Don’t just create three or four customer personas. Build profiles that reach across dimensions, time and transactions. Map customer interactions and attitudes to provide sales and marketing teams with thorough customer data that allows the team to build quality messages and relationships.

2. Using data to document the past, rather than predict the future

Knowing where you’ve been is important, and it can tell you how you’re doing with current customer relationships and sales. However, a CRM system that only documents past customer actions isn’t showing you the most valuable piece of the data picture: what’s next. Companies need to get predictive with their customer data to encourage customer action and help them on their journey.

Instead Ask: What do my customers’ actions today say about what they will do tomorrow?

Don’t just set key performance indicators. Establish key predictive indicators and build them into the CRM process to aggregate customer data and extrapolate their behavior into useful, applicable actions. This can lead to helping customers make decisions and even improve brand loyalty.

3. Implementing a CRM that doesn’t fit with how employees actually do their jobs

If you don’t take your employees into consideration, then instead of empowering them, your CRM will become a hindrance. They won’t see the value and will resent attempts to get them to use it, which impacts their relationship with the company and affects productivity, engagement and ultimately customer satisfaction.

Instead Ask: What is a day in their life? How can we better enable them?

Do you really understand your employees? Most often, CRMs are implemented as tracking mechanisms to monitor internal employee productivity. Ideally, a CRM system should be a salesperson’s best friend, providing them with the information they need to engage and build relationships with their customers. Focus the CRM on the customer data that your employees really need and the sales numbers will follow.

4. Implementing a CRM that is siloed or single purpose

Many CRM systems collect quality raw data; however, that isn’t what makes or breaks customer relations. What really hurts companies is a lack of integration for sharing customer information between departments. Disconnected data is the often overlooked, silent killer of business that frustrates customers and lead them to seek out a competitor.

Instead Ask: What do we really know? Who knows it?

From sales to customer support, streams of data are flowing into companies’ CRM systems constantly. But how much of that data automatically transfers with customers as they continue onto their next steps? There are many solutions for pairing data with customers on their journey, but the initial step is to understand where all the data is, as well as which pieces are relevant, and to whom, in order to build an fully-integrated system.

5. Not connecting the CRM to the big picture strategy

This is less about what a company can do for customers, and more about what they can do for your business. If a CRM system is not connected to the company’s big picture strategy, you may be collecting irrelevant information about customers and not maximizing potential relationship building opportunities. Customers can provide insights and feedback if you tailor your interactions around the big picture strategy for overall business improvements. Remember, you don’t get what you don’t ask for.

Instead Ask: Where are we going? Who do we aspire to be?

To achieve the big picture strategy, companies need to look at the intersection of what your customers need and what you have to offer for the relationship to be mutually beneficial. Ask questions such as, “Do our customers impact where we want the company to go?” or “Are we collecting the right data and tracking the best metrics for future growth?” By asking these types of exploratory questions, companies can drill down and focus on success rather than get bogged down by irrelevant CRM data.