A relationship-management assessment tool: Questioning, identifying, and prioritizing critical aspects of customer relationships

Abstract

With customer-relationship management (CRM) no longer a buzzword among trendsetters, organizations in all types of industries initially rushed to embrace it. Although a seductively attractive concept, the implementation of CRM proved difficult, however, and organizations are struggling with realizing their vision of a CRM organization. To help managers assessing the stage of relationships between their organization and the organization's business customers we consider the automotive industry. Based upon our case organization and its relationships with numerous business customers we develop a practical tool to question, identify, and prioritize critical aspects of customer-relationship management. First, we identify key areas in CRM. Secondly, we investigate how the chosen case organization has managed each of these key CRM areas over a broad range of business-customer relationships. Thirdly, we acknowledge that many organizations simultaneously have different types (transaction-relationship continuum) of business customers. We finish the article with a discussion of the study's limitations, and suggest avenues for future research. D

Exploring the Success Factors of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems in the Telecommunication Sector in Saudi Arabia

“…Data warehousing's role is similarly significant because it enables customer data to be merged, managed, correlated and transformed into forms and formats that allow for the easy analysis and identification of customer behaviour. By using technology, a company can combine its customer information into an up-to-date and comprehensive database [19], [23]. Given that technology is regarded as one of the main components of CRM system [24], the role of technology is widely accepted in the literature, and technology issues have been reported as being among the causes of CRM failure [21].…”

Step-Change: Micro-Entrepreneurs’ Entry into the Middle-Class Market

“…These relationships take time to be built and also require time to be maintained, highlighting the importance of their management (Gummesson, 1987). As long as those business activities are profitable to both parties in the relationship (entrepreneurs and stakeholders), the relationship can progress from transactional to relational with an increasing involvement and mutual commitment of the parties (Lindgreen, Palmer, Vanhamme, & Wouters, 2006). It is therefore up to entrepreneurs to dynamically manage their relationships with stakeholders to attain the desired state (transactional or relational).…”

Proposing a customer knowledge management model for customer value augmentation: A home appliances case study

“…However, today transaction marketing (product, price, place and promotion, the 4 Ps) is not suffi cient anymore. 8 Consequently, relationship marketing is proposed to fulfi l the new needs of businesses in today ' s totally different business environment. In comparison to transaction marketing, relationship marketing develops more unique relationships with customers and adds more value to goods and services.…”

“…In comparison to transaction marketing, relationship marketing develops more unique relationships with customers and adds more value to goods and services. 8 One of the prominent constituents of relationship marketing is value. In addition, providing superior value to customers is considered as one of the most successful competitive strategies.…”

“…As Lindgreen et al 8 stated, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is ' the management of relationship marketing ' . In fact, as Chan et al 7 defi ned, CRM can be considered as ' a philosophy that anticipates customer needs with the purpose of providing the target customers with the right product, at the right time, in the right place ' .…”