Improve Customer Retention Research Articles

Methods to Improve Customer Retention and Satisfaction Level to Build a Strong Brand

Methods to Improve Customer Retention and Satisfaction Level to Build a Strong Brand

Roles of Top Management and Customer Orientation in Enhancing The Performance of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in Hotel Industry

The last decade has seen the emergence of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as a technique to underpin organizational performance improvement in improving customer retention, customer satisfaction and customer value. However, despite many studies conducted on customer relationship management in various industries in the past 20 years, there is still significant disagreement about its definition and meaning, and the framework for the effective implementation and evaluation of customer relationship management practice. Moreover, there is a lack of systematic empirical evidence regarding the success factors for the CRM performance. Objective: To address these issues, this study examines the influence of top management and customer orientation on CRM performance. Results: In this quantitative study, a total of 133 Jordanian hotels participated in this study by voluntarily completing the survey questionnaire, constituting an overall 66% response rate. From the analysis undertaken, it was found that Top Management significantly influence CRM performance But. this research found insignificant relationship between customer orientation and CRM performance Conclusion: The results suggest that hotels should have processes to maintain, analyze, and integrate customer information. Theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.

Effects of perceived cost, service quality, and customer satisfaction on health insurance service continuance

This paper aims to contribute to the universal discourse on financial services continuance behavior by examining the impact of service cost on customers’ service-quality perception and service continuance intention. It presents the results of an empirical study that has explored the impacts of service cost, service quality, and customer satisfaction on health insurance customers’ behavioral intention toward continuing or discontinuing with their service providers. Very few studies had examined the impact of service cost on service-quality perception. Our study attempts to fill that gap. A sample of 820 customers was surveyed, and 624 usable responses were analyzed with ANOVA, standard multiple regression, and logistic regression. Our findings indicate that, although highly satisfied health insurance customers will most likely retain their current service providers, customer dissatisfaction does not necessarily lead to discontinuance. Our results also provide some operational implications for health insurance managers, with strategies for reducing attrition and improving customer retention.

Measuring and improving customer retention at authorised automobile workshops after free services

Customer retention is vital for businesses with much research literature now available. But nothing has been investigated regarding measuring and improving customer retention at authorised automobile workshops after free services. Even after providing extensive warranties and other free service benefits, customers don't use authorised workshops although their vehicles are still under warranty. By not arranging regular maintenance services, customers lose warranty benefits, with product performance and safety related awareness undermined; companies lose huge business potential. Therefore, this study aims to measure and improve customer retention at authorised automobile workshops after free services. To achieve this, a four-phased study has been conducted. In phase one, a combination of a literature review and expert opinions is used to identify customers' retention factors. The second and third phases describe how data is collected from industry experts and customers. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Decision Making Trial & Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) are used to prioritise and examine inter-relationships among factors. In the last phase, the study recommends three business strategies to help a company to improve customer retention and make their Annual Maintenance Contract (AMC) product more customer friendly.

Actor-oriented approach for fault tolerance in e-commerce events

Online transaction systems require a high level of consistency and availability for it to perform well for the end use. Though there are tools like google analytics, which are more towards click streams, but very less focus has been given on tracing the critical events happening in ecommerce space. Business like online commerce or e-commerce require excellent fault tolerant mechanism for improved customer retention and increase profitability. The online events which captures the user behavior helps to understand the end customers spending patterns on the given site. Capturing of user behavior will be essential for profiling the customers into different categories based upon which they can be given preference to complete an online-transaction in the event of a fault. There are various access violations occurring at multiple interaction levels exist in order to complete a successful transaction in the web application. The constant demands for increased performance from the end-users are the rationale behind such an implementation. This paper focuses on implementation of fault tolerance event transactions in online e-commerce solution actor based approach to ensure better the user experience in the case of any faults during an online e-commerce events or transactions.

The Determinants of Loyalty in Online Commerce – An Exploratory Study in India

AbstractInternet based commerce has exploded over the last decade and a half. A large set of studies have been undertaken in the West to understand the drivers of customer loyalty in the online space. With consumer preferences varying across regions and geographies, this study aims at understanding the impact of trust and satisfaction as antecedents of behavioral and attitudinal loyalty for the consumers in a developing country. 175 respondents were surveyed on different elements involved in online purchase during the three phases of information‐search and evaluation, purchase and post‐purchase. The findings revealed a strong positive impact of trust and satisfaction on behavioral and attitudinal loyalty. Attitudinal loyalty was found to positively influence behavioral loyalty. Further, satisfaction was found to have a strong positive relationship with trust. Deviations from western findings were observed for impact of website design, assortment and security on satisfaction. The study highlights generalization of certain determinants of satisfaction, trust and loyalty while pointing towards context specificity of others. Findings should also assist the practicing community to better understand the drivers of satisfaction, trust and loyalty and thereby help them take the right steps for improving customer retention.

