I recently read a fantastic article from MITSloan Management Review called Why CRM Fails - and How to Fix It. In the article, the authors Stan Maklan, Simon Knox​ and Joe Peppard, not only outline many of the reasons large CRM efforts fail but draw out lessons from successful CRM solutions. They suggest that "...the starting point for profitable CRM investment lies in developing marketing capabilities in advance of major capital investments in resources, particularly CRM technologies. " To develop these marketing capabilities the authors referenced an example from Flutter, a web-based betting site, where understanding their customers was to "...not merely know about consumer behavior - they knew their consumers." Another example from BMW (UK) described a company that "traditionally relied upon survey data to know about consumers, rather than knowing their consumers".

How Well Do You Know Your Customer?

I love that quote about not simply knowing their customer's behavior but knowing their customers. In the article, they talk a little about how Flutter went about making that distinction and how they filled the gaps in their knowledge. It's an excellent place to start when evaluating how much your organization truly knows about your consumer and if it's the right information for building a relationship. There are many approaches for sifting and filtering through data to surface consumer insights and preferences. One recommendation I have, especially after reading this article, is establishing a baseline of consumer knowledge then expanding upon it to answer questions, including:

• What do you need to know about your consumer? Not all data is critical to understanding your customer. What elements - geography, age - are necessary to help you build a better relationship with your customer?

• How much of this critical consumer detail do you have? How big are your gaps in information? Do you have this information but a random method of organizing consumer details makes it difficult to use.

• How much of your audience is online, uses social media or prefers email? Although, we like to believe social media is pervasive and ubiquitous, only 12% of the world population is on Facebook, 8-9% is on Twitter. Find out where your customer engagement points are - go where your customers are.

• Do you have a data source where this information is currently stored but not yet analyzed? In what format is this information? How is information currently collected and stored? Is it text-based, like chat transcripts or survey answers?

This isn't an exhaustive list but establishing what you do know about your consumer and what you would like to know can help guide not only your text analytics efforts but also how you intend to manage and share the results across an enterprise.