The Impact of Knowledge Management on Customer Relationship Management

Hadi Nejatian Khalilabad*, Omid Nasrollah Mazandarani*, Ilham Sentosa*, Shishi Kumar Piaralal*

The business environment is transforming from product-centric to customer-centric. CRM as a customer-oriented business approach is considered as one of the powerful capabilities in organizations which help to transform themselves to a customer-centric environment. The utilization of CRM is directly related with increase in customer knowledge, which in turn has positive effect on customer satisfaction. By using knowledge management companies can improve their relationship with their valuable customers, thus create loyal customers and obtain competitive advantage. Organizations can create new ideas and provide improved and new services by help of knowledge management and the knowledge originated from CRM. The customer knowledge as an integral element of relationship between Knowledge Management and CRM could help organizations to tailor their products and services and even the entire relationship with customers to increase customer satisfaction and finally economic profitability. Keywords: Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Knowledge Management (KM), Knowledgeenabled CRM Paper: Theoretical Paper

* Hadi Nejatian Khalilabad, Centre of Postgraduate Studies, Limkokwing University, h.nejatian@limkokwing.edu.my * Dr. Omid Nasrollah Mazandarani, Centre of Postgraduate Studies, Limkokwing University, dr.omid@limkokwing.edu.my * Dr. Ilham Sentosa, Centre of Postgraduate Studies, Limkokwing University, dr.ilhamsentosa@limkokwing.edu.my * Dr. Shishi Kumar Piaralal, Centre of Postgraduate Studies, Limkokwing University, dr.shishipiaralal@limkokwing.edu.my

Introduction

Today, firms are considering their customers as their most important assets (Croteau and Li, 2003), therefore they are transferring their business strategies from productcentric to customer-centric ( Chen and Su, 2006; Kotler, 2003).According to Park and Kim (2003); organizations are focusing more on acquiring and maintaining share of their customers rather than their markets and by adopting customer-centric strategies, they demonstrate their insight on the importance of managing relationships with customers (Mithas et al.,2005). Organizations recognize customer knowledge as one of the major contributors of increase in their value and therefore they review their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) initiatives (Croteau and Li, 2003) to use in-depth and integrated customer knowledge for creating collective relationships with their customers (Boulding et al., 2005; Croteau and Li, 2003; Parvatiyar and Sheth, 2001).With arrival of knowledge-economy those organizations which successfully recognize, build and enhance their knowledge capabilities will be more successful and are considered as knowledge-enabled organizations (Rowley, 1999). These organizations segment their markets not only based on their products and services but also based on the amount of knowledge which they can learn from their customers (Zack, 2003). Romano and Fjermestad (2003) describe the existing, product-centric to customercentric, shift in firms strategies as a shift from transaction-based economy to relationship-based economy. This transformation has made organizations to collect more information from their customers such as their behavioral, demographical and interaction information which is also can be done in large quantities by help of advancements in technological capabilities. In customer-centric economy the concepts like economies of scale will be replaced by concepts such as economies of interaction or economies of relationship which are main value drivers for customer-centric economy. The good knowledge viewpoint of customers and increased switching costs due to increase of direct interaction with each customer are supplementary elements for economies of interaction. They also facilitate increase in returns and also are in contrast with economies of scale which provides decreasing returns upon increase of productions volume (Moeslein and Piller, 2002). Interestingly, the transition from product-centric to customer-centric has been followed by another shift in marketing aspect, which is the shift of power from vendor to buyer which creates lot of benefits for customers as well as demands (Romano and Fjermestad, 2003; Shanks and Tay, 2001). On the other side, the studies show that cost of keeping the current customers is much more less than the cost of attracting new ones (Bitran and Mondschein, 1997; Chattopadhyay, 2001; Desatnick, 1988; Massey et al., 2001; Park and Kim, 2003; Reichheld and Sasser, 1990; Stone et al., 1996). Meantime establishing a good relationship with customers is an important factor in an organizations success. (Gibbert et al., 2002; Hanvanach et al., 2003; Smith and McKeen, 2005; Wood, 2003) Thus the best strategy for sustaining the current customers is establishing a long lasting relationship with them and keeping them satisfied (Stefanou et al., 2003). In order to keep customers satisfied, organizations should identify their customers problems and
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preferences and most importantly determine and understand the reasons for their decisions. But the issue is, organizations may know about their customers problems and preferences through transactional data , but knowing the customer themselves and understanding the reasons for their decisions is not an easy task (Annabi and Murillo, 2002; Davenport et al., 2001). Since the markets are becoming more and more complex and complicated, customers demands for having products with lower price and better quality increase (Jutla et al., 2001). Meanwhile organizations try to find answers for questions like: who are their current customers, who and where their potential customers are, what benefits their customers are expecting from them and What are their customers preferences, needs and problems (Annabi and Murillo, 2002; Rowley, 2002). Therefore for being able to compete in this competitive business environment, organizations are trying to have access to newer type of knowledge and capabilities (Jutla et al., 2001). Along with this competitive transition to a knowledge intensive environment, firms are becoming more dependent on detailed knowledge of their customers for improving their CRM objectives and finally their long-term business success (Bang et al., 2005; Bose and Sugumaran, 2003).As the result, firms are transforming their CRM from a transaction