A holistic framework to embed good company practice for customer retention

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to detail a holistic practice based guiding framework for improving customer retention, which helps companies instil a customer service culture through encouraging them to concentrate on the three key areas of culture, continuous improvement (CI) and customer service.Design/methodology/approachThe Delphi technique, using three rounds of hour long in-depth semi-structured interviews at director level across a range of industries. This was done with nine directors, totalling over 30 hours of data requiring in excess of 200 hours to transcribe.FindingsIn order to achieve customer retention, a holistic company approach underpinned by senior management buy-in is critical, with open communication, employee empowerment, and employing “the right” personnel. The framework is viable with specific organisation input and supplementation with ongoing customer research.Research limitations/implicationsThe framework has only been tested with the companies in the study, and requires testing in practice. As such, it has not covered the ability of companies to change, but has simply developed a framework to assist in identifying the areas that need to be reviewed when considering changing to focus on the customer.Practical implicationsTo use this approach to customer retention requires companies to amalgamate culture, customer service and CI equally alongside customer focussed leadership, as an underpinning for the ethos of the business.Originality/valueThe Delphi technique in an in-depth systemised approach with directors revealed unanticipated and significant insights regarding the benefits of amalgamating and devoting equal weight to the three areas of culture, customer service and CI to improve quality in all these areas

Extended Collaborative Filtering Technique for Mitigating the Sparsity Problem

Many online shopping malls have implemented personalized recommendation systems to improve customer retention in the age of high competition and information overload. Sellers make use of these recommendation systems to survive high competition and buyers utilize them to find proper product information for their own needs. However, transaction data of most online shopping malls prevent us from using collaborative filtering (CF) technique to recommend products, for the following two reasons: 1) explicit rating information is rarely available in the transaction data; 2) the sparsity problem usually occurs in the data, which makes it difficult to identify reliable neighbors, resulting in less effective recommendations. Therefore, this paper first suggests a means to derive implicit rating information from the transaction data of an online shopping mall and then proposes a new user similarity function to mitigate the sparsity problem. The new user similarity function computes the user similarity of two users if they rated similar items, while the user similarity function of traditional CF technique computes it only if they rated common items. Results from several experiments using an online shopping mall dataset in Korea demonstrate that our approach significantly outperforms the traditional CF technique.

The effect of CRM implementation on pharmaceutical industry’s profitability

Purpose The aim of this study is examine customer relationship management (CRM) effect on enhancing customer satisfaction and on improving customer retention. In this study, the impact of CRM on loyalty in the pharmaceutical sector in Tunisia is studied. Service quality perception, customer satisfaction, loyalty, retention and firm profitability have been tested as independent variables. This study highlights the importance of CRM and service quality perception in maintaining a sustainable and profitable relationship with customers. Design/methodology/approach A survey research design was used to collect data. In total, 221 respondents from 5 pharmaceutical companies in Tunisia were involved in the study. Exploratory and confirmatory analyses were adopted to examine the effect of CRM technology on profitability. Structural equation modeling was used to validate results. Findings The results show that there are significant relationships between CRM and quality perception, satisfaction and loyalty. However, there are no significant relationships either between CRM and retention or between CRM and profitability. Research limitations/implications Fitting CRM scale with the context of the study and the number of the survey companies was the limitation of this research. Practical implications This study provides significant results to practitioners to understand the role of establishing a CRM strategy and to understand the selected factors affecting customer satisfaction and retention as well. Originality/value This study was conducted in Tunisia to contribute to enrich literature in the implementation of information technology and customer satisfaction.

Sales and Invoice Management System with Analysis of Customer Behaviour

Today, the organizations advertise and sell their products online and offline but they face the issue of managing their sales and inventory. A crucial part of their businesses is maintaining relationships with their customers, preventing them from churning out, track decreasing brand loyalty and taking steps to prevent it, and increasing profitability. This paper focuses on efficiently automating the sales processes and making a more accurate system for improving customer retention and extension, than previous software‟s. An extensive research done on existing systems gave us an insight into their shortcomings which this system attempts to overcome by using predictive analytics. Using decision trees and random forests in machine learning, the accuracy of the algorithm improves over time to give us better results progressively. The implementation of this system has resulted in better resource utilization, increased responsiveness and accurate forecasting of customer behaviour. This system has been implemented to seamlessly integrate with any ERP system for efficient stock management and an Android application to track the employees and keep them updated with their tasks.

