Customer Relationship Management: A look at the Krusty Krab

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a complex topic. Today you will find countless books, articles, and schools offering degrees in CRM. Such a complex topic cannot be summed up in one simple blog post, even with a required minimum of 600 words. To save time and maximize the transference of knowledge I am going to look at an example of the greatest training video of all time; a training video so far ahead of it’s time that generations of children will watch with bloodshot eyes, their sugary breakfast cereals forgotten on the floor as the overwhelming face of knowledge clouds their minds with truth. I speak, of course, of the Krusty Krab Training Video.

The firsts step in creating an excellent customer experience is training your employees on which attitude to have toward their customers. Please examine the following example.

Like a gold minor dying of dysentery in the old west, allow me break down the golden nuggets of information hidden amongst the fools gold:

1. One popular tool in Customer Relationship Management is the CRM Software, otherwise known as Customer Relationship Management Software. Many people believe that CRM Software is a silver bullet that will say the logistical vampire that continues to disrupt their sales. This is not the case. Watch the KKTV from (1:40-2:25). As you can see, the many technological improvements that Mr. Krabs has implemented into the Krusty Krab have not changed the customers’ relationship with the restaurant. As the Narrator says, “if modernization is the heart of the Krusty Krab, then employees are the liver and gallbladder. ” So lets examine the Liver and Gallbladder.
2. Watch from (2:25-2:57). What did you notice? Were there any red flags? How about the “I really wish I weren’t here right now” button. Training employees to speak and interact with customers is an important step in maintaining a good customer relationship. Some employees are not meant to speak to customers, their attitude is not conducive to that activity. Here is an article from MindFlash.com detailing some of the poor attitudes that people can take with customers. Notice that #5 is the “It’s not my job” attitude, also known as the “Am I getting paid to film this dumb video Mr. Krabs?” attitude. Let’s examine an interaction with the customer.
3. Watch (5:50-6:45). You will encounter times when a customer is frustratingly slow. Rarely does a customer know what they want, and it is even rarer for them to ask directly for it. Gathering Requirements for software is like pulling teeth, the customer needs it done but doesn’t want to take the time to have them pulled, in fact, they don’t think they need them pulled. The best way to handle this situation is to grab your metaphorical pliers and anticipate the customer’s needs.
4. Any company can sell a product, very few can anticipate a customer’s needs. Jeremy Watkin, a writer about customer experience, once tweeted, “It’s one thing to sell a product to a customer.  It’s an entirely different thing to anticipate the needs of the customer and tell them everything they will need in order to do the job right.” In the KKTV, the simple example of P.O.O.P. shows us just how simple it can be to anticipate a customer’s needs. When you scale up the complexity to a company like Amazon with thousands of products and millions of unique customers, anticipating customer needs becomes more difficult. This is where market research and AI technologies can really help.

I hope you enjoyed the KKTV.