The CRM behaviour theory - Managing corporate customer relationships in service industries

INTRODUCTION

Much research has been conducted on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) since its academic emergence in 1997.¹ After more than a decade, CRM for corporate clients in service industries such as telecommunications has been neglected in both academic and professional domains - often regarded as 'quick fix' technology projects.² Many CRM approaches focus on mass markets and on related CRM initiatives such as retention and churn management.

CRM academics' theoretical writings are often unrelated to business realities, consisting of overly abstract CRM models (Figure 3). CRM practitioners writing about the topic often address the success rate of technology-focused CRM software projects.³ However, CRM for corporate clients is very complex, in particular in service industries such as telecommunications. A tentative complexity analysis carried out during this research project uncovered more than 1400 CRM 'hard' activities for marketing, sales, customer service and billing. However, CRM for corporate clients is not just related to 'hard' factors. 'Soft' issues prevail in the business-to-business (B2B) world, where clients are known personally by supplier staff. CRM studies (Figure 3) and CRM market data ⁴ propose a narrow view focusing just on CRM strategy, processes and systems. However, bearing in mind the actual complexity of CRM for corporate clients, perhaps Einstein⁵ described the best approach: 'Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler'.

Notwithstanding the progress in CRM project success rates⁶ and wider academic propositions,^{7, 8, 9} CRM for corporate clients has never been fully explored,¹⁰ embracing both 'hard' and 'soft' factors.¹¹ This is the role of this article.

Evolution of research questions

Our research questions (RQs) evolved over time as an iterative, non-linear process (2002, 2004, 2007) in order to answer 'what you specifically want to understand by doing your study'.¹² In conclusion, we were trying to answer the major research question:

'What are the evolved characteristics and behaviours of the holistic management of corporate customer relationships for telecoms carriers?'

This involved answering these further research questions:

RQ1: How are corporate customer relationships managed in the telecoms industry and what CRM models evolve?

RQ2: How do corporate clients behave and how are their requirements aligned with CRM models?

RQ3: What are the characteristics of performance management (PM) in...