based system to a more knowledge intensive and analytical oriented system. Through this transformation, organizations can maintain and improve their relationship with their customers throughout the customer lifetime cycle but this requires capabilities that enable them to follow and examine customers activities and responses over time. They can obtain required capabilities by use of knowledge derived from CRM operations and other enterprise systems such as Knowledge Management (KM) system (Bose and Sugumaran, 2003). Although knowledge discovery in customer-centric approach companies is an important factor, but only few companies can manage this discovered knowledge in a systematic style and make this strategy more effective which provides them more economic value (Bang et al., 2005; Smith and McKeen, 2005; Zack, 2003). With help of CRM and its related technologies, organizations are able to gather, analyze and transfer customer information more easily, but they are not capable of transforming information in to knowledge. It is mainly because of relatedness of knowledge to individuals and group of them. Therefore organizations need to integrate customer knowledge in to their processes and procedures for bringing more value to their customers and themselves (Halinen and Rollins, 2005). This Integration helps organizations to have a successful CRM development and when they achieve a higher level of integration among their different functional areas, they will have a higher overall performance along with higher level of match between what their customers demand and what they offer (Campbell, 2001). 1.1 Background of the Study Despite the many studies that have been done, particularly in west (Bose and Sugumaran, 2003; Brenner et al., 2005; Campbell, 2001; Gibbert et al., 2002; Stefanou et al., 2003), looking at the relationship between Knowledge Management (KM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM), none of them are comprehensive enough to capture all the factors into one single framework. According to Bose and Sugumaran
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(2003), true CRM could be achieved only through integration of KM with it which as the result improves business processes and allows firms to have a good evaluation on their customers level of satisfaction, profitability and loyalty. They also pinpoint the lack of a simple and general framework for integration of CRM functionalities with knowledge management capabilities (Bose and Sugumaran, 2003). Today, the current challenge for organizations is to develop an integrated CRM platform. This platform enables organizations to collect relevant data about customers from existing customer interfaces. Although firms have access to huge amount of information about their customers like their behavioral actions, they still know little about how to manage this knowledge and use the best out of it (Campbell, 2001). Bang et al. (2005) acknowledges that successful CRM requires deep knowledge of customer (Knowledge Management), but the ways that these two types of technology fit in together needs research. Moreover, previous studies trying to link KM and CRM have been limited in scope and the results been affected by often methodological limitations or errors. Many of the previous studies have used qualitative methods (i.e. case studies, literature review) (for example, see Gibbert et al., 2002; Brenner et al., 2005; Campbell, 2001; Halinen and Rollins, 2005; Gao and Li, 2006) to conclude their research findings and some other few studies have used conclusive statistics (for example see, Stefanou et al., 2003). Therefore, in order to bridge the gap and provide organizations with assistance in dealing with management perspectives of KMs effect on CRM performance, this paper proposes a set of KM critical factors and develops a proposed model to show the relationship between KM critical factors and CRM. Given the above reasons, this paper presents an integrated model regarding the effects of KM on CRM. The next portions of this paper include the literature review which presents the theories on the literature of KM and CRM and also the relationship between them followed by presenting the integrated model of Knowledge Management effect on CRM and finally, the review of model components and conclusion. 2 Literature Review

2.1 The Concept of CRM CRM is a customer-oriented business approach which includes analyzing, planning and controlling of relationships with customers by use of state-of-the-art information technologies. It is considered as combination of business processes, customer strategies and technology for achieving better insight on organizations customers and achieving higher customer loyalty and profitability (Kim et al., 2003; Rigby et al., 2002). CRM engages each individual customer in a significant dialogue that helps firms to customize their products and services in such a way which attracts, develops and retains customers (Campbell, 2001; Grabner-Kraeutera et al., 2007). The main focus of CRM is to monitor customers behavior for better understanding of their ever changing needs and preferences. By coordinating and using this knowledge, organization can provide superior service for customers and progressively improving this excellence by communicating with them through multiple channels. Based on what companies have learned about their customers through multiple channels and different departments such
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as marketing, sales and etc., they should be able to treat each individual customer differently and delivering products and services along with supporting information in order to address their specific needs and problems (Bose and Sugumaran, 2003; Mithas et al., 2005; Peppers et al., 1999). CRM can be defined as an organizational wide strategy to transform an organization to a customer-centric organization by acquiring selected strategic customers and developing and maintaining long-term beneficial relationships with them. This long term relationship will be empowered by use of their knowledge and information which as its ultimate purpose, it improves customer support and increases organizations revenue and profit (Buttle 2001; Could-well 1999; Gosney and Boehm 2000; Kim et al., 2003; Parvitiyar and Sheth 2001; Payne and Frow, 2005; Singh and Agrawal 2003). CRM is one the most important components among organizational processes due its ability to recognize customers, originate knowledge, create relationships with them and exhibit their insight about the company and its