Chapter 01

1.1 Introduction

The strategies, technologies and various types of methodologies which are using to create and maintain the relationship among the organization and the customers can be identified as the Customer Relationship Management. The successful Customer Relationship management will help to define the way of making a satisfied customer. Here it is explained that the current practice of the Keells Super.
As per Kotler customer satisfaction is the measurement to identify the level of meeting the customer expectation. When the customer’s expectation is not satisfied from the organizational product it will lead to dissatisfaction of the customer. And if the customer’s expectation is fully provided the customer will be a satisfied person. The level of the profitability will determine with the level of the customer satisfaction. If the product provides a value to the customers while fulfilling their expectations this will help to make the proper customer relationship among them. Customer relationship management is the set of activities which show the path to that.
There are three main concepts for an effective Customer Relationship Management. They are as follows.
1. Trust
2. Commitment
3. Satisfaction
The improved satisfaction of the customer is the main objective of the Customer relationship Management. Having long term retention with a loyalty is the ultimate result of that objective. When driving a CRM in an organization it is important to understand the customer base and their needs and wants. Accordingly the products and services need to be developed in an effective way. The objective of an effective Customer Relationship Management is to gain benefits than the costs incurred on that. Therefore having an effective and efficient Customer Relationship Management practices are very much important. It will help to attract customers. If the organization uses this practice most accurately that will help to gain the competitive advantage. There are various types of techniques are used for communication among the customer and the organization. The methods are changing timely due to the technological development. The Customer Relationship Management provide overall understanding about the customers and the way of addressing those expectations by providing the product by gaining a benefit on it. This method will protect the organizational retention in the market by making good relationship among customer and the firm. The level of usage of Customer Relationship Management is determined as per the size of the company and the nature of the company.
Keells Super is one of best conglomerate brand in Sri Lanka which has long history. As per their top management the reason behind this success is the innovations and the strategical ways of selling the products.
By using various types of strategic methods they could achieve more than 4.6Bn of turnover per month.
Keells Super always tries to attract more customers by creating good relationship with customers. Therefore Keells Super started to segment their types of customers. Accordingly they tried to create a value to the customers who utilize the products. This helped to create higher level of relationship among them. With these efforts Keells Super become to world’s to 10 retail marketing.

1.2 Problem Identification

In this case the problem is the switching customers and the dissatisfaction of the customers. It is clear that the reason to creating dissatisfied customers is the lack of knowledge about the customers’ expectations. Therefore the research will address the importance of having strong CRM practice. The correct Customer relationship management function will help to fill the knowledge gap between customer and the firm. The research applies Keells Super contexts to explain the problem.
Customer relationship is a key to business since that significantly effect to its profitability. Therefore CRM practices are very much supportive to maintain the relationship and to manage the relationship as they want. This will help to create a value to the business. Ultimately this will affect to the efficiency of the organizational performance too.
Keells Super has done a survey and identified that the level of satisfaction of their customers is drastically reducing. The number of complaints were increasing after the survey they could understand the reason behind this issue. It was the mistakes on their Customer Relationship Management. At that time they did not have a proper customer relationship practice. They only operate with self-serving sale practice. Therefore they have a very less relationship with their customers. This caused to create issues in product according to their customers’ expectations. With this issue the customers started to switch from Keells Super product to others. The retention of their customer was very poor.