Design Thinking - The new resolution to design

In week 10, Rob discussed the emerging role called 'Design Thinking' and its connection to CRM development and use.

First of all, the term Design Thinking can be defined as a design strategy that would allow realignment of needs between both individuals and companies. The concept is very simple, where it would greatly rely on empathy that is placing yourself (designer) into the customers' shoe.

The importance of empathy can be seen in many types of organizations (from hospital to furniture) where the designer should opt in understanding what the customers' really feel and what do they really need and design something that would target their needs and wants.

An interesting example was presented in a TED conference, where the answer of the question "What is our patients experience?" does not require a complex graphs, Data Flow Diagram, Flow Charting, and/or other complex drawings but instead it should give visualization on how the patients really feel when they are hospitalized and unable to move. From the findings, it appears that patients tend to look at hospital ceilings when they are hospitalized. This may be very simple findings and require very simple solutions, such as: re-decorate the ceilings, re-decorate the hospital floor to make it feel more comfortable. This small solutions could make huge amount of impact to the company. The needs of both customers and companies are addressed thus creating a win-win situation.

When 'Design Thinking' is applied to enhance the development and use of Customer Relationship Management, it is important that company should view it through the lens of both employees and customers.

Employees

Why employees? simply because they are the one who will utilize the system. The needs of individual employees should not be ignored. For an example, the designer should put himself in the employees' shoe. If I am in Sales Department what would I want my dash board to be like? say the employee would like to have sales figures yearly to be displayed on the front page of the CRM software. This of course differs to the expectations and needs of other employees working in other departments.

Salesforce.com, one of online CRM vendor provides an exceptionally amazing approach as it enables its users to customize their page according to their needs and wants.

That simple approach to design in my opinion is very critical due to the fact that people in different departments are most likely to analyze different things. They may based their analysis on one source data but what they analyze would be different to each other. Thus, providing them with a flexible software that would enable them to perform their tasks effectively can be seen as vital.

Customers

Why customers? the target of organizations CRM activity is Customers. and the main issue with customers is that they are very aware of Privacy issues. It is important that organizations must acknowledge and understand that there are different types of customers in the market. There is one that would divulge the information presented to the organization, there is one that would refuse the collection of personal information, and there is one that would happily provide information to the organizations as long as there is clear benefit for them in doing so.

Understanding of these types of customers and linking business strategies to meet their expectations can be seen as vital to the effectiveness of CRM strategy as it would help the organization in capturing the essential information about the customers that would assist long-term relationship maintenance and thus boost the organizations' profitability in the industry.

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