Using Personality & Horoscopes in enriching CRM

Let me start by asking some very simple questions to all the readers - how many of you believe in
Astrology? or to make it more objective, let me put it as how many of you read your daily/weekly
horoscope?

Does some basic traits of our personality could be attributed to our birth date and the place of birth?
Though to get the records straight, even I do not follow this blindly but still I have found out that
one's personality and sun-sign could be related by at least some common traits, if not all.  To
validate my point, one can just browse through the internet for materials that provides a basic
personality description according to a birth sun-sign. If one does not trust content on internet, one
can also call on some expert to know about it. I am confident everyone would be able to relate to
some personality traits described by their sun-signs.

Also, how we react in different situations and conversations are governed some what by the
underlying traits. Though, I will also like to add that many other factors also come into play but at a
sub-concious level no one can change it even after external influences.

I believe by now everyone would be thinking that this portal is supposed to be for CRM topics and
not about personality and horoscopes!! But then, I will like to say that a CRM also assists business
users to know more about customers, prospects and other stakeholders. So, it makes sense if a
business user can use these traits to alter their communication accordingly. How much impact this
can create again will depend upon how better CRM can assist in mapping the personality traits.

Now, we arise at the question of what information should organizations have in the system in order
to map personality attributes. I think the least any organization would already have about their
contacts is 'the birth date'. This is more than enough to start mapping the traits. Since a birth date
directly relates to a sun-sign, one can have a third-party application within CRM system to display
the common personality traits directly on to the agent's screen.

Possible implications of having this information readily available:

a. An agent can have an assisted call text based on the personality type. For instance, some people
prefer a straight talk, some like to have an informal talk and thus the communication could be
altered in order to better engage with the customer.

b. Some customers would be pleased by monetary benefits while some are pleased only if basic
services met their expectations. Hence, the services can be aligned accordingly to increase customer
satisfaction index.

c. The traits could be also used as an input to recommending intelligent offers and products. A basic
working is to do a analysis on mapping already accepted products/offers with the personality type
which can help in future recommendations. Since CRM systems already keep track of a customer's
past purchase and the accepted offers, one can try to measure the degree of correlation between a
sun-sign, personality patterns with types of product/offer.

To make a more strong argument in favor of using personality attributes, let's look at a possible
scenario: 
'Extroverts' are mainly those people who are more outgoing in nature and want to always stay in the
limelight. Thus customers who are extroverts are more likely to play a role of a efficient brand
advocate in case they are pleased with the brand. Further, they are also more likely to have more
number of social contacts than someone who is introvert. For a better accuracy, a score range could
be attributed to it like a score of 1 relates to absolute introverts and 5 to absolute extrovets.

Hence, if CRM systems are able to tag customers with a Extroverts/Introverts score, this can help in
shortlisting of influencing customers.

To conclude, this article only gave an insight on the possible useful scenarios but it is purely upto an
organization how they would like to leverage personality and horoscopes within CRM business
processes. May be one can start it on a trial basic with incorprating the most basic personality types
as an enhancement to existing customer data.