Given the important role being played by knowledge management (KM) systems in the current customer-centric business environment, there is a lack of a simple and overall framework to integrate the traditional customer relationship management (CRM) functionalities with the management and application of the customer-related knowledge, particularly in the context of marketing decisions. While KM systems manage an organization's knowledge through the process of creating, structuring, disseminating and applying knowledge to enhance organizational performance and create value, traditional CRM have focused on the transactional exchanges to manage customer interactions. True CRM is possible only by integrating them with KM systems to create knowledge-enabled CRM processes that allow companies to evaluate key business measures such as customer satisfaction, customer profitability, or customer loyalty to support their business decisions. Such systems will help marketers address customer needs based on what the marketers know about their customers, rather than on a mass generalization of the characteristics of customers. We address this issue in this paper by proposing an integrated framework for CRM through the application of knowledge management technology. The framework can be the basis for enhancing CRM development. Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
INTRODUCTIONCRM is one of the hottest tools in business today. But like total quality management and reengineering before it, CRM has not always lived up to its hype (Brown, 2000;Swift, 2001). Still, companies ignore it at the risk of being left behind. Simply, CRM is a high-tech way of gathering mountains of information about customers, then using it to make customers happy-or at least a source of more business. It is therefore, concerned with understanding and influencing customer behavior (Kotler, 2000).One CRM trailblazer was the gaming company Harrah's Entertainment, which has successfully combined software and human marketing expertise to get gamblers into its 25 casinos. Harrah's do a thorough, sophisticated analysis of 24 million customers in their database. Harrah's know-how frequently customers come, what they play, and they then provide follow-up with continuous communication over the phone, direct mail and e-mail and on their Web site. It allows Harrah's to be participatory rather than being simply reactive. Their technologists refer to it as CRM but their managers refer it as their loyalty program.Although CRM is the fastest-growing business tool satisfaction with its use currently ranks quite low (Winer, 2001 (Zeithaml, 2001). CRM is not necessarily about automating or speeding up existing operational processes; rather, it is about developing and optimizing methodologies to intelligently manage customer relationships. Thus, it is about effectively managing and leveraging customer related information or knowledge, to better understand and serve customers.A true CRM solution design requires a complex combination of many best-of-breed components, including a...
