A quarter of firms admit to having lost customers due to ineffective use of customer relationship management systems, according to a new survey this week from Microsoft.

The survey of 100 sales directors found that many sales teams do not use CRM properly with 72 percent of respondents claiming they tolerate inefficient use of the technology and 73 percent refusing to discipline staff for failing to use their CRM software correctly.

Jason Nash, Microsoft Dynamics CRM product manager, said the main cause of the problem lies with traditional CRM systems that are too difficult to use. Almost half of respondents claimed the main reason for not using the technology was that they did not like having to change they way they worked, while 37 percent said they were resistant to new technologies.

Nash argued firms should look to deploy more user friendly CRM systems, that exploit familiar user interfaces.

However, he also admitted that customers must take some of the blame for unsuccessful CRM projects, claiming that many firms had to invest more in training, management and process development to accompany CRM deployments and ensure the systems are used effectively.

"Firms will spend money on the system and then cut back on the user training until they end up with a solution that is sub-optimal," he said. "Any firm deploying CRM needs to understand what they are deploying it for, ensure it benefits the people using it, and measure how people are using it."