—can also create barriers to holistic customer relationship management,” Nicol says. “This means that CRM tends to live within IT and so becomes a clinical exercise. But managing and building relationships requires emotions so there needs to be a balance of having a right and left brain approach.”
Lavender founder Will Lavender believes many CRM providers give “PowerPoint presentation promises” of what their systems can deliver, but which can fall short when the theory is put to daily practice”.
