Customer Relationship Management (CRM) typically involves tracking individual customer behavior over time, and using this knowledge to configure solutions precisely tailored to the customers' and vendor needs. Although the concept and technology of CRM are barely old, there is already feeling among clients that it may not live up to its promise. The perceived lack of delivery has its roots in three areas:

• Organisations who were keen to replicate the apparent successes of the earliest adopters, did not subject the idea to a rigorous business case. Because CRM worked well for a competitor, it was assumed that it would work equally well for them.
• CRM often is concentrated on creating a dialogue with customer through trial and error, rather than on a single, operational deliverable, and this left a significant roster of operational issues still to address.
• Sometimes low quality of services provided by outsourcing contact centres and vendors.

Our experience shows that at present there are still issues in integration into existing systems and processes. The challenge is to develop more specific applications of the CRM concept and apply intelligent analytics to the collection of data, information and knowledge. This aims to suit a client’s unique set of circumstances, rather than assuming that one size of CRM fits all.