Knowledge‐enabled customer relationship management: integrating customer relationship management and knowledge management concepts[1]

Abstract

The concepts of customer relationship management (CRM) and knowledge management (KM) both focus on allocating resources to supportive business activities in order to gain competitive advantages. CRM focuses on managing the relationship between a company and its current and prospective customer base as a key to success, while KM recognizes the knowledge available to a company as a major success factor. From a business process manager’s perspective both the CRM and KM approaches promise a positive impact on cost structures and revenue streams in return for the allocation of resources. However, investments in CRM and KM projects are not without risk, as demonstrated by many failed projects. In this paper we show that the benefit of using CRM and KM can be enhanced and the risk of failure reduced by integrating both approaches into a customer knowledge management (CKM) model. In this regard, managing relationships requires managing customer knowledge – knowledge about as well as from and for customers. In CKM, KM plays the role of a service provider, managing the four knowledge aspects: content, competence, collaboration and composition. Our findings are based on a literature analysis and six years of action research, supplemented by case studies and surveys.

The use of organizational capabilities to increase customer value

“…Although current opinion generally treats these concepts as separate research topics, Gebert et al (2003) show that the integration of CRM and KM at the process level benefits both management approaches. On the one hand, customer oriented KM focuses on the type of knowledge that is most valuable to the firm -customer knowledge-but on the other hand, knowledge oriented CRM can use a conceptual framework for the cost-effective management of the knowledge a firm requires for high quality relationships (Gebert et al, 2003). Although arguments have been put forward that support this relationship, the opinion of the authors is that KM influences CRM through MO.…”

“…Many authors link MO to the objective of creating customer value (Kaur & Gupta, 2010;Lafferty & Hult, 2001;Narver & Slater, 1990;Slater & Narver, 1995) and the literature discusses the relationship between KM and customer value (Gebert, Geib, Kolbe, & Brenner, 2003;Kaplan & Norton, 2004). In fact, many authors describe KM as a bundle of processes that firms need to enable them to use what they know in order to create value for their customers (Vorakulpipat & Rezgui, 2008) The literature argues that MO, KM and CRM foster the creation of superior customer value (Martelo, Barroso, & Cepeda, 2011) and the authors of this study can therefore reasonably propose that a particular combination of the three organizational capabilities might constitute a dynamic capability (DC), whose output would be an improvement in the customer value creation capability.…”

Web Based Application Customer Relationship Management for Helping Sales Analysis on Bike Manufacturer

“…The concept of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and knowledge management have gained wide attention in both business and academia [4]. CRM can be defined as a strategic approach to managing customer relationships in order to create customer and shareholder value through the appropriate use of IT, data and customer knowledge [5].…”

Mobile Customer Relationship Management: a communication perspective

“…The conceptual development of CRM is discussed more profoundly in chapter 2.1.1. The origins of CRM can be traced back to the concept of relationship marketing (Parvatiyar & Sheth 2001, Gebert et al 2003, Zablah et al 2004. However, in the line with Zablah et al (2004), this study considers that RM and CRM are different phenomena albeit interrelated and highly associated with each other.…”