Customer Relationship Management Practices and Performance of Safaricom Limited in Kenya

Abstract

In Kenya, Safaricom being one of the firms in the Telecommunication sector uses Customer Relationship Management to allow customers to easily interact with the firm. This is aimed at enhancing efficiency in managing responses and service quality. This study was set out to achieve the following objectives to determine the customer relationship management practices adopted by Safaricom Limited and to establish whether customer relationship management practices used by Safaricom Limited improved performance. The study adopted a case study research design of Safaricom Limited was because it is the leading Telecommunication firm in Kenya with over 25.1 million subscribers where majority of them were old customers. The study used primary sources of data which was collected using an interview guide using openended questions. Primary data was collected by interviewing three heads of marketing and one head of finance at Safaricom Limited. They include Head of department Consumer Sales, Head of department Mass Market, Head of department Enterprise Sales and the Head of Finance. Data was analyzed using content analysis. The study found that customer relationship management practices used by Safaricom Limited were: one-on-one interaction with the customers, customer follow-ups through use of calls, loyalty schemes such as ‘bonga points’, use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, direct emails, online partnerships and search engine optimization. The company had team of competent staff who were well trained in handling matters to do with customer care and use of customer database for gathering customer information. The study also found that customer relationship management practices impacted positively on performance of Safaricom Limited. This was achieved through improved efficiency in customer feedback, reduction in communication costs, customer retention, efficient processes and procedures and reduced customer complaints. The study recommends that Safaricom Limited should frequently monitor and evaluate the current CRM practices. It is essential to regularly monitor, analyze and assess the existing CRM practices so as to tell if they are effective and they should increase their capacity to allow more customers to gain access to the company’s products and services. The study was limited to time and cost which necessitated a case study of Safaricom Limited. The results obtained in this study are therefore exclusive to Safaricom Limited and cannot therefore be used for either direct application or comparison to another study. The other limitation was that some interviewees perceived the process of being interviewed as tedious and non-paying and thus a few Heads of departments delegated the interview process to their juniors who represented them. The Heads of departments are directly involved in decision making concerning customer relationship management and thus they are best suited to give accurate and reliable information as compared to their juniors. Future researchers should consider conducting a similar study in all the three Mobile Telecommunication firms in Kenya to establish the most common customer relationship management practices used by Mobile Telecommunication firms and how these practices relate to performance of Mobile Telecommunication firms.