products (Llamas and Sule, 2004). Moreover, CRM helps organizations to customize their products and services and meantime increase the quality to create more value for customers and increase customer retention by fascinating and maintaining valuable and profitable customers and dismissing the invaluable ones (Kim et al., 2003; Romano and Fjermestad, 2003). According to Payne and Frow (2005), the way that organizations define the CRM strongly affects the method of CRM acceptance and practice in organizations and one of the most dangerous decisions that organizations can make regarding CRM implementation is installation of CRM before creation of a customer-focused environment in organization or in the other words, before transforming themselves to a customer-centric organization (Rigby et al., 2002). CRM is a management approach that organizations undertake to identify and develop in-depth knowledge about their customers behaviors and preferences. Finally they adopt strategies and develop programs for developing and retaining successful relationships with their customers to maintain and keep the right and profitable customers (Parvatiyar and Sheth, 2001; Stefanou et al., 2003). Therefore, the main focus of CRM is on establishing and sustaining a loyal and stable customer base through provision of excellent service to customers, supporting them and offering products based on their demands. Finally, as the ultimate outcome of CRM initiative, organizations can measure the level of customer satisfaction and the value of relationship with their customers (Halinen and Rollins, 2005). Relationship building and management have become an important marketing trend in business. Management of relationships with customers is fundamentally changing marketing and business models and the marketing strategy models are transferring from marketing mix to relationship marketing (Llamas and Sule, 2004; Romano and Fjermestad, 2003). Unlike traditional marketing approaches, the relationship marketing is focusing on creating and sustaining relationships with customers for improving customer retention to maintain and also increase the market share (Romano and Fjermestad, 2003). When companies engage in to customer relationship management, it means that they should be ready and enthusiastic to change their activities and behaviors toward each customer based on what they know about that specific customer
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including his/her desires and preferences (Peppers et al., 1999). Concepts such as Customer Relationship Management, relationship marketing and one-to-one marketing are all identical and interchangeable concepts but among them, CRM is more technology oriented that can be described as information-enabled relationship marketing (Payne and Frow, 2005; Parvatiyar and Sheth, 2001; Peppers et al., 1999). But most of the time the CRM technology is mistaken with CRM and this is considered as one of the most important reasons for failure of CRM in organizations (Payne and Frow, 2005; Peppers et al., 1999; Reinartz, Krafft, and Hoyer, 2004). The CRM literature shows that there are various aspects toward CRM and there is no any specific agreement on the description of CRM and required strategies for its development (Payne and Frow, 2005). In their CRM continuum Payne and Frow (2005), demonstrate three different views on CRM. In one end of continuum, there is pure technological view of CRM and in the other end there is a pure customer centric point of view on CRM. In the middle, a mid-range CRM view is located which views CRM as combination of both customer-oriented and technological approaches (Payne and Frow, 2005). The customer-centric view of CRM, is expressing the strategic and holistic concept of CRM that focuses on discriminative management of relationships with purpose of more value creation for customers (Payne and Frow, 2005). Moreover; Grabner-Kraeutera et al. (2007) have an overall perspective toward CRM and propose that CRM can be viewed technologically, strategically, philosophically, process-oriented or capability-oriented. Bose and Sugumaran (2003) and Brenner et al., 2005 view CRM as set of components and propose that true CRM consists of multiple components such as analytical tools, campaign management, multi-channel management, collateral management, sales and service management, loyalty and complaint management. Finally from process oriented point of view Parvatiyar and Sheth (2001) have developed a four stage CRM process framework which consists of four sub-processes, namely: customer relationship formation process; relationship management and governance process; relational performance evaluation process; and CRM evolution or enhancement process. 2.2 The Concept of KM In recent years the worlds economy has been shifted from goods producer to service provider and this has caused the transformation from industrial economy to knowledge economy (Sveiby, 1998; Shanks and Tay, 2001). Drucker (1998) describes this transformation as information revolution which is about the meaning and purpose of information. Knowledge is information with high value and it is considered as one the most important assets of an organization which helps organizations to make decisions easily and take action upon them. It is also considered as the source of success in delivery of value to customers (Crie and Micheaux, 2006; Davenport, 1998; Drucker, 2003; Rowley, 2002; Shanks and Tay, 2001). With knowledge, organizations could deliver better value to their customers, enhance their products and services and finally solve their problems through unification of scattered kinds of knowledge and lessons learned derived from their past experiences (Carrion, 2006). In this paper, the Davenport and Prusaks (1998) definition of knowledge have been adopted which define
