Is there a suitable CRM framework to evaluate the effectiveness of CRM practices in the Singapore hotel industry?

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

9-2010

Is there a suitable CRM framework to evaluate the effectiveness Is there a suitable CRM framework to evaluate the effectiveness

of CRM practices in the Singapore hotel industry? of CRM practices in the Singapore hotel industry?

Janet Wong

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

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IS THERE A SUITABLE CRM FRAMEWORK

TO EVALUATE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CRM PRACTICES

IN THE SINGAPORE HOTEL INDUSTRY?

Janet Wong

Bachelor of Science (Economics) in Management Studies (2

Upper)

University of London, UK

1992

A professional paper in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the

Executive Master of Hospitality Administration

Department of Hotel Administration

Graduate College

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

September 2010

Abstract

Is there a suitable CRM framework

to evaluate the effectiveness of CRM practices

in the Singapore hotel industry?

Janet Wong

Dr. Clark Kincaid, Committee Chair

Associate Professor

Department of Hotel Management

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

With the continuous growth of the hospitality industry in Singapore and the increasing

interest in CRM, it is becoming more critical to ensure Singapore hotels have in place a best

CRM practice to improve customer value and retention. The purpose of this study is to

develop a best CRM practice for Singapore hotels. Four frameworks are discussed in the

study with Buttle’s modified framework being the best suited because other models took on a

more strategic CRM focus or focus their attention on the role of ICT. This framework

provides a detailed value chain to understand the CRM practices at different operational level

and activities. It also show how by getting all these activities together, a successful CRM

practices is achievable. The best part of this framework is Buttle provides four supporting

conditions to guide the CRM implementation at the property level.

Table of Contents

Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... ii

PART ONE ................................................................................................................................ 6

Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 6

Purpose ....................................................................................................................................... 7

Statement of Problem ..................................................................................................... 7

Justification ................................................................................................................................ 8

Constraints ................................................................................................................................. 8

PART TWO ............................................................................................................................... 9

Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 9

Literature Review....................................................................................................................... 9

What is customer relationship management (CRM)? .................................................... 9

Framework for implementing and evaluating the effectiveness of CRM practices..... 11

Five generic inter-related process steps. ................................................................ 11

Strategic, operational or analytical CRM............................................................... 12

CRM Value Chain.................................................................................................. 12

An integrated managerial approach. ...................................................................... 12

CRM research in the hotel industry ............................................................................. 13

CRM goals ................................................................................................................... 16

Implementing CRM best practice using CRM value chain ......................................... 17

Modified version of Buttle’s CRM value chain. .................................................... 17

Five primary stages. ............................................................................................... 18

Four secondary supporting activities. .................................................................... 22

Conclusion to Literature Review ................................................................................. 25

PART THREE ......................................................................................................................... 27

Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 27

Methodology ............................................................................................................................ 27

Result ....................................................................................................................................... 27

Develop a best CRM practice used at hotel property level .......................................... 28

CRM goal. .............................................................................................................. 28

Customer portfolio analysis. .................................................................................. 28

Customer intimacy. ................................................................................................ 29

Value proposition development. ............................................................................ 29

Manage customer lifecycle. ................................................................................... 30

Evaluation and control. .......................................................................................... 30

Identify how CRM practices can be effectively administered ..................................... 31

Identify the gaps existed in one service residence in Singapore .................................. 31

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 31

Recommendation ..................................................................................................................... 32

Reference ................................................................................................................................. 33

Appendix A: The CRM continuum.......................................................................................... 40

Appendix B: Five generic inter-related process steps.............................................................. 41

Appendix C: Strategic, operational or analytical CRM ........................................................... 42

Appendix D: Buttle’s CRM value chain .................................................................................. 43

Appendix E: Integrated managerial approach.......................................................................... 44

Appendix F: Modified CRM value chain ................................................................................ 45

Appendix G: Characteristic of the property from personal communication............................ 46

Appendix H: Personal communication (5 primary stages) ...................................................... 47

Appendix I: Personal communication (4 supporting conditions) ............................................ 49

Appendix J: Recommended best CRM practise for hotel in Singapore .................................. 50

Appendix K: Customer centric practices ................................................................................. 51

Appendix L: Customer information matrix ............................................................................. 52

Appendix M: Customer characteriszation and customer analysis ........................................... 53

Appendix N: Data mining steps and tools .............................................................................. 54

Appendix O: Value star ........................................................................................................... 55

Appendix P: Service recovery strategy .................................................................................... 56

Appendix Q: Evolution of customer relationship .................................................................... 57

Appendix R: Ways to effectively administer CRM practices .................................................. 58

Appendix S: Gap analysis ........................................................................................................ 59

PART ONE

Introduction

Customer relationship management (CRM) has received enormous enthusiasm amongst

academicians and practitioners touching on issues like managing CRM effectively (Reinartz,

Krafft, & Hover, 2004); measuring CRM performance (Richards & Jones, 2008) and CRM

domain and meaning (Parvatiyar & Sheth, 2001). Companies are now gaining knowledge and

realizing different individual customers view the value of service differently, hence driving the

organizations to adopt different offerings and communication strategies (Reinartz et al., 2004).

