Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

Here are a few of the questions and responses.

1. Over the past 10 years what percentage of organizations have measure the ROI from CRM?
Thurlow: 20 percent. According the Thurlow, his estimate is based on the challenges companies have in measuring the often varied objectives across an organization.
Martin: 30 percent. Martin said that executives spend so much time struggling with basics of doing CRM that most haven't gotten as far as measuring it--but they still invest in it because there is increasing optimism for chances of success using CRM.
Wilson: 30 percent. What drives higher ROI is situational by company, he said. In some cases it depends on where a company many have perhaps underinvested in the past.
Gartner analysts said, on average: 24 percent

2. Given that the percentage of SaaS-based CRM deployments in 2008 was 15 percent, what do you think it will be by 2020?
Thurlow: 60 percent, because cloud computing will be much more federated.
Martin: 86.2 percent. What's driving CRM growth now is the sheer increase in number of projects. There is a democratization of CRM because smaller companies now have access to CRM tools that only enterprises could afford in the past, he said.
Wilson: 45 percent. "We all believe that SaaS is a deployment option for customers," he said. The key is strategy first, technology options second. Some companies are still not comfortable having data in the cloud, he noted.
Gartner analysts said, on average: 45 percent
Additionally, analysts predict that 8 percent of CRM deployments in 2020 will be open source. Open source CRM accounted for less than 1 percent of deployments in 2008.

3. What percentage of customer-employee interactions will be driven predominately by real-time analytics in 2020?
Wilson: 60 percent. Wilson is huge believer in this space because having insight and leveraging analytics drives results in sales, in service, and across the organization.
Thurlow: 70 percent. Because of the increase in the use of self-service, customer-employee interaction will focus on tougher issues, so employees need to be informed by analytics to provide a better customer experience.
Martin: Less than 5 percent.
Gartner analysts said, on average: 41 percent

4. What percentage of customer processes will not involve an employee by 2020?
Wilson: 90 percent. When you automate there is a risk of fraud or other problems, but costs saving outweighs that, he said.
Martin: 20 percent on average, but will vary enormously. For example, companies that offer a comprehensive knowledge base will have a higher rate of self-service.
Thurlow: 80 percent. Many commodity processes will be self-service, but high-value, complex services will remain person-to-person. The decision for an organization on what to offer has to be experience-led versus driven by costs.
Gartner analysts said, on average: 59 percent