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knowledge as a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information and expert insight that provide a framework for evaluation and incorporating new experiences and information. Knowledge management is the efficient use of knowledge and expertise within an organization. This efficiency can be achieved by managing of knowledge assets and enhancing of organizational processes and capabilities in creation, coordination, share and utilization of knowledge (Ganesh, 2000; Rowley, 1999; Shanks and Tay, 2001). Moreover, knowledge management is a complex concept which goes beyond the collection of data and its transformation to knowledge (Rowley, 2002). Organizations consider knowledge management as an essential strategic process which is the major source of competitive advantage for them (Carrion, 2006; Davenport, 1998; Grant, 1996). One of the key success factors of knowledge management in organizations is the ability of an organization to identify the relevant knowledge and exploit the value out of this knowledge. This relevant and available knowledge is the only factor which has a significant impact on firms competitive advantage which proactively must be identified proactively and its embedded value should be extracted (Carrion, 2006). Today an effective knowledge management is about real time access and processing of data which enables organization to respond to their customers in a faster fashion and also leads to more informed and reliable decisions (Jutla et al., 2001). 2.3 CRM and KM association Companies try to improve their relationship with their valuable customers by help of knowledge management which enables them to gain competitive advantage by creating close and loyal customers which will not switch to rival companies easily (Paquette, 2006). Therefore companies use knowledge management as process of acquiring the collective expertise and intelligence within an organization which leads to innovation through continuous organizational learning (Nonaka, 1991; Quinn et al., 1996). Since significant parts of this acquired expertise is related to customers then it can be concluded that KM and CRM are completely inter-related concepts (Massey et al., 2001; Romano, 2000).Therefore organizations should reinforce their KM and CRM systems in a way that enables them to obtain value-added knowledge for their customers and themselves (Stefanou et al., 2003). Moreover Roscoe (2001) acknowledges that, in order to have a successful CRM, firms need to integrate the learning from relationship with their customers into CRM and meanwhile have a clear strategy about it. Thus acquiring customer knowledge have to be aligned with firms business objectives, otherwise it would be useless and costly. Despite other organizational solutions and concepts, CRM is not implemented for increasing the speed of organizational processes or automating organizational operations. CRM is combination of multiple methods which are developed within organization to manage customers relationships intelligently. Therefore it needs information and knowledge related to customers to help firms to understand their customers better and manage relationships with them more effectively (Bose and Sugumaran, 2003).In the other side knowledge management enables organizations to generate new ideas for creating and developing new products and services help of customer knowledge generated from CRM and its related applications (Boulding et al.,
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2005; Chen and Li, 2006; Mithas et al., 2005). By use of acquired customer knowledge such as customers behaviors, preferences, needs, buying patterns, desired way of relationship, and their perception of companys products, even if it is negative, organizations will be able to increase their sales, position themselves better in marketplace and finally customize their entire relationship with customers in order to increase customer satisfaction (Bose and Sugumaran, 2003; Boulding et al., 2005; Chen and Li, 2006; Mithas et al., 2005; Smith and McKeen, 2005). According to Park and Kim (2003), in each relationship two types of data can be acquired, namely: transactional and non-transactional data. Transactional data include amount of sale, time, place and non-transactional data include inquiries or feedbacks like customer complaints and suggestions. Concepts like data mining and data warehousing have been existed for quite a time, but todays existence is mainly due to CRM (Boon et al., 2002). CRM uses data mining techniques to analyze large amount of transactional data to capture the knowledge such as buying behavior of customers but in this scenario the person, who is behind of this transaction, and his desires will be ignored. Even sometimes when companies try to analyze the transactional data, they will not be able to determine the true meaning and as the result they will not be able to reach correct conclusions. CRM and one-to-one marketing sometimes put extreme confidence on statistical information which results to customer myopia. As tools for presenting the customers buying patterns, these concepts show themselves stronger as they really are (Kendrick and Fletcher, 2002). Due to researches undertaken by companies, the most desirable outcome from CRM can be obtained from combination of both transactional data and human data. The human data are considered as tacit customer knowledge which is customers interests and their mental maps which convey customers attitudes toward companys products (Park and Kim, 2003). Romano and Fjermestad (2003), point out some common and related concepts between CRM and KM, such as; commitment, trust, culture and social-embeddedness of knowledge. The latter, is the important issue for CRM because knowledge unlike the information is embedded within customers like their preferences, desires and their insights and understandings on organizations products and services. In their eBusiness stakeholder model Jutla et al. (2001) propose, that KM is one of the three key critical factors for success of CRM and they state that managing the knowledge resided in all stakeholders ,including customers, should be part of customer relationship management. In other aspect, Gao and Li (2006) argue that the integration of Knowledge Management and CRM could be considered from two point of views; Managing customers knowledge and Using customers knowledge to manage. Managing customers knowledge includes acquiring, analyzing and dissemination of customer knowledge within organization. Based on the analyzed outcome knowledge, customers could be selected and their values will be prioritized, hence managers could have quick decision making with less error and mistakes. The other aspect is Using customers knowledge to manage which combines organizational factors like people, process and culture with customer knowledge through utilization of special systems to develop and enhance organizations service capability and competitive advantage. Besides, Croteau and Li (2003) acknowledge that KM has the most significant impact
