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The modern business environment has undergone fundamental changes – shifting from being production-inclined to being service driven; a situation that has resulted in a shift from the traditional ways of conducting organisational and marketing processes to a new strategy that is technology-enabled and customer-centric. Particularly, the advancement of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has created new channels for organisations like never before for exploiting customer relationship management tailored towards enhancing customer satisfaction, enhancing customer loyalty, increasing sales, and improving profitability. The internet and social media especially have enabled the flourishing of customer relationship management (CRM) practices. Business organisations can now incorporate the functionalities of the internet and social media into the traditional CRM systems to provide a platform where firms can interact and engage with consumers (both existing and prospective) in view of providing customised and personalised services. However, there have been major concerns raised on the fruition of these Social CRM systems in delivering value to both business organisations and its different stakeholders. Specifically, questions have been raised on whether these organisations claiming to implement Social CRM are fully exploiting its capabilities and are embracing the full possibilities such systems offer to businesses. Evidence in both the practitioner and academic literature has suggested that for the telecommunication industry, the transition and re-engineering of telecom operations and processes into being customer-centric has not been generally smooth. In the centre of the argument and criticism is that the needs and expectations of the customers are constantly evolving faster than the offerings and products offered by the many telecom firms and therefore needs a robust system like social CRM to manage customer relationships. In this contextual understanding, this doctorate research was embarked upon to explore the implementation of Social CRM by telecom companies in emerging markets as well as examine how such Social CRM strategies translates to customer outcomes such as brand reputation and customer loyalty. The country of Nigeria was chosen for this research given the huge potential it provides as an emerging market for the telecom firms with over 190 million people. The mixed methodology research was adopted in this research in order to gain a deeper insight of the situation both from the companies and customers’ perspectives. In other words, the qualitative research approach has been used to gain insight on the implementation of social CRM by telecom firms in Nigeria and quantitative research approach was used in examining how the social CRM strategies translates to customers’ brand awareness and loyalty. Three out of the four multinational companies who are the industry leaders participated in the study whereas, 491 customer responses were empirically analysed to reflect the customer outcomes from the implementation of the social CRM strategies. The study findings indicate Nigerian telecom firms are adopting the customer-centric approach to business and are using social CRM systems as a means of gaining competitive advantage; as well as establishing a beneficial relationship with their customers and in value co-creation. On the other hand, customers were found to hold high value of the usefulness of social media marketing and social CRM in driving customer-oriented service delivery and as well influencing the brand resonance among customers. The implication of the findings and practical recommendation is provided in the thesis. |