To effectively and efficiently manage customer relationships, company will have to implement

customer centric practices, strategies and programs, tools and techniques so as to build a strong

co-operative and partnering relationship with customers (Parvatiyar & Sheth, 2001).

It is to a hotel’s interest to engage in CRM activities which include understanding

customer requirements and expectations; delivering of services which create value for the

customer and managing customer lifecycle effectively and efficiently (Lo, Stalcup, & Lee,

2008). To achieve success with a CRM program, companies will need to take a holistic approach

towards strategic, organizational and technological issues (Roberts, Raymond, & Hazard, 2005).

The misconception CRM is principally IT implementation must be erased. Technology is viewed

as an enabler for CRM success (Roberts et al., 2005). Agrawal (2004) points out there must be a

link between CRM strategies and business objectives to stand a better chance of success in CRM

implementation.

CRM is about putting customer in the center of organization activities. With the

assistance from technology, a 360º view of the customer’s needs and requirements is made

possible. CRM is about first listening to the customer before designing the CRM strategies or

practices. Listening to the customer is a good way to motivate customer to return to the same

hotel.

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to develop a best CRM practice for Singapore hotels.

Previous research on CRM focused mainly on relationship between operational investments,

customer satisfaction and company profitability (Kamakura, Vikas, & Jose, 2002); the link

between long-lifetime value customer and company bottom line (Reinartz & Kumar, 2000);

positive effect of customer loyalty program (Verhoef, 2003). There are not many academic

researches on CRM practices focusing on the Singapore hotel industry. This study aims to begin

the process of research to develop an understanding of CRM practices for Singapore hotels.

Statement of Problem

This study will highlight a best CRM practice to help organization implement CRM

program successfully. Research has shown about 60 to 80 % of CRM projects were implemented

unsuccessfully (Kale, 2004). Gartner (2003) studies show 70% of CRM projects end with no

gain or improvement to the company’s bottom line performance. Kale (2004) sums up seven

poisonous sins that will lead to CRM implementation failure: narrowly equating technology

implementation as CRM implementation; customer centric vision is absent; lack of appreciation

for customer lifetime value (CLV); lack of top management support; lack of understanding

change management in an organization; failure to re-look at organization business process and

overlooking the difficulties and amount of work with respect to data mining and customer

segmentation.

This paper will also look at effectively administrating CRM practices in Singapore hotels.

Besides gaining an insight into the CRM framework and practices based on the current available

research, this paper aims to raise awareness of the available CRM practices which Singapore

hotels can implement. This study should also provide a basis for future research into how best to

implement such practices. The objectives of the study include:

• Develop a best CRM practice used at hotel property level

• Identify how CRM practices can be effectively administered

• Identify the gaps existed in one service residence in Singapore

Justification

Worldwide CRM software spending is forecasted to grow through 2010 reaching $13.3

billion (Gartner Newsroom, 2008). According to Gartner, highest spending growth in CRM

spending will be coming from the Asia Pacific region, hitting $840 million in 2012 against $410

million in 2007. This growth has not even considered CRM-related services like consulting,

customer care outsourcing, change management etc.

Visitors arriving to Singapore in April 2010 tipped a record high of 938,000, a 20.4%

increase. Hotel revenue reached S$158 million, a 36.5% growth as compared to last year

(Government of Singapore, 2010). With the continuous growth of the hospitality industry in

Singapore and the increasing interest in CRM, it becomes even more critical to ensure Singapore

hotels have in place a best CRM practice to improve customer value and retention.

Constraints

Lack of available existing literature or case studies regarding CRM practices in the

Singapore industry context posed a challenge for this study. Insufficient time to perform an

island wide survey to understand how most of the hotels in Singapore practice CRM confine the

study to limited few cases.

PART TWO

Introduction

In Part one, an overview was made as to the holistic approach towards strategic,

business objectives and technological issues within an organization to achieve success in

CRM program. CRM is really first listening to the customers’ needs before designing the

CRM strategies or practices.