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on CRM and the result of their study shows that improvement in KM capabilities could improve effectiveness and efficiency of customer relationships. Moreover, Brenner et al. (2005) state that CRM processes could be considered as semi structured and unstructured processes meanwhile being knowledge intensive. Having knowledge intensive processes requires CRM to acquire, disseminate and store customers related knowledge through employment of KM techniques. Therefore firms KM capability is an important success factor for their CRM initiative. 3 Integrated Model of Knowledge Management effect on CRM

Based on the above literature review, an integrated model is developed to examine the relationship between KM critical factors and CRM performance. The relationship between KM critical factors and CRM performance is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Integrated Model of Knowledge Management Effect on CRM

The model consists of set of components which are categorized in to two major sections. The first section which is related to KM critical factors contains three factors namely, Customer knowledge, Organizational Factors, and KM infrastructure. The second section is related to CRM performance which includes two aspects towards CRM performance in qualitative and quantitative ways. 3.1 KM Critical Factors 3.1.1 Customer Knowledge In the business environment, which was previously driven by organizations products offerings and now dominated by customer needs and preferences, knowledge of the customer is considered as an important organizational asset which can bring competitive advantage to organizations and help them to have a focused strategy upon
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their customers (Shanks and Tay, 2001). According to Park and Kim (2003), for having a long term relationship with customers, firms should have a continuous relationship with their customers along with provision of distinguished value for them. Thus this sustainable relationship is strongly dependent on customer knowledge, with support of information technology, organizations will manage customer knowledge to improve their relationship with their customers and hence achieving competitive advantage. The definition and categorization of customer knowledge varies based on different research perspectives. One of the commonly accepted definitions of customer knowledge is from Feng and Tian (2005), originally defined by Gebert (2003) and Blosch (2000). They define customer knowledge as the dynamic combination of experience, value and insight information which is needed, created and absorbed during the process of transaction and exchange between the customers and enterprise. Campbell (2001) defines customer knowledge as organized and structured information about the customer as the result of systematic processing. According to Mithas et al., (2005) originally cited by Davenport and Klahr (1998), customer knowledge is considered a one of the complex types of knowledge. The reason is due to existence of different sources and channels which customer knowledge can be captured, its multiple contextual meanings and finally its dynamic nature which makes it to be changed fast. The evolved concept of marketing, views customers as cocreators and coproducers which can be considered as form of value proposition (Bendapudi and Leone 2003; Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004; Vargo and Lusch 2004; Payne and Frow, 2005). Therefore Companies should try to keep their customers as much as possible, especially those which are economically valuable and are called as frequent purchasers. The more their customers get involved in learning relationship and transfer the knowledge of their desires and preferences to company, the more they become reluctant to redo this process with another company (Pine et al, 1995). Shanks and Tay (2001) acknowledge that organizations are increasing the utilization of customer knowledge in order to obtain competitive advantage. Having in-depth knowledge of customer behaviors will help organizations to focus on their target customers based on customers evolving needs and experiences instead of customers general characteristics, which finally increases the firms products perceived value and switching cost (Mithas et al., 2005).In the other side, the shared customer knowledge could help employees to do cross-selling and predict the market demand which helps to leverage the competitive advantage more effectively (Mithas et al., 2005). But although capture of customers knowledge and information, provides a powerful competitive advantage to organizations but they should be aware that they cannot treat their customers as static individuals. They should know that the nature of relationship between customers and organizations is dynamic and like organizations which change throughout the time therefore customers also change which as the result their preferences, desires, lifestyles, conditions and interaction channels always evolve and change. Thus observation and monitoring of relationships with customers should be done constantly and thoroughly at all aspects (Blosch, 2000; Pine et al, 1995). As mentioned above, there are different types of definitions and classifications for customer knowledge. For example Gibbert et al. (2002), have classified the customer knowledge, from organizations point of view, in to three types: knowledge for
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customers, knowledge about customers and knowledge from customers. The similar classification of customer knowledge has been made by scholars such as Brenner et al. (2005); Feng and Tian (2005); and Ye Naiyi (2002). In other classifications, Crie and Micheaux (2006) divide customer knowledge in to two types, Behavioral or Quantitative and Attitudinal or Qualitative. The behavioral knowledge is easy to obtain and they are basically quantitative by nature which contain customers transactional relations with firm. On the other side, attitudinal knowledge is difficult to obtain because it deals with customers state of mind but meanwhile it is an important factor for enhancement of customer knowledge because they are directly related to customers thoughts and insights. For the purpose of this paper, the Gibbert et al. classification of customer knowledge, which is a commonly used classification, has been adopted. Knowledge for Customers is unidirectional knowledge which is sent from organizations to support their customers and make customers to understand their offered products better (Gibbert et al.; 2002; Smith and McKeen, 2005). This knowledge could help organizations to sustain their customers by focusing on changing the customers preferences and increases