A Revised Model that Enhances CRM Operations for a Shipping Line Company: A Case Study.

AuthorElkhouly, Sayed M. ElSayed
PositionCase study

INTRODUCTION

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is premised on the belief that developing a relationship with customers is the best way to get them to become loyal and that loyal customers are more profitable than non-loyal customers. Reichheld, Teal, and Smith (1996) have argued that a company can achieve significant increases in profits from only small improvements in customer retention rates. The strategy is to engineer increased customer retention, often with strategies labeled as CRM or Customer Loyalty Marketing. Research indicates that these schemes are generally liked by customers.

CRM systems has now been heavily invested in by organizations to better engage with customers, however, according to Kim and Kim (2009), CRM failure rates are over 70%. This is due to the wide scope of the application which creates resistance from the users to cope with the system.

A company using CRM has to take into consideration the following questions: is the product easy to use?; will staff resist implementation?; how much work will it take to deploy?; will staff ever embrace it, or will they use it grudgingly? To answer these questions, a customization was applied to the system so it can be effectively used.

RESEARCH PROBLEM

Successful development, implementation, use and support of customer relationship management (CRM) systems can provide a significant advantage to the user. A study was applied on the end-user satisfaction of CRM systems in a logistics environment in order to know the areas that have shortages in the system.

But, often there were some barriers that obstruct the user from using the system to its full potential:

* Instances of CRM attempting to contain large groups of data, which makes it difficult to understand for an ill-trained user.

* Additionally, an interface that is difficult to navigate or understand can hinder the CRM's effectiveness, causing users to pick and choose which areas of the system to be used, while others may be pushed aside.

* This fragmented implementation can cause inherent challenges, as only certain parts of the system are used and the system is not fully functional.

* The increased use of customer relationship management software has also led to an industry-wide shift in evaluating the role of the developer in designing and maintaining its software.

An interview was conducted with the managing director of a logistics company and interview questions and answers were as follows:

  1. What was the main driver that encouraged you to think of building a customized model? A huge investment was made in the CRM system and the return on investment (ROI) wasn't meeting our expectations, so we never felt any benefits from the system in comparison to the investment made.

  2. What made you think that building a customized model would solve the current problem? A study will be made on the other systems operating in the company and users will be part of building the customized model in accordance with the management, which will probably help overcome problems in the old model. And also participation of users in the early stages will help overcome the double work problems that used to exist in the old model.

  3. What is your complaint about the system compared to other systems operating in the company? The interface of the other systems was much more user friendly, and there were not so much data to be inserted, which consumes so much time from the team

  4. What are your expectations from the customized model? The system should focus on monitoring sales work and activities by capturing a feedback from the...

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