FACULTY OF COMMERCE

DEPARTMENT OF MARKETING

CUSTOMER RELATIONS MANAGEMENT

GROUP ASSIGNMENT

SIMBARASHE MARINGOSI: N0176 724J (BLOCK)

HOPE. D. MATHAGA: N0175 704A (BLOCK)

ANGELA MHAKA N0173 101L (CONVENTIONAL)

Lecturer : MRS J CHARUMBIRA

QUESTION 1

What is the role of Human Resources in Customer Relations Management?

There are many definitions of customer relationship management presented by, either scholars or
practitioners or researchers, and from various perspectives. (Parvatiyar and Sheth, 2004) have
included the four dimensions of customer relationship management in their definition, where
they defined it as "a comprehensive strategy and process of acquiring, retaining, and partnering
with selective customers to create superior value for the company and the customers". While
marketers have defined CRM, "CRM is a comprehensive and marketing strategy; that integrates
technology, process and all business activities around the customer (Anton and Hoek, 2002).
And from the customer focus perspective (Becker, 2009), defined customer relationship
management as: "the key competitive strategy you need to stay focused on the needs of your
customers and to integrate a customer facing approach throughout your organization".

Many organizations nowadays have recognized that their people are the most important asset,
because they play the centric role in organizational success (Robbins and Coulter, 2005),
according to (Chalmeta, 2006), people are the cornerstone in customer relationship management
strategy, because they are ones who decide the success or failure of organizational plans and
strategies, Human resources management, is the department which manages and cares for people
affairs through many activities; human resources planning, recruitment, selection, orientation,
training, performance management, compensation and benefits, and career development (AL-
Damen, 2006). Human Resources are those constituents of an organization that take care of the
human facets and needs of all employees within that organization.

According to (managementstudy.com, nd), employees are the significant assets and the primary
promoters of profitable business for an organization. Hence, apart from managing clients and
customers for business purpose, it’s a decisive responsibility of an organization to manage and
fulfill all needs of its own employees. It would be improper to say that a CRM system is only
used to manage clients and customers; most of the HR heads or managers are using CRM
technologies for managing company’s human capital. This approach is called as Employee
Resource Management (ERM). An ERM is a business process that fills gaps between an
organization and its employee to create a strong emotional and professional bonding among
them.

Most businesses spend more time and energy trying to find new customers than in retaining the
customers they have. The logic behind customer retention is simple - it costs far less money to
keep current customers happy than to spend more money to recruit new customers. Loyal
customers tell their friends about the organization’s products and services business and will
spend more money than new customers. There are human resources management roles as
postulated by ( Shah and Harsha, 2011) and (Ye, 2014) to retain customers thus attaining good
customer relations management. They are as follows:

1. Recruitment ( Shah and Harsha, 2011).

Recruitment is the process of locating, identifying and attracting capable applicants, then, we
can say that if building a long-term relationship with the customers was a strategic
organizational goal, the organization will strive to attract people who can deal friendly with
the customers, especially those in the front desk (Zamil, 2011). Nyaradzo Funeral Services
 company has a very strict recruitment policy that ensures that they attract the right candidates
for their company or available vacancies. These right candidates when selected, have
assisted tremendously the company in establishing good customer relationships much to the
thriving of the business which has grown vastly. Human resources management plays a role
in ensuring that in order for customer relationship management to be a success, the
recruitment process attracts, locates or identifies the right and capable candidates.

2. Select the right people ( Shah and Harsha, 2011).

After developing the recruitment activities, organizations now have a pool of candidates. The
definition of selecting process is as follows, it is the process of screening job applicants to ensure
that the most appropriate candidates are hired (Zamil, 2011). Therefore, whatever the
organization's mission is, including the goal of calling for establishing good relations with
customers; it will not be achieved without employee's commitment. Most businesses do a poor
job of hiring people. They hire just anyone and place them on the front-line with customers as
further established by (Zail, 2011). Emphasis should be placed on recruiting and hiring the right
people with good personalities. Focus should be on those who are friendly and demonstrate an
interest in and enthusiasm for the job, this is a recipe for a thriving customer relationship
management process. ( Shah and Harsha, 2011) suggest that when hiring, firms should consider
using personality profiles as part of the hiring process. These profiles help identify the true
personality characteristics of your applicants. In order to drive customer satisfaction to an
enviable level HR should concentrate on smart hiring practices and employee development.

To build a customer friendly culture, Human Resources Management should hire only such
employees who are capable to reinforce customer satisfaction. Most service-quality gurus say
that hiring is the first and most critical step in building a customer-friendly company
(www.workforce.com, 2008). Shah and Harsha, 2011 indicate that a successful customer service
representative is one who is an optimist, flexible and able to manage stress and criticism. He
should be able to strike a balance between his interests and that of the company and the
customer. Thus, scrutinizing a potential candidate should begin from the time he appears for the
interview. The candidate's body language and attitude before and during the interview might give
some cues about his capabilities. This all sums up to the notion that, it’s a lot easier to start with
people who’ve got the right personality qualities to work with customers than it is to struggle to
teach those skills to whoever walks in the door.

Human resources management thus plays a significant role that in order for there to be good
customer relations management, the right people for that task are brought on board.
 3. Sensationalize the service experience for organization’s customers ( Shah and Harsha,
2011).

Good service is not good enough. A recent Gallup survey showed a customer who is
"emotionally connected" to your place of business is likely to spend 46% more money than a
customer who is merely "satisfied" but not emotionally bonded ( Shah and Harsha, 2011).

