Customer Relationship Management Practices And Performance Of Safaricom Limited In Kenya
Year: 2016
Type: dissertation
Abstract: In Kenya, Safaricom being one of the firms in the Telecommunication sector uses \nCustomer Relationship Management to allow customers to easily interact with the \nfirm. This is aimed at enhancing efficiency in managing responses and service quality. \nThis study was set out to achieve the following objectives to determine the customer \nrelationship management practices adopted by Safaricom Limited and to establish \nwhether customer relationship management practices used by Safaricom Limited \nimproved performance. The study adopted a case study research design of Safaricom \nLimited was because it is the leading Telecommunication firm in Kenya with over \n25.1 million subscribers where majority of them were old customers. The study used \nprimary sources of data which was collected using an interview guide using openended \nquestions. Primary data was collected by interviewing three heads of marketing \nand one head of finance at Safaricom Limited. They include Head of department \nConsumer Sales, Head of department Mass Market, Head of department Enterprise \nSales and the Head of Finance. Data was analyzed using content analysis. The study \nfound that customer relationship management practices used by Safaricom Limited \nwere: one-on-one interaction with the customers, customer follow-ups through use of \ncalls, loyalty schemes such as ‘bonga points’, use of social media platforms such as \nFacebook, Twitter, direct emails, online partnerships and search engine optimization. \nThe company had team of competent staff who were well trained in handling matters \nto do with customer care and use of customer database for gathering customer \ninformation. The study also found that customer relationship management practices \nimpacted positively on performance of Safaricom Limited. This was achieved through \nimproved efficiency in customer feedback, reduction in communication costs, \ncustomer retention, efficient processes and procedures and reduced customer \ncomplaints. The study recommends that Safaricom Limited should frequently monitor \nand evaluate the current CRM practices. It is essential to regularly monitor, analyze \nand assess the existing CRM practices so as to tell if they are effective and they \nshould increase their capacity to allow more customers to gain access to the \ncompany’s products and services. The study was limited to time and cost which \nnecessitated a case study of Safaricom Limited. The results obtained in this study are \ntherefore exclusive to Safaricom Limited and cannot therefore be used for either \ndirect application or comparison to another study. The other limitation was that some \ninterviewees perceived the process of being interviewed as tedious and non-paying \nand thus a few Heads of departments delegated the interview process to their juniors \nwho represented them. The Heads of departments are directly involved in decision \nmaking concerning customer relationship management and thus they are best suited to \ngive accurate and reliable information as compared to their juniors. Future researchers \nshould consider conducting a similar study in all the three Mobile Telecommunication \nfirms in Kenya to establish the most common customer relationship management \npractices used by Mobile Telecommunication firms and how these practices relate to \nperformance of Mobile Telecommunication firms.
Author: Phoebe K Gitonga
Language: English
Subfield: Marketing
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2592620019