In Part two, existing literature review was performed relative to understanding what is

customer relationship management (CRM); understanding the different framework for

implementing and evaluating the effectiveness of CRM practices; CRM research in the hotel

industry; CRM goals and implementing best CRM practice using CRM value chain.

Literature Review

What is customer relationship management (CRM)?

Prior to defining CRM, it is essential to know what a customer is. Customers can be

broken down into four categories namely paying customers, employees, business associates

and suppliers/ vendors (Greenberg, 2004). This definition gets complicated with respect to

the different industry having different process to govern the way these industries perform

their business functions. In CRM, both internal and external customers are included in the

customer definition. Employees and suppliers/vendors are both referred to as internal

customers (Gamble, Stone, & Woodcock, 1999). Internal customers (especially employees)

play a critical role in ensuring organizations can meet and exceed customer satisfaction for

external customers (Gronroos, 2000).

CRM has received enormous interest amongst academicians and practitioners

touching on issues like managing CRM effectively (Reinartz et al., 2004); measuring CRM

performance (Richards & Jones, 2008) and CRM domain and meaning (Parvatiyar & Sheth,

2001). Despite all this explosive interest and an increasing amount of practitioner oriented

published journals and articles, there is no common consensus on the definition of CRM. The

meaning of CRM varies from individuals to individuals. To some, it is about creating

marketing activities using knowledge about customer from a data warehouse. For others

CRM is technologically oriented. This highly diverse definition of CRM is a major cause of

failure to some CRM projects when an organization restricts their understanding of CRM

solely to a technological perspective (Kale, 2004) or view CRM from an incomplete

perspective.

Despite all the different descriptions, definitions and viewpoints about CRM, most

definitions constitute two things, i.e. customer relationships and information technology.

Payne and Frow (2005) use a continuum to define CRM from three perspectives, ranging

from narrowly and tactically defined to broadly and strategically define. See Appendix A for

the detailed CRM continuum.

The first perspective takes a narrow and tactical outlook where CRM is accomplished

through a defined technology initiative project. CRM is described as using data to drive

marketing activities (Kutner & Cripps, 1997). CRM is also look upon as a marketing

promotional activities linked to marketing database (Bickert, 1992; Winer, 2001).

The second perspective view CRM as implementing a combination of customer-

focused technology solutions. CRM is defined as using ecommerce to drive relationships

with customer (Stone & Woodcock, 2001) and web-based methods and internet technology to

drive organization to become more customer-centric (Gosney & Boehm, 2000).

The third and last perspective takes a broader and strategic approach where CRM

applies a holistic or wholesome approach to customer relationships management and to

develop value for shareholder. CRM applies 1-to1 relationship marketing to respond to

customer requirement supported by what the customer says they prefer and other known

information related to the customer (Peppers, Rogers, & Dorf, 1999). It employs process

oriented view by combining all the functions of an organization (Parvitiyar & Sheth, 2001)

and uses an organized process by managing customer relationship touching on all customer

touch points to develop value for the customer and profitability for the organization (Reinartz

et al., 2004). For this paper, Buttle (2009) describe “CRM is the core business strategy that

integrates internal processes and functions, and external networks, to create and deliver value

to targeted customers at a profit (p. 14).”

Framework for implementing and evaluating the effectiveness of CRM practices

Researchers did many studies on CRM and CRM is also implemented across various

organizations like manufacturing (Sidney, 2003); financial services (On, Pires, & Stanton,

2008); medical services (Chahal, 2010); retailing (Anderson, Jolly, & Fairhurst, 2007) and

hotels (Lo et al., 2010). Yet there is no agreement regarding a common framework for the

implementation and appraisal on how effective is the CRM practices. There are four such

frameworks discussed in this paper:

• Payne and Frow (2005) five generic inter-related process steps

• Iriana and Buttle (2006) strategic, operational or analytical CRM

• Buttle (2009) CRM value chain

• Sigala (2005) an integrated managerial approach

Five generic inter-related process steps.

Payne and Frow (2005) uses interaction research and a combination of literature

review and field communication with executives to arrive at a strategic multi functional

process oriented CRM framework consisting of five generic processes including strategy

development process; value creation process; multichannel integration process; information

management process, and performance assessment process. The process begins from

developing business and customer strategy (strategy development) and concluded with

performance monitoring through qualitative and quantitative measurement and key

performance indicator. Data are collected throughout these four processes. Refer to Appendix

B for the CRM framework consisting of five generic interrelated processes.

Strategic, operational or analytical CRM.

