The CRM team in Redmond recently surveyed a group of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 users to discover what they liked about the product, how they used it, and what suggestions they had for improvement. Some of you reading this may have participated in the survey—if so, thank you for your feedback. I’d like to share some of the results with you today. Perhaps you’ll find it interesting what CRM customers like you are telling us.
First, we were pleased to learn that CRM 3.0 users are much more satisfied than they were with previous versions. In fact, satisfaction went up over 60%. Another question asked was how much of an improvement 3.0 was over previous versions, and over 60% of respondents said “Huge improvement.” That shows a remarkable focus on the part of the CRM team to listen to customers and address those issues that were the most significant in previous versions.
Another response that we found gratifying is that 53% of business professionals (sales, marketing, customer service, and business executives) reported that CRM was “extremely important” to their company.
Other data points of note include:
Sixty-two percent of business professionals told us they had been using version 3.0 for 10 months or more, and almost 80% for seven months or more, very good for a product that’s only been out for a little more than a year.
• Almost 80% of those surveyed are using the Professional edition, the rest, of course, using the Small Business edition.
• About 55% of users access CRM through the browser client; only about 13% use CRM in offline mode through the Outlook client.
• Seventy-nine percent of respondents are also using Microsoft Office 2003, the latest version at the time of the survey.
• Seventy percent of users in large organizations plan to roll out CRM to additional users in their company in the next six months, with a mean projected number of additional users at nearly 100.
The benefits respondents said they get from using CRM were (in the order of priority):
• Improves communication
• Enhances collaboration
• Integrates with Microsoft Office applications
• Looks and feels similar to Microsoft Office
• Improves personal productivity
• Saves time
• Improves business results
• Produces useful reports
• Projects an impressive image
• Saves money
However, we also heard about some of things you’d like us to improve or add for future releases, including:
• Proposals and quotes
• Sales forecasts
• Customer service resource forecasting and scheduling
• Creating PR and marketing plans
• Developing pricing strategies
• Producing and distributing collateral
• Product performance
• Becoming an “expert” in CRM
Thanks again to those who responded to the survey. The CRM team will continue to use this survey data and other customer feedback to set development priorities and improve the product to meet your needs.