Running head: CRM
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Discussion Board Forum Four: Customer Relationship Management
Valerie K. Delgado
Liberty University
BUSI 650: Operations Management
Dr. Bob Timmons
CRM
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Discussion Board Forum Four: Customer Relationship Management
Key Concept Explanation
In a world without customers, there is no business, there is no financial performance,
there is no competition. Without customers, businesses simply wouldn’t have the need to exist.
Therefore, the way businesses treat their customers is of upmost importance not only to be
successful, but to be competitive. The idea of customer relationship management (CRM) first
appeared in the 1980’s and has been evolving ever since as the use of technology becomes
greater and greater. Initially we could define CRM as a process that initiates, maintains, and
improves relationships with customers (Chan, Fong, Law, & Fong, 2018) by collecting internal
and external data that ultimately enables to the firm to provide better products and services. As
technological advances continued to take place, CRM began to shift to include the use of internet
forums, websites, and emails. Today firms are feeling the pressure to move towards a more
social customer relationship management (SCRM) by using social media sites such as Facebook
and Twitter to gather insights into customer behavior. It is the idea of SCRM that I am interested
in pursuing throughout the rest of this forum as I believe it is something extremely prevalent in
today’s market and something organizations must adopt in order to continue to be competitive.
Comparison
Customer relationship management (CRM), according to Dewnarain, Ramkissoon, and
Mavondo (2019) is a “strategic business approach underpinned by relationship marketing
theory” (p.172) and can be defined as a “process of acquiring, retaining, and partnering with
selective customers to create superior value for the company and the customer” (p.172). Now
that organizations interact with consumers via internet technologies (Paliouras & Siakas, 2017),
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the relationship organizations have with their customers are being increasingly influenced by the
large community of online social networks (Kantorova & Bachmann, 2018). Kim and Wang
(2019) discuss this new type of customer relationship as integrating customer-facing activities
with social media applications in order to create more collaborative conversations. In social
media networks, the consumers control relationships and have the power to influence others
(Kantorova & Bachmann, 2018) by the ability to exchange information globally and instantly
(Chan, Fong, Law, & Fong, 2018). Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn have become
integral to modern society, changing the way people communicate, share, and co-create loads of
information (Paliouras & Siakas, 2017). This new group of social customers are quickly
becoming influential stakeholders that are empowered to drive firm-related conversations which
in turn has the ability to increase firm performance (Chan, Fong, Law, & Fong, 2018).
Article Summary
Last year, Kim and Wang (2019) set out to determine how to define and measure the
social customer relationship management (SCRM) capabilities due to the rising significance of
social media. “By integrating social media with the existing CRM systems, they can develop
new capabilities for enhancing customer satisfaction and effectively leverage these collaborative,
interactive platforms to manage their customer-relationships” (Kim & Wang, 2019, p.41). They
wanted to know what the capabilities were and why they were important. One of the most
important aspects of SCRM capabilities is that of technology.
Network technology capability is important for a number of reasons because of the
control consumers have over information that is shared with them, how it’s generated, and how
it’s organized (Kim & Wang, 2019). Not only do social networking sites have the ability to
spread electronic word of mouth rapidly, and bring customers together, but they are also used
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widely as “platforms to exchange brand- and product-related information” (Kim & Wang, 2019,
p.42). It is this ripple effect that Kim and Wang (2019) believes can lead to positive social chain
reactions that may aid in determining a firm’s profits. They also found that due to the sheer
nature of technology, users could overcome physical and time gaps through the use of social
media, something Kim and Wang (2019) describe as “personal extensibility capability” (p.43).
Biblical Integration
The use of social media in customer relationship management is still relatively new to a
lot of businesses, but something worth adopting if they wish to remain competitive. Psalm
37:23-24 (NIV) states, “The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though he
may stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.” This verse is a reminder
that running a business can be difficult and challenging in ways one never thought possible, but
God is always there to guide and lift you. This could be easily followed by II Corinthians 12:9-1
(NIV) in which we are reminded that God uses our weaknesses to make us strong and should
therefore look at challenges as ways in which God is teaching us strength.
Application
There are certainly organizations out there who have successfully implemented a social
customer relationship management technique. Burberry and their social fragrance launch as well
as Aurora with in-store iPad usage are just a couple of examples. Burberry’s launch of Burberry
Body was done solely using a custom Facebook app to target their 7.7 million fans to encourage
them to purchase a sample (Saran, 2011). Aurora, a fashion retailer, also engages with customers
via social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, but also brings an engaging experience to
their stores. They give iPads to store employees to encourage more customer engagement.
