Abstract
In a competitive environment that increasingly awards a clever approach to customer relationship management (CRM), firms need to systematize the way they interact with their customers. The relationships that often lay in the hands of managers and salespeople need to be thoughtfully organized to maximize both customer satisfaction and the effectiveness of the marketing efforts. CRM software packages can be an answer to organize and systematize the management of such commercial relationships. However, decision makers may not have the time and the competencies to identify the most suitable solution for their needs, among the hundreds existing, and may ultimately resort to an external expert. Since the existing methods to select a CRM software package suffer from several limitations, this article introduces a novel four-step method allowing to actively involve the decision makers in the CRM software package selection, simultaneously minimizing the effort requested to them and maximizing the extent to which the final choice suits their specific needs and preferences. The method resorts to a coordinated use of the analytic hierarchy process and of its fuzzy adaptation. The article also presents an exemplification of the method in a small Italian firm.
1 INTRODUCTION
Evidence suggests that nurturing the relationships with the customers is among the most important factors to firms (Haislip & Richardson, 2017; Palmatier, Scheer, Houston, Evans, & Gopalakrishna, 2007; Rodriguez, Peterson, & Krishnan, 2018). This applies both to the business-to-consumer and to the business-to-business settings. However, relationships with customers may be managed in an unmethodical way, without systematically organizing prospecting and postsales activities. The valuable pieces of information that nearly every firm collects in their databases about their customers often remain poorly utilized (Stein, Smith, & Lancioni, 2013). Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are growing in importance as essential tools to exploit such data, enhancing sales, productivity, and customer satisfaction (e.g., Li, Huang, & Song, 2019; Rodriguez et al., 2018; Soltani & Navimipour, 2016), becoming the foundation of contemporary marketing strategy (Baran & Galka, 2016).
5 CONCLUSIONS
Customers are increasingly becoming the Polar Star of firms operating in the most various industries, with customer satisfaction measures that are gradually becoming as important as financial ones. This context is especially valid for the B2B market, in which firms typically interact with a few customers that demand much attention and dedication. For the firms operating in the B2B market, a naïve approach to CRM, mainly relying on the competence of the salespeople, can cause the loss of interesting opportunities.