their demands compatibility with the offered product which finally leads to purchase of product by customer (Feng and Tian, 2005). Moreover, Feng and Tian (2005) also note that the meaning of what they define as knowledge for customers is different with the one which has been defined by Gebert and Blosch. They acknowledge that by mentioning the fact that: The knowledge prepared for the customer is not necessarily the knowledge the customer needs. Knowledge about customers is firms comprehension on customers background, desires and preference on product characteristics (Chen and Su, 2006). Customers are interacting with organizations through multiple and different channels and based on the type of channel that they interact; organizations can segment their customers and also define their relationships with them. Moreover this can be done through acquired knowledge from channels which are derived from statistical information and historical data of customers purchases or their interactions. This acquired knowledge is considered as organizations insight on each customers demand and preference or organizations knowledge about their customers (Blosch, 2000; Feng and Tian, 2005; Gibbert et al., 2002). Knowledge from customers is the knowledge which resides in customers, and organizations should pay attention to this knowledge more than two other types (Paquette, 2006). This knowledge contains information that customers have about organizations products and services, its competitors products and services, customers inputs for product development and innovation, and their preferred channels of communication (Feng and Tian, 2005). Knowledge for customers is generated from data obtained through customers direct complaints, needs and suggestions and helps organization to focus on correct market segments and adopt appropriate business strategies for their product development and marketing activities (Chen and Su, 2006; Park and Kim, 2003).

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3.1.2 Organizational Factors According to Feng and Tian (2005), 80% of CRM implementation failures were because of overestimation of technological factors and ignorance of organizations about organizational factors such as, organizational procedures and cultures, management and leadership. The integration of KM and CRM is concerned with organizational changes which involves every direction of organization. Knowledge management has the highest contribution to success of organization when it is dealt with in a holistic approach that connects all internal factors such as organizational culture, top management leadership and business processes with customer relationship management (Crie and Micheaux, 2006). The most important part for managing the customer knowledge is its utilization for doing something different and despite the technology which has the least effect; organizational and managerial factors are playing an important role (Davenport et al., 2001). For instance, if knowledge acquired from customer indicates a change in product or service design, the barriers for using that knowledge would be refusal, delay or failure to listen and these barriers could not be removed by use of technology (Davenport et al., 2001). Moreover, whenever there are issues regarding organizational politics and disinterest in knowledge sharing, or little cross-functional flow of knowledge, a good support environment by managers who are above functional departments in organization hierarchy will be necessary (Davenport and Klahr, 1998). Top management support is an important factor for success of CRM in an organization and it also decreases the amount of resistance to change in an organization (Croteau and Li; 2003; Greve and Albers, 2006). The top management support affects employees perception on importance of customer knowledge by transferring the concept of customers knowledge value to employees and encouraging them to participate in this view and undertaking necessary actions to create customer knowledge competence (Campbell; 2001). Knowledge culture is another important factor on having a successful KM-enabled CRM (Paquette, 2006). Knowledge culture, as one aspect of organizational factors, is contributing on effective creation, transfer and use of knowledge (Rowley; 2002). There are some initiatives that will fall into knowledge culture category. For example, increasing the level of awareness on the benefits of sharing the knowledge which is embedded in relationships and engagements with customers, and focusing on encouraging the knowledge-related behavior of employees for increasing employees contributions on structured knowledge base of organization through utilization of rewards and bonuses, would be considered as some of knowledge culture initiatives (Rowley; 2002). 3.1.3 KM Infrastructure The competency of the organization to gather and utilization of knowledge is considered as an important issue for KM-enabled CRM (Paquette, 2006). According to Paquette (2006), originally cited from Cohen and Levintal (1990), this competency consists of the organizations knowledge to identify and unify the new knowledge, ability to gather,
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process and share of knowledge and also existence of supporting platform for this processes including information systems. Information Technology is considered as an enabler for KM but the way that organizations are adopting it, is considered as a success factor for KM implementation (Chong, 2006). The transformation of organizations from product-centric to customer-centric requires existence of technological and informational infrastructure which enables organizations to know and understand their customers better (Shanks and Tay, 2001). But the infrastructure is not adequate for this transformation unless it is complemented by some changes in organizations structure, culture and processes (Shanks and Tay, 2001). Similarly Tiwana (2001) confirms that organizations which adopt IT and its applications to suit the needs of their internal and external customers along with their employees and suppliers can have better success in KM implementation. Previously information did not have any impact on decision making processes in organizations and information technology was only a producer of data, not information and knowledge. But now, it is producer of new information and knowledge along with various new strategies (Drucker, 1998). The technology is not only used for purpose of knowledge extraction, it also contributes in sharing of knowledge within organization. It