UX for CRM Solutions

A CRM project will likely entail the purchasing/licensing of applications such as SalesForce.com or Microsoft Dynamics, which we might not be familiar with. Next, the users we are designing for are usually a mix of customers and internal users. The job of the internal users is to positively impact the experience of the customers, but the customer should still be regarded as a direct user as well. Also, defining who owns a CRM may be very difficult. CRM systems may be used by marketers, sales departments, inventory workers, customer support staff and of course both prospective and current customers. Last, we as UX professionals are often blind and/or ignorant as to what is feasible. CRM packages are usually robust platforms that can do many things out-of-the-box, but they are also designed to be very customizable. This make it hard to design because it's hard to even know what is your canvas.

To prepare for such projects, let’s start by breaking this daunting endeavor down by a few categories.

CRM Business Goals

I believe all UX architects, should have a good handle on the business drivers behind every project they are on. In some organizations, you may work with a Business Analyst, a Product Owner or a Strategist. At a minimum, the UX Architect should understand the business/project goals backing the project. Let’s start by getting our arms around a common list of CRM project goals:

1. Generating Leads – CRMs can help generate and track leads through request forms, social networks, and subscription lists.
2. Manage Leads – This is much broader, but CRMs can help marketers and sales professionals plan campaigns, close existing leads, aid in targeting customers segments with relevant follow-up, and they can also provide insights into which marketing campaigns work and which ones don’t.
3. Retain Customers – Customer support may use the CRM solution to track a customer’s support history and follow up with complimentary services. Managers may use insights to better understand why customer are abandoning the website.
4. Other Goals – Improving employee morale, connecting the company, reducing support cost, increasing loyalty, reducing training costs and better delivering cross-channel experiences are all valid goals for a CRM project.

Whatever the goals are, it’s important to understand the goal prioritization and have some notion on how those goals can be achieved. What outputs will generate these outcomes? Is it data integrity, speed of the system, visibility of pressing issues? What data needs to be pushed to the staff and what information needs to be a criterion for a search? What does the system need in terms of data flow, workflow, and automation, to help internal users improve the experience throughout the customer lifecycle?

Persona Categories

I’m a fan in “blue sky” solutions, but I also feel it’s important to have some forethought about what you might expect find. Of course, personas will and should vary from project to project, but it's useful to know kind of personas could be included in your project. Below is a list of some broad persona categories you might find on your CRM project.

1. Potential customers – There might be a variety customer personas that you might have. Potential customers want to know if your products and/or services are a fit, or they may be interested in something you have to offer, such as a white paper.
2. Current customers – You may decide to break this persona(s) out separately or delineate customers by common behaviors they exhibit across the entire customer lifecycle.
3. Marketing and/or Sales manager – There is likely to be a stakeholder who will use the system to gain insights, plan campaigns, and track marketing activities. It's usually important that this manager sees the right kind of dashboards, reporting, trends at a macro level.
4. Customer Support personnel – To provide the best customer support, the team needs to provide a seamless experience even if they have never talked to a given customer before. CRM systems need to give visibility into the customers’ history and arm the support staff with relevant information. The staff may also need to know what issues are affecting many customers and view policies on how to resolve a critical issue.

UX Processes to Emphasize

There are a variety of UX processes that UX professionals may employ such as surveys, various types of interviews, A/B testing, as well as wireframing/designing at varying degrees of fidelity. It’s also important to remember that UX methodologies should be tailored to each project. If time and budget permit, I have listed a few processes that you might consider for your CRM project.

1. Personas – I recommend developing personas emphasizing wants and needs of each persona in distinct scenarios. A CRM is a collection of workflows that involve a wide gamut of scenarios, so it important ensure that personas capture key wants and needs both generally but also situationally. So it’s important to consider the array of scenarios that will come up for each persona.
2. Journey Mapping with Process Flow Diagrams – Usually the main intent of journey mapping is to generate an empathetic view of a customer’s journey interacting with a brand. With a CRM project, it may not be wise to use one persona, “the customer”, to plot out your touchpoints because internal users arguably are more heavily-weighted personas. Therefore, don’t be afraid to create a process flow diagram that involves a variety of users across an entire workflow, rather than focusing only on the customers’ interactions with your products and/or services. Traditionally, a journey map documents the “tip of the iceberg” of a host factors (in the ocean) that manifest itself as a customer’s holistic experience.   Consider the CRM as the ice that is below the waters. 
3. User Interviews- Interview representatives of all the personas. With a CRM the wants and needs of each persona could vary greatly so it’s extremely important to capture the wants, needs, pain points and attitudes of each persona. Direct each internal user participant to consider ways that the system could enable them to serve the customer better at various points in the customer lifecycle. For managers, you might consider what insights do they need to plan better? For customer support, ask them what visibility do they need to make sure a critical customer issue is followed up with. They may be able to search the information, but they may also need alerts or a dashboard view to surface critical issues. Finally, keep in mind, you may need to re-validate your findings with key stakeholders.
4. Wireframes – Depending on how much personalization and security trimming features the CRM offers, you may decide to create a variety of views for important screens. You will likely want to put a lot of emphasis on dashboards, data visualization, findability, and advanced search screens. If your team already has key features written up, make sure your solution accommodates all the features. It’s also a good idea to think of a variety use-case scenarios to ensure your solution is fire-tested. The wireframe phase can be tricky because you will likely not be clear on what is possible, so you will likely want to collaborate with a technical person to create and flesh out wireframes that are feasible.
5. User Testing with Wireframes – The beauty of wireframes is that they allow you to continuously flesh out your solution with rapid cycles because they are easy to edit. Vet your solution out with your team, customers, stakeholders, marketing, sales, and support. If you can’t speak with one of the groups, request for “surrogate users” to act out the behaviors and attitudes of a given user.
6. Work with Your Team – Because of the complexity of a CRM, it's imperative that you don’t try to be a “prima donna”. Ask your technical and business team members questions... a lot of questions.

Final Thoughts

I’d like to leave with some final thoughts on the mindset you want to have:

1. Think Indirectly Serving Customers- A CRM is a tool to attract and retain customers. The customer may have some direct interaction with the tool, but most of interactions of the system is by internal users that have a vested interested in the customer. So, the vital question is how can we provide a tool that will enable the organization to better care for its customers.
2. Think Workflows and Scenarios – Once you understand the workflows and how the organization desires to funnel clients, you will begin to understand what the solution needs to be.
3. Think Right Data at the Right Time – Put a lot of consideration on what data is readily available versus what data is findable. There is a tremendous amount of data that can be used. Your mission is to know what information should be at the forefront, which information will require a drill down, and which information will be available by search.