Actions Over Objects

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After a few weeks, a customer’s first page of contacts will become static.  Same with tags, lists, and every other object that your CRM supports.  When the data on the first page becomes static, users stop seeing it entirely.

Instead the first page becomes muscle memory on the way to your user’s real actions.

How long do you make your customers wait to load a page of data objects that won’t even register in their minds?  How many extra hoops do they have to jump through to get to the actions they want to take?  How much slower is the process for your biggest customers?

Customers log in to take actions, not objects.  Don’t waste their time showing data objects until you know enough context to show meaningful data.  

Data scales, actions and attention don’t.  You can wage a constant fight to scale your UI, or you can choose Actions over Objects, and avoid the issue entirely.

The C in CRM Grows Unbounded

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There’s no upper limit on the number of Contacts that customers will want to add to your CRM.  Until you can support billions of contacts, there’s always an argument that you should support more.

On the other hand, Relationship and Management options are constrained by the choices you present to your users.  You can’t support everything and need to consider which options make sense for your CRM.  Every option adds complexity and cost to you; and cognitive load on your users.  Adding features often decreases value.

When it comes to contacts, think about what scales.  For everything else, remember that people have limits.

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