An analysis of customer retention rates by time series data mining

To analyse after-sales services for passenger cars, the traditional research methods only considered the lifelong value of customers when the all services were viewed, while aiming to improve customer retention rates. In this paper, a framework is proposed for time series data mining focused on the time order of a purchase history. The purpose of this study is to acquire the primary reason for a long-term relationship between an automobile dealer and a customer using analyses of relationships between automobile maintenance records and customer retention rates. We attempt to clarify the characteristics of the high retention customers and improve the accuracy of the customer retention predictions as a result of the clustered customer obtained by machine learning. This research is able to show the usefulness of the service science through the application of the engineering methods in the service industry.

Mobile Customer Relationship Management: An Exploratory Comparative Study of Rural and Urban Consumers

KEYWORDS Mobile Technology Communication. CRM Strategy. Mobile Marketing Messages. Customer Loyalty ABSTRACT The present study aims at combining customer relationship management (CRM) strategy and mobile technology in order to analyse the effects of mobile marketing messages on customer loyalty. Further, this study aimed to investigate if mobile marketing messages are a cost-effective and convenient way to reach customers in rural areas, who do not have access to personal computers but can use their mobile phone to access the internet in order to communicate with marketers. This study used a quantitative research approach. A self-administered questionnaire using a 5-point likert scale was developed and piloted. The questionnaire was distributed to 385 urban consumers in the Johannesburg central business district (CBD) area and to 373 rural consumers in township areas. The one-way ANOVA test suggested that there is a difference between rural and urban consumers' attitudes towards mobile marketing messages. The multiple linear regression results proved that mobile customer relationship management (m-CRM) is an effective strategy that will increase customer satisfaction and improve customer retention rates through the provision of better mobile marketing communication services. Thus, the implication for marketers is that they should implement this m-CRM strategy into their existing marketing mix so that marketers can benefit from considerable cost-efficiencies and repeat purchases from loyal customers.

Improving customer retention management through cost-sensitive learning

Purpose – Retailers realize that customer churn detection is a critical success factor. However, no research study has taken into consideration that misclassifying a customer as a non-churner (i.e. predicting that (s)he will not leave the company, while in reality (s)he does) results in higher costs than predicting that a staying customer will churn. The aim of this paper is to examine the prediction performance of various cost-sensitive methodologies (direct minimum expected cost (DMECC), metacost, thresholding and weighting) that incorporate these different costs of misclassifying customers in predicting churn. Design/methodology/approach – Cost-sensitive methodologies are benchmarked on six real-life churn datasets from the retail industry. Findings – This article argues that total misclassification cost, as a churn prediction evaluation measure, is crucial as input for optimizing consumer decision making. The practical classification threshold of 0.5 for churn probabilities (i.e. when the churn probability is greater than 0.5, the customer is predicted as a churner, and otherwise as a non-churner) offers the worst performance. The provided managerial guidelines suggest when to use each cost-sensitive method, depending on churn levels and the cost level discrepancy between misclassifying churners versus non-churners. Practical implications – This research emphasizes the importance of cost-sensitive learning to improve customer retention management in the retail context. Originality/value – This article is the first to use the concept of misclassification costs in a churn prediction setting, and to offer recommendations about the circumstances in which marketing managers should use specific cost-sensitive methodologies.

The role of employee job satisfaction in strengthening customer repurchase intentions

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of front line employee job satisfaction in customers ' behavioral intentions.Design/methodology/approach– Research design is nested with data collected from both first line employees and customers. Data are collected from multiple branches of a single bank to eliminate the possibility of other parameters such as design of operations and physical evidence from masking the true effects of the variables under investigation.Findings– Employee job satisfaction influences a customer ' s perception of quality, customer satisfaction and the development of high relational switching cost. Hence the effect on repurchase intention is indirect but significant and strong while moderated by branch size and age of the employee.Research limitations/implications– The degree of employee job satisfaction is a resource of strategic nature for these companies aiming to improve customer retention rates. Such companies should protect their ability to build employee job satisfaction and restrain themselves from policies that threaten to slim down the satisfaction their employees derive from their job.Originality/value– Using a hierarchical research design, this is the first study that manages to establish the relationship between employee job satisfaction and customers ' behavioral intentions while eliminating the effect of complementary marketing mix parameters such as operations design effectiveness and aesthetics.

