When It Comes To CRM, User Adoption Is Always A Challenge. Here’s How One Of Our Biggest Clients Pulled It Off

2019 taught one of our biggest clients a lot about what their advisors wanted, how they engaged with software, and what they needed to do, to continue creating value for their customers and communities.

You may have the best possible CRM solution on the market, a deep vertical award-winning software geared to meet your every need. What you will always struggle with is poor user adoption. This is why a Google search throws up thousands of case studies featuring experts, amateurs, and everyone in between, sharing their perspectives on how to tackle this particular problem.

Our client began by identifying the most common challenges that financial services organizations usually face when it comes to boosting user adoption. Trust, for instance, is often an issue because users need to be convinced of the efficacy of a new product or solution. There is also the fear of being monitored, which our client was cognizant of. They also acknowledged the need to work across departments seamlessly.

While these seemed like issues that could easily be managed by bringing a reputed CRM on board, they were aware that barely 40 percent of businesses claim a CRM adoption rate of 90 percent or more. They had specific challenges of their own, such as limitations within reporting functionality, the volume of custom fields, coordination issues with the final 10% of migrations, and training.

Many of our clients have noticed that the biggest challenge is every team wants something different. This is expected, but still difficult especially when some requests are odd. What most of our clients do is evaluate the pros and cons of all requests carefully. For example, a large team recently wanted specific functionality that wouldn’t be considered important for all users. So, our clients simply offered an option to turn it on and left it off for other teams. Ultimately, user adoption is boosted when one can explain the market value of a solution and communicate constantly. Our client held training sessions, went on road trips, and took the concept of continuous support very seriously. They also tracked the way customers used their tools.

At NexJ, we have learned a lot of things about user adoption over the years, starting with the fact that our customers don’t always want change. Sometimes, specific CRM tools hamper adoption; at other times, there is a marked preference for functionalities offered by some solutions that others don’t offer. As global pioneers with a long-established principles-led approach to delivering leading performance, we know best practices alone don’t lead to success. We follow them, of course, but also make sure we convey benefits, drill down the process with rigorous training, offer the right mix of personalization and simplification, and ensure our CRM is scalable as well as flexible.

We asked this specific client if they had any words of advice for financial organizations struggling with user adoption. Their response: Train, train, train. It should never stop, and makes all the difference. Today, they are proud to have an adoption rate of between 85 and 90 percent, primarily because of how they have implemented change and trained their users. By the end of 2019, they completed their migration project, increased firm-wide adoption with a total adoption rate of 85 percent, and saw a 40% reduction of defects since 2018.

If you have questions about integration, boosting user adoption, or getting the most out of your investment, why not give NexJ a call?