Situation: Encumbered by geographical, legal, and strategic differences, the regional member companies of the Stentor Alliance stood in danger of falling behind their competition in services to the largest enterprise customers.

What we did: By adopting a national customer focus, we brokered an overhaul of the national sales and service strategy. Corporate divides and differences were carefully respected internally, but became invisible to the marketplace. Customers received a seamless sales and operational experience across nine provincial territories, enjoying uniform messaging, branding, and consistent service.

Bottom line: $2-billion enterprise market was protected from attrition to the competition.

Lessons learned: By a dogged focus on customers, operational barriers can be brought down, enabling seamless customer service and transferring the benefits directly to the bottom line.

Situation: A rapidly expanding company, GotMarketing found itself managing a growing customer base with increasingly complex expectations of personalized service.

What we did: All customer-facing operations were integrated in a CRM system, which automated leads and sales management, customer service, billing, and reporting. Using mass personalization techniques, we added automation to the customer experience. In response to key triggers in the customer lifecycle, we enabled just the right amount of support at the right time and in a way that was most meaningful to each customer. Employing the same CRM techniques, sales efforts were focused and maximized.

Bottom line: 11% conversion rate from unqualified prospects to customers. 6-fold increase in revenue and customer numbers in one year.

Lessons learned: Companies can continue providing exceptional personalization of sales and service even when they outgrow their ability to deal with each customer individually.

Situation: Hundreds of targeted product initiatives in Bell Canada, costing more than $500 million a year, dictated the need for a simple set of executive measures to enable project to project comparisons. Key issues: ultimate success with the target customers and the impact on the bottom line.

What we did: By setting a standard scorecard of financial, risk and strategic drivers, we ensured that all targeted initiatives were measured by the same benchmarks. Careful tracking of project results after the launch provided further valuable metrics. This simplified and clarified project prioritization and ensured early elimination of costs sunk into potentially dead end initiatives.

Bottom line: Productivity improved by 20%, time to market on priority initiatives shortened by 42%.

Lessons learned: Measure everything you do. The backbone of a long term CRM strategy is a set of concise meaningful executive metrics, which allow you to compare initiatives, track results, avoid repeating mistakes, and build on past successes.