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Having the iPads on hand allows employees and customers alike to search for product
availability across the UK and place orders for product located in other stores. This type of
customer relationship management aids in reducing sale time and makes the buying experience
simple and more engaging which leads to positive word-of-mouth for the company (Saran,
2011).
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Annotated Bibliography
Chan, I., Fong, D., Law, R., & Fong, L. (2018). State-of-the-art social customer relationship
management. Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 23(5), 423-436.
doi:10.1080/10941665.2018.1466813.
The authors of this literature review recognized the rise of challenges related to social
media when dealing with customer relationship management and therefore studied the
findings in several articles in relation to tourism and hospitality. They realized that social
customer relationship management (SCRM) is still relatively new, but not much research
exists, especially in regards to tourism. There also has not been a ton of review on how
organizational culture and management structure affects SCRM. They reviewed several
articles written from 2010 on and found five supply-focused research theme objectives
and two demand-focused themes amongst them all and that more empirical research
should be conducted.
Dewnarain, S., Ramkissoon, H., & Mavondo, F. (2019). Social customer relationship
management: An integrated conceptual framework. Journal of Hospitality Marketing and
Management, 28(2), 172-188. https://doi-
org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1080/19368623.2018.1516588.
In this study the authors sought to determine the links between great customer
relationships, social media outlets, customer engagement, brand loyalty, and word of
mouth in the hospitality industry and how they contribute to firm performance. They
wanted to show that the financial success of the hotel industry was not solely related to
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the ability of management to monitor internal resources and capabilities. Ultimately they
uncovered that the use of social media and loyalty programs didn’t in fact contribute to
loyalty at all, but instead, high levels of engagement did by way of positive word-of-
mouth with the intent to repurchase, sometimes even at a higher cost.
Kantorova, K., & Bachmann, P. (2018). Social customer relationship management and
organizational characteristics. Information, 9(12), 306. doi:10.3390/info9120306.
This paper aims to show the control that customers have over an organization with
implemented social customer relationship management (SCRM) and how certain
organizational characteristics influence SCRM. To do so, the authors used a
questionnaire that was given to 362 organizations in the Czech Republic that contained
54 questions, answered on a five-level Likert scale, related to how much of an impact
marketing has on customer relationship management practices. What they found was that
large firms were able to manage information more efficiently because of their own online
social communities that they could strategically manage. Smaller firms were found to
rely more heavily on already established social networks to communicated with
customers.
Kim, H., & Wang, Z. (2019). Defining and measuring social customer-relationship management
(CRM) capabilities. Journal of Marketing Analytics, 7(1), 40-50. doi:10.1057/s41270-
018-0044-8.
This article looks at the customer relationship management capabilities that are necessary
for a firm to be able to efficiently determine how their social marketing resources
contribute to sales and customer relationship outcomes. They believe that firms that
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invest in social media technology will realize larger CRM benefits and greater market
value compared to competitors. During their study they found that not only is firm
performance strongly influenced by social customer relationship management capabilities
but it can also support organizational transformation. One of the largest drawback to
their study is the fact that they only used Facebook as their social media outlet.
Paliouras, K., & Siakas, K. (2017). Social customer relationship management: A case study.
International Journal of Entrepreneurial Knowledge, 5(1), 20-34. doi:10.1515/ijek-2017-
0002.
During the fall semesters of 2014 and 2015, students were asked to complete an
assignment relating to social media networking at the Alexander Technological Institute
of Thessaloniki in Greece. The idea was for them to create a social customer relationship
management (CRM) strategy and tie it to family businesses. This paper discusses the
outcomes of the assignment which include the fact that SCRM seems to be a fantastic
mechanism in obtaining valuable real-time data in addition to its low-cost. The authors
also discuss the transition of customer information systems that were designed typically
to support specific employee groups, to e-CRM which uses web-based technologies such
as emails and websites, to the evolution of SCRM which focuses on communication with
customers through social media sites.
Saran, C. (2011). Buyer's Guide: The companies using social networking in their CRM
processes. Retrieved April 28, 2020, from
https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Buyers-Guide-The-companies-using-social-
networking-in-their-CRM-processes