4. Set performance standards ( Shah and Harsha, 2011).

( Shah and Harsha, 2011) postulate that an organization should outline the behaviors expected
from its employees; they further articulate that you should tell them your requirements for how
employees should act, speak, and respond to customer needs and requests. Service performance
standards like for example, to retain 75% of first time customers help the employees in ensuring
that every first encounter with customers does not end there, they should treat customer with so
much care, respect or reverence so that they may come back and do business again and again
thus maximizing benefiting from the customer life time value.

Human resources management ensures that there are set customer relations performance
standards by which the performance of employees is measured. These standards thus ensure that
employees are motivated to perform better since they have a set mark or goal to achieve, that is
creating, maintaining and enhancing good customer experience and relations.

5. Sustain on-going training and reinforcement ( Shah and Harsha, 2011).

Good customer service skills are not natural for most people, ( Shah and Harsha, 2011).
Effective customer service training must be reinforced and taught on a recurring basis. The
organizations must provide a thorough customer service training program for all of its employees
during their orientation. It is the amount of training afforded to an employee that will determine
their effectiveness. Refresher courses are a necessity, employees need to be reminded or
rekindled on how they should handle customers for the ultimate benefit of the organization by
way of customer retention.

( Shah and Harsha, 2011) state that, on being recruited, a candidate should be trained to establish
customer relationships. To serve the customer better one needs to understand his needs. For this
the employee should be aware of the different personality traits and their behavioral patterns.
Effective communication skills need to be imparted. Employees should thus be trained to exhibit
to customers a zeal to serve them.

Stanbic Bank Zimbabwe has an employee training program to ensure that it’s bankers are kept
abreast with current trends on how to handle clients in the private banking department. The
employees due to their regular training are highly friendly, courteous and welcoming. This
establishes the foundation for good customer relationships.

Human resources management thus plays a pivotal role in identifying the customer relations
training needs of employees, identifying the trainers and the frequency of training amongst other
issues pertaining to training employees in line with good customer relations management.

6. Specify incentives for demonstrated good customer service behavior ( Shah and Harsha,
2011).

As employees want to be paid well, they also want to be treated with respect and shown
appreciation. The front-line supervisor has the greatest impact on motivating and retaining
employees. Reward those who exceed the standards and provide development for those who do
not ( Shah and Harsha, 2011). A large part of achieving great customer service is keeping the
employees happy.

Human resources management thus ensures that employees in order for them to achieve more in
their quest to establish, maintain or enhance good customer relations are rewarded for their good
behavior. The incentives for such behavior are well spelt out. Nyaradzo Funeral Services has a
holiday package for its top performers when it comes to good customer relations. Employees are
thus motivated to work even harder to satisfy customers and create good relations as they know
their efforts will not be in vain as they will be rewarded.

Human resources also clarifies the incentives and rewards for employees that do well in terms of
good customer relations.

7. BUILDING CUSTOMER LOYALTY THROUGH EMPLOYEE LOYALTY:

( Shah and Harsha, 2011) indicate that, employee allegiance is crucial to build customer
satisfaction and loyalty, because customer and employee satisfaction run parallel. New
employees feel good about their company when they have the opportunity to acquire new skills
and move up the corporate ladder. Once an employee stays with the company for about 3 years
he gets restless if nothing new is happening. Similarly, new customers feel thrilled by the
attention showered on them by the company. Over the years, regular customers used to attention,
however begin to feel neglected and explore new avenues. An organization that does not acquire
the loyalty of the customer or employees might be left in lurch. The two are interdependent. If
the employee is happy then the customer satisfaction is also high.

Human resources management is thus crucial in the above mentioned sense because it then
identifies the programs and incentives that enhance employee loyalty, once the employee is
happy and loyal, that happiness and loyalty is transmitted to the customers by way of good
customer relations.

8. TRUST

(Ye, 2014) indicates that in Customer relationship marketing, concepts of trust, commitment and
attraction are important. In the trust concept, we can find 4 different trusts, such as generalized
trust, system trust, process-based trust, and last personality-based trust. Personality-based trust is
here we will discuss more because it is related with the Human Resource Management. It means
a customer believes that he can rely on the word or statement which is represented by the
employees of the service provider. In this scenario, then the trust is built and customers are
willing to have further contact and continue a business relationship with this trusted service
provider. The existence of trust in relationship can possibly secure the supplier or service
provider when facing risks and unexpected behavior afterword.

Human resources management then plays a role in ensuring that trustworthy people are hired. It
ensures also that trainings are done in order to have employees that have expert knowledge in
their field so as to be trusted by the customers as they will be speaking basing on their expertise.

9. Employee voice

When an employee has complaints, suggestions and is willing to discuss problems with
supervisors, that is called voice (Ye, 2014). Usually, more loyal employees are more likely to
voice, because they consider that they are valuable to the company and ready to get improved. It
can be either direct dealing with employees or indirect handling through their representative.

How to collect voice?

 Direct voice: Let employees say their own feeling and experience, and methods or ways
to meeting a customer's needs, give them the permit to influence their working
conditions.

Human resources management in these circumstances would have played a pivotal role in
acquiring information from employees which is necessary to achieve good customer relations
since they are the ones that interact with the customers

10. Remuneration
A well paid employee is highly motivated and is the best suitable candidate for good customer
relations management.

Clear remuneration policies and packages should be in place. The best perfomers in terms of
customer relations management are to be well renumerated.

CONCLUSION

Since increasing of employee's commitment towards change, is one of the outcomes of human
resources management activities, and since this commitment helps in the creation of the right
climate for change, and since the desirable change, is the implementation of customer
relationship management, which represented by customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, this
simply means that there is a close relationship between HRM activities and the creation of the
suitable climate for change, which has a direct impact on the implementation of CRM strategy.
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