The big idea

How well do you treat your customers? Do you have a strategy for customer loyalty? In their research in 2001, Gartners found that less than 10% of the businesses they reviewed had a single, integrated view of their customers. Not having this customer-centric approach can be costly in terms of customer loyalty and profitability, particularly as customer expectations grow.

Purpose

The purpose of the customer relationship management (CRM) maturity checklist is to enable you to consider where your business is located in terms of its customer focus. It is primarily aimed at SME to larger organisations. If you are a micro-business or sole trader, you can adapt the various headings to make them more appropriate to your circumstances. CRM is crucial whatever scale and whatever sector you operate in. The maturity model looks at three interrelated areas:

• Process – marketing, sales and support
• People – who is involved and how they are organised
• Technology – infrastructure and applications

The Tool

This tool provides you with a template to analyse how customer-centric your business is. Complete the template to see where your business scores well and what might need improving. The tool is aimed at SMEs and larger organisations but it could be adapted for very small businesses. It should be completed by all those people with responsibility for customer service and may require additional research.