Improving customer retention in financial services using kinship network information

This study investigates the advantage of social network mining in a customer retention context. A company that is able to identify likely churners in an early stage can take appropriate steps to prevent these potential churners from actually churning and subsequently increase profit. Academics and practitioners are constantly trying to optimize their predictive-analytics models by searching for better predictors. The aim of this study is to investigate if, in addition to the conventional sets of variables (socio-demographics, purchase history, etc.), kinship network based variables improve the predictive power of customer retention models. Results show that the predictive power of the churn model can indeed be improved by adding the social network (SNA-) based variables. Including network structure measures (i.e. degree, betweenness centrality and density) increase predictive accuracy, but contextual network based variables turn out to have the highest impact on discriminating churners from non-churners. For the majority of the latter type of network variables, the importance in the model is even higher than the individual level counterpart variable.

The Practice of Jordanian Banking to Improve Customer Retention

Enterprises have become increasingly reliant on digital information to meet business objectives. Significant amounts of information fuel business processes that involve parties both inside and outside of enterprise network boundaries. In response, many banks have recognized the importance of managing customer retention from the perspective of a process approach to positively impact customer retention. This paper adopts a holistic approach that examines the combined effects of customer processes on customer retention. Drawing on this framework, the paper develops several hypotheses regarding the main and interaction effects of customer processes on customer retention. The paper tests these hypotheses based on a sample of data collected from two hundred respondents, drawn randomly from four Jordanian banks working in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The results show that customer commitment has strong positive effects on customer retention. However, findings that effect of customer knowledge creation and customer acquisition on customer retention is weaker than that of customer commitment. The empirical findings help both researchers and practitioners in future customer process and customer retention research. The value of the paper consists in establishing the need of researching and incorporating customer retention process as an important support to keep organizations competitive within the global business environment.

Low-Cost Airlines—A New Customer Relationship? An Analysis of Service Quality, Service Satisfaction, and Customer Loyalty in a Low-Cost Setting

Many organizations are now paying close attention in evaluating and implementing marketing strategies with the specific aim of improving customer retention. While extensive literature has focused on the link between service quality, satisfaction, and loyalty, little research has been conducted on examining these three constructs in the context of low cost airlines. Using questionnaire data collected at two European airports, the results suggest that, though both the service quality and customer satisfaction have positive influence on repurchase intentions, customer satisfaction is a much stronger driver in influencing repurchase loyalty than service quality, which implies that these constructs interact in a different manner in a low cost setting.

The Attraction of the Sizzle: A Service Investment Model

This paper presents the results of the first test of the investment model for predicting attitudinal loyalty in service industries. Application of the investment model in the service context of casual dining restaurants has the potential to improve the understanding of the role of quality and the reasons that customers are loyal or disloyal to these restaurants. A focus on quality allows firms to improve performance and, as a result, improve customer retention. The research method in this work employs a survey data collection approach. Confirmatory factor analysis is used to test the predictive power of the investment model as it relates to quality and the associate retention of customers within the casual dining restaurant domain. The authors' results show that service satisfaction and investment size substantially predict a customer's loyalty to casual dining restaurants. These results provide service managers with insights into customers' attitudes toward casual dining restaurants and extend the body of knowledge on the antecedents that predict attitudinal loyalty in a service industry. This study is the first to operationalize the investment model in the casual dining services domain as well as to examine customers' internal and external motives and the role that quality plays in creating loyalty to a casual dining restaurant.

Learning and Acting on Customer Information: A Simulation-Based Demonstration on Service Allocations with Offshore Centers

As service centers become crucial corporate assets for increasing customer relationships and profits, it is imperative to understand customer reactions to service allocations. Using customer call history from a DSL service, the authors empirically investigate how customers’ onshore and offshore experiences affect service duration and customer retention. They formulate service channel allocation decisions as solutions to a dynamic programming problem in which the firm learns about heterogeneous customer preferences, balances short-term service costs with long-term customer retention, and optimally matches customers with their preferred centers to maximize long-term profit. They demonstrate through simulations that learning enables a firm to make more customized allocations and that acting on long-term customer responses prompts the firm to make proactive decisions that prevent customers from leaving. As a result, the firm can improve customer retention and profit. The proposed framework also mirrors the recent trend of companies seeking solutions that transform customer information into customized and dynamic marketing decisions to improve long-term profit.

Improving Customer Retention Through Service Quality At Call Centers

For many call centers, improving customer service is an ongoing goal. These inbound call service centers have a unique opportunity to impact customer retention through value-adding customer service interactions. This paper serves three objectives: validate the connection between service quality, customer service and retention; describe a quality process for improving service quality; and discuss training and other key implementation needs for improving service delivery.