facilitates structuring of knowledge which makes the right information available for right individual in right time. The rest depends on the individual to select the information which is useful for organization in the given time. Boon et al. (2002) originally cited from Hwang et al. (2002), describe the components of organizations Information Technology (IT) infrastructure as set of IT services, including communications management, standard management, security, IT education, service management, application management, data management, and IT research and development. Romano and Fjermestad (2003) posit that the KM literature has put lot of emphasis on IT issues rather than considering the people management aspect. They identified the people management aspect as a critical factor for KM success. In knowledge-enabled organizations intangible assets such as knowledge assets are much more important than tangible ones. In this organizations, employees who are known as knowledge workers are highly qualified and well trained professionals who enable organizations to use their knowledge for solving their customers complicated problems (Shanks and Tay, 2001; Sveiby, 1997). Therefore employees who handle or gather the customer knowledge, need to be trained for being able to use the technology and also hold some analytical skills for better use and evaluation of the acquired knowledge. Rewarding mechanisms and recognition of employees skills stimulates employees and gives them the responsibility to treat the customers in high quality levels (Crie and Micheaux, 2006). Llamas and Sule (2004), argue that interaction of customers with organizations provides experiences to organizations. This customer experience has intangible characteristics which make it to be different from person to person and employees as the other participants in interaction with customers are considered as customer experience holders and their involvement in collection and distribution of customer knowledge has positive impact on firms performance (Boulding et al., 2005). Customer knowledge cannot be only generated from sales and marketing channels. Customers have different
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types of interactions with organizations through different channels therefore customer knowledge which is integrated into CRM can be used by different people in different departments who have interactions with customers through different channels (Boon et al., 2002). The employees of the company are one of the success factors for CRM due to their amounts involved in CRM and their level of involvement (Payne and Frow, 2005). 3.2 CRM Performance Although the demand for transformation of companies from product-centric to customercentric is growing fast but for measuring the performance of CRM, as result of KM integration, still, there is no any well accepted set of metrics or a measurement system (Brenner et al., 2005; Payne and Frow, 2005). According Grabner-Kraeutera et al. (2007), the absence of holistic framework for determining success metrics as well as insufficient implementation of performance measurement processes are important reasons for failure of many CRM initiatives. Llamas and Sule (2004), confirm that by mentioning the main reasons for failure in establishment of a standard framework for performance measurement in the field of marketing. They state reasons such as, the short term characteristics of current performance metrics, their restricted diagnostic power and finally the absence of a general agreement on the amount of measures and succeeding problems in performing comparisons (Llamas and Sule, 2004). Based on reviewed literature there are different methods and categorizations for CRM performance, such as financial versus non-financial; one-dimensional versus multicriteria; hard versus soft; tangible versus intangible (Chi et al., 2004; Kim et al., 2003; Llamas and Sule, 2004; Payne and Frow, 2005). The most common categorizations of CRM performance are regarding to financial and non-financial and also tangible and intangible success measures. In terms of financial or tangible measures, measures such as net profit, net sales, reduced costs, market share, customer share and cash flow (Kim et al., 2003; Llamas and Sule, 2004; Pine et al, 1995) can be considered. Measures such as customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, increased customer lifetime value, service and quality improvement, innovation and competitiveness are considered as nonfinancial or intangible measures (Chi et al., 2004; Kim et al., 2003; Llamas and Sule, 2004; Payne and Frow, 2005). Although, financial and nonfinancial measures may seem to be in opposition of each other, but further studies indicate the strong relationship between nonfinancial measures such as customer satisfaction and customer retention and companies profitability as financial measures (Llamas and Sule, 2004). Beside different categorizations of CRM performance and outcomes, literature also shows different methods of measuring CRM performance. In their model for evaluating the performance of CRM, Kim et al. (2003), used the adapted model of Balanced Scored Card. They substituted factors such as customer knowledge, customer interaction, customer value and customer satisfaction with the original elements included in the traditional Balanced Scored Card (Kim et al., 2003; Llamas and Sule, 2004). Payne and Frow (2005), based on their study, state different CRM performance measures such as profit, revenues, customer retention, customer satisfaction and
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combination of customer retention and customer satisfaction, which have been adopted by previous researchers. Meantime they divide the CRM assessment process, as part of their strategic framework for CRM, in to two components called shareholder results and performance monitoring. The first one provides the overall view of relationships and consideration of building customer and employee value as ultimate objective of CRM and the latter provides more specific view on CRM measures and performance indicators (Payne and Frow, 2005). Moreover, Chi et al. (2004) propose that CRM performance can be measured from two tangible and intangible aspects. The tangible behaviors are visible and they are concerned with customers behavioral factors such as customer retention, cross buying/repurchase, word of mouth and etc. The tangible behaviors could generate tangible profit for organizations. Meantime Croteau and Li (2003), point out that CRM impacts can be categorized in two types: internal focus and external focus and they adopt Jutla et al.s (2001) CRM performance measurement framework which uses three customer metrics such as: customer retention rate, customer satisfaction and customer profitability as tools for measurement of performance, cost and effectiveness of CRM. Another view for CRM performance measurement is from Greve and Albers (2006) which consider different types of CRM performance measurement at its different stages of implementation. They explain that by considering the amounts of improvement in customer acquisition and customer recovery in initiation stage of CRM implementation. In Maintenance stage, the improvement in cross-/-up-selling activities, customer satisfaction, and share of wallet will be measured and in Retention stage, the amount of improvement in customer retention and decrease in customer defection (Greve and Albers, 2006). According to Drucker (1998), today the business success is no more based on making of returns and capitals but totally different factors such as achieving high life-time value for customers, high customer retention rates and customer satisfaction which all are considered as ultimate outcomes of CRM to lead companies to positive economic performance (Grabner-Kraeutera et al., 2007). Customer satisfaction is one the main objectives of CRM. Customer satisfaction is difficult to measure because it is hard to quantify the satisfaction level. Customer satisfaction represents a modern approach for quality in enterprises and organizations, and it serves the development of a truly customer-focused management and culture. Measuring customer satisfaction offers an immediate, meaningful, and objective feedback about customer preferences and expectations (Kim et al., 2003). The improvement in customer knowledge has impact on relationship between CRM and customer satisfaction (Mithas et al., 2005). Measuring customer satisfaction offers an immediate, meaningful, and objective feedback about customer preferences and expectations (Kim et al., 2003). Customer life time value is another important performance measure for CRM. According to Pine et al. (1995), Lifetime value is the sum of the future stream of profits and other benefits attributable to all purchases and transactions with an individual customer, discounted back to its present value . Thus, if company could achieve to keep its customers longer, it will be able to receive more profit from them due to factors such as: increase in purchase, cost reduction in operations, referrals and word of mouth, premium prices and cost reduction in customer acquisition processes and activities. But some customers will have a higher lifetime
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value due to the knowledge that they provide to company, because this knowledge gives the company the new skills and capabilities which can be used for other customers as well. Pine et al. (1995), also describe customer share as one of performance measures which is the companys share on each of its customers total business trade. The company can calculate its customer share through understanding of what customer wants to buy from competitor and what she/he might be willing to buy from the company. 4 Conclusion

The business environment is changing from industrial to information environment and this transition includes the reassignment of core capabilities in organizations. For example the focus on tangible assets such as equipment, raw materials, human resources and etc., in industrial community is changing to intangible assets such as brand image, customer loyalty, customer and market knowledge and business knowhow in information community (Llamas and Sule, 2004). CRM as a customer-oriented business approach is considered as one of the powerful capabilities in organization which help them to transform themselves to a customer centric environment but CRM utilization is directly related with increase in customer knowledge, which in turn has positive effect on customer satisfaction (Boulding et al., 2005).By using knowledge management companies can improve their relationship with their valuable customers to create loyal customers and obtain competitive advantage (Paquette, 2006).Since knowledge management is responsible for acquiring and collecting the expertise and knowledge within organizations to promote innovation in organizations and meantime CRM is able to capture customer preferences, desires and above all, their knowledge; the integration of these two concepts provide tremendous amount of benefits to organizations (Massey et al., 2001; Nonaka, 1991; Quinn et al., 1996; Romano, 2000). Organizations can create new ideas and provide improved and new services by help of knowledge management and the knowledge originated from CRM (Chen and Li, 2006). The acquired knowledge of customers is called customer knowledge which includes customers preferences, desires, needs, buying behaviors and their insight on companies products and services. The customer knowledge as an integral element of Knowledge Management and CRM relationship could help organizations to tailor their products and services and even the entire relationship with customers to increase customer satisfaction and finally economic profitability (Bose and Sugumaran, 2003; Boulding et al., 2005; Chen and Li, 2006; Mithas et al., 2005; Smith and McKeen, 2005). Thus, measuring the impact of Knowledge Management on CRM is a necessary action to demonstrate the results of Knowledge Management and CRM interaction. The outcomes of the interaction between Knowledge Management and CRM can be considered as both tangible and intangible. Measures such as net profit, net sales, and customer share are considered as tangible outcomes of CRM performance and as intangible ones, measures such as customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and increased customer lifetime value are considered as important intangible outcomes of CRM in perspective of relationship between Knowledge Management and CRM. Although there have been numerous amount of studies conducted on field of CRM
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performance but still, there is no any standard and well accepted model or framework for measuring all aspects of CRM performance in organizations. Authors believe that further study on this field on enriching the previous studies on developing a standard and overall CRM performance measurement system is necessary and worthy of further studies by researchers.

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