David´s Quest — how a CRM tool made him start thinking, in systems.
When back in Colombia this Christmas, I met up with David who recently took over a realtor business and who was telling me about the business challenges he has been facing in transforming a very long-standing, traditional but severly struggeling business. His main challenge being, how compartementalized systems and processes resulted in siloed operations and a severe lack of communication.
As we at the Systemic Design Group believe that value of interaction, context awareness and responsiveness are key drivers to success in our post-industrial age, this made me curious.
How come that in a relatively small structure of a few dozen employees, customers were complaining about the lack of follow-ups? Why is no one picking up the batton and why so many errors?
What was happening where David to me appeared to be such a driven and at the same time reflected entrepreneur? An entrepreneur who, from the start, did not seem to see the business as seperate, discrete elements?
Yet slowing sales and a drop in operating margins were the most imenent consequences David experienced — so, time to look at the business challenges in a new way. The quest: how to radically improve the customer experience and go full circle when addressing customer challenges.
Time to look at the business as a holistic system of interdependent processes which do not only affect eachother but the system as a whole — and in a larger context. Like Apple did, with the iPod:
“ (…) It is not about the iPod; it is about the system. Apple was the first company to license music for downloading. It provides a simple, easy to understand pricing scheme. It has a first-class website that is not only easy to use but fun as well. The purchase, downloading the song to the computer and thence to the iPod are all handled well and effortlessly. And the iPod is indeed well designed, well thought out, a pleasure to look at, to touch and hold, and to use. Then there is the Digital Rights Management system, invisible to the user, but that both satisfies legal issues and locks the customer into lifelong servitude to Apple (this part of the system is undergoing debate and change). There is also the huge number of third-party add-ons that help increase the power and pleasure of the unit while bringing a very large, high-margin income to Apple for licensing and royalties. Finally, the “Genius Bar” of experts offering service advice freely to Apple customers who visit the Apple stores transforms the usual unpleasant service experience into a pleasant exploration and learning experience.”
Well, David´s business is not an Apple — so how does thinking in systems benefit his business? How does his business become more responsive, more resilient to the changes the realtor business is facing due to the digital transformation? How do David and his team assess the larger context? Understand their system and its interdependencies?
In our strategic (in all honesty: poolside!) dialogue we used the CRM tool as an example of how to potentially better anticipate change, how new ways of (systems) thinking (and doing!) will impact the customer experience.
In a traditional way you would look at a CRM tool to get you sales team from A. e.g. tracking sales pipelines and organizing contacts, notes and follow-ups to B. e.g. a higher lead-conversion.
So how about C., or D. … how about asking yourself, how the rest of the team, how other workflows, are affected? Can e.g. everyone leverage the CRM to track interactions with the customers? Who are we tracking anyway? Where are our boundaries? So what does this mean for our branding and marketing efforts? Can Marketing access the tool as freely and openly as the Sales team? Who else needs to get involved and, again, how does this affect how we organise ourselves with the ecosystem in mind and e.g. the prospect in the center?
Systems thinking is creative — it is intelligence at play.
What are the root causes for the challenges David is experiencing? E.g. is the drop in operating margins truly a sales problem or rather due to the (system-wide) challenge of retaining customers? Are they looking at all, the right actors in the system? Is the drop in operating margins due to the fact how prospects are being handled and how the customer life-cycle is actually not a (full) circle?
David is comitted to embark on a more systematic journey to find out. Seeing the whole picture, for and with everyone. Encouraging feedback and co-creatively contextualizing, in a potentially new role as a lateral leader who curates and moderates, David seeks to increase engagement, sense of responsibility and to ultimately design his organization for participation and responsiveness.
Suerte (Good luck), David!
What are the challenges your organisation is facing and how do you feel thinking and designing in systems will benefit you? We are curious to find out! Please drop us a line at hello@systemicdesign.group — be in touch and thank you for reading!
