Customer Relationship Management. 8 Common goals for a CRM Program. What are Key Drivers Of Customer Satisfaction?

Discovering The Key Drivers Of Satisfaction
Excellent service organizations intensively study the key drivers of people who use their products. Key drivers are the needs, wants, and expectations that are most important to customers, and they should be part of the organization’s knowledge base. The best way to learn these key drivers is to continually and carefully study customers.
Many managers think they understand the factors that contribute to customer satisfaction and intent to return. Most times, however, management’s perception does not represent the customers’ point of view, creating a disconnect between what managers think consumers prefer and what consumers actually want.
As mentioned earlier, Disney created and developed the concept of guestology to learn about its customers’ expectations. Other superb service organizations train their direct-contact employees to regularly ask guests about their customer experience. For example, the Ritz-Carlton has identified 18 key drivers through the use of customer surveys. Ritz-Carlton realized that these key drivers are so important that it designated one employee in every one of its hotels to be in charge of ensuring the delivery of each of the 18 key drivers (Ford and Heaton 2000).

Customer Relationship Management
Benchmark service organizations live by the old sayings “the only constant is change” and “success is never final.” That is, they exert much effort into identifying and responding to changes in customer expectations and demographics. Indeed, this is the underlying principle of customer relationship management, the organizational practice of focusing all activities on the needs, wants, and behaviors of its customers (Dickson, Ford, and Laval 2005).
According to Berkowitz (2006, 195), customer relationship management (CRM) is “the organization’s attempt to develop a long-term, cost-effective link with the customer for the benefit of both the customer and the organization.” Simply, CRM shifts the service thinking from the individual transaction to relationship building. Thomas (2005, 309) states that CRM involves the creation of a centralized body of knowledge that interfaces internal customer data with external market data. This integrated data set can be analyzed to determine patterns relevant for the task at hand. More specifically, it involves identifying customers and their past purchase behaviors for the purpose of guiding future marketing decisions. It involves building a comprehensive data base of customer profiles and initiating direct marketing based on these profiles.

Well-designed and well-implemented CRM programs yield substantial returns, and new technologies only expand this opportunity. Common goals for a CRM program include the following (Thomas 2005):
? Improve customer service and satisfaction
? Increase profitability
? Reduce negative customer experiences
? Allocate resources more efficiently
? Lower the cost of customer interaction
? Attract and retain customers and prospects
? Build stronger customer relationships
? Improve clinical outcomes

Most organizations use customer satisfaction to define CRM success. Given that most organizations already use customer satisfaction as a key performance indicator, adopting CRM strategies should not feel like a big leap. However, organizations seem to have a difficult time switching from being inside-out driven to being outside-in driven. Kaiser Permanente, Celebration Health, and Mayo Clinic all have made significant strides in becoming customer (outside-in) driven. However, they are the exception, not the rule.

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