This approach will be even more important as organizations look to leverage and integrate lightweight, SaaS and Web 2.0-inspired models with deep, SOA and BPM-driven solution frameworks. With these considerations in mind, the following areas are ways that your business can harness the full potential of CRM in 2008 and beyond.

1. Talk to your customers.
Whether via surveys or focus groups, ask customers what they want and how they define "usability" when it comes to self-service applications—often the most important factor in driving adoption of online tools. Look at the top issues or questions being asked, and ask about channel preferences; for example, when do you prefer to reach someone live, and when would you like us to contact you? With better insight into top issues and preferred delivery channels, companies may find that a simple "tuning" or upgrade of their website content, knowledge base or e-mail response system can provide significant improvements without the cost and delay of deploying new systems.

2. Audit your answers.
Between account records, support documents, marketing materials, product documentation, training material, e-mail threads, blog postings, forums and other sources, most companies have an awful lot of information that could help answer customer questions. Yet, it's surprising how little they know about how useful it is, who owns it, how often it's used, and what to do with it when it is inaccurate or out of date. In the end, it's the answer that matters, so a structured content audit can be money well spent, both as a necessary "spring cleaning" for CRM systems and a key step in getting ready to deploy new search, personalization or knowledge management tools.

3. Refresh your metrics.
There are many traditional metrics for measuring the performance of CRM initiatives like call deflection, upsell, average handle time, etc. But as online channels become the primary point of interaction and goals such as loyalty or customer advocacy potentially become more important than achieving additional operational efficiency, there is a need to examine and refresh your metrics. For example, first-call resolution may need to become first-contact resolution to represent e-mail and chat discussions. And handle-time targets in your call center will certainly need to be reset as easier questions get resolved online via self-service, or some agents hold simultaneous e-mail or chat sessions.

4. Embrace SOA.
If you have not already made the connection, a service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach to CRM is increasingly a no-brainer as the distinctions among sales, support and marketing blur, self-service takes off, and new Web 2.0 models gain traction. Not only is SOA a way to more easily access various components that make multichannel CRM work, but it also makes it easier to assemble next-generation "CRM 2.0" solutions from commercial and open-source software components, internal and community-generated content, and even a blend of on-premise and on-demand resources.