Another perception on CRM framework is the formulation of an idea that supports a

multi-dimensional view of strategic, operational and analytical CRM. A 13-item survey

questions were developed to understand an organization’s orientation towards a strategic,

operational or analytical form of CRM (Iriana & Buttle, 2006). How does this framework

relate to the Payne and Frow framework? Strategic CRM covers the strategic development

and value creation process answering questions related to business visions, customer choice,

value proposition and assessment. Operational CRM is related to multichannel integration

process focusing on the communication channels between customer and organization.

Analytical CRM encompassed the process of managing information focusing on collecting

and using customer data. See Appendix C for the interrelationships.

CRM Value Chain.

Buttle (2009) CRM value chain uses Porter (1985) competitive value chain system as

a guide. The Buttle’s CRM value chain includes five primary stages and four supporting

conditions to aid the organization create customer value and organization profitability. The

primary stages are customer portfolio analysis, customer intimacy, network development,

value proposition development and manage the relationship. The supporting conditions

consist of culture and leadership, procurement processes, human resource management

process, IT/ data management process and organizational design. See Appendix D for the

Buttle’s CRM value chain.

An integrated managerial approach.

Sigala (2005) noted CRM has exaggerate the role of Information and Communication

Technologies (ICT) in the hospitality industry but it is now globally acknowledged for CRM

to be successful, organization will need to align the function of ICT with operational

activities. Successful CRM implementation is possible through an integrated managerial

approach of combining ICT, internal and external relationship and knowledge management

(Sigala, 2005).

In ICT management, data warehouse and data mining helps to gather, store, retrieve,

access, and disseminate customer data and information. This can be done by aligning all the

various systems that handle various customer touch points so that information about customer

is integrated and useful. See Appendix E for a graphical model of the framework.

The role and aim of external marketing is to provide individualized services at every

customer touch points with the help of various communication strategies or any guest loyalty

program. To support the role of external marketing, organization creates a motivated and

customer centric culture among the employees. This can be achieved through implementing

new job descriptions, training employees to be part-time marketers, changes to the

organizational cultures and structures to support this new paradigm where guest interactions

demanded substantial skills from employees.

Knowledge management is not simply information only but knowledge is produced

when information are examined carefully and methodically to arrive at some useful and

strategic actions. Knowledge management involved three fundamental steps running in

parallel: knowledge acquisition, knowledge sharing and knowledge utilization (Sigala, 2005).

For knowledge management to be successful in the hospitality industry, hotel must display a

behavior that reflects customer interaction as a learning experience culture and also creates

opportunity to accumulate new information regarding the guest (Olsen & Connolly, 2000).

CRM research in the hotel industry

There are not many CRM research done at the property level for the hotel industry. A

research conducted on 45 hotel managers in 17 Hong Kong hotels found that all 17 hotels

have guided practices managing customer relationships with evaluation and control being the

most critical and important activities in the CRM value chain (Lo et al., 2010). In this same

study, it was found that different tariff (high, medium and low) properties will implement

different programs to meet the customers’ requirements and hotel profitability.

In another research conducted through mail, email and telephone on 84 Greek hotels

reveal ICT is not the only solution to a hotel CRM practice, although it was found to be more

important to larger than smaller hotels (Sigala, 2005). Organizational structures and cultures,

staff motivation, staff development, online and offline social and communication skills are all

vital to achieve CRM’s success. In this study, CRM in smaller hotels are found to follow the

owners or managers personal style or aptitude but at larger properties CRM adopted a more

formalized processes.

Successful CRM systems will have clear economic returns and able to sustain a

highly satisfied customer base. But a poorly managed CRM system will invite trouble for the

hotel. From Bang (2005) study, a well constructed CRM process, and not Informational

Technology (IT), contributes to the productive execution of CRM system in a hotel industry.

Critical success factor for an efficient CRM system includes “CRM Fit, Market Orientation

and Market Knowledge Competence (p. ii)” and managers should understand the impact of

each process stages to plan appropriate strategies to ensure highest level of customer

satisfaction and commitment (Bang, 2005).

For any organization or hotel who wanted to survive long term and stay competitive

within the industry, they must develop a bonding with some identified customer segments

(Gronroos, 1994). Hotel or service industries are moving away from ‘transactional exchange’

into ‘relational exchange’ to achieve relationship that satisfies the customers. Jain and Jain

(2006) sample 120 executives using 33 items developed by the researchers to evaluate CRM

effectiveness in a hotel. These executives have experience staying in hotels. The business

objectives of hotels are to provide comfortable, pleasurable and safe staying experience to

their guests and every guest has its value to the hotel. Every part of a hotel including hotel’s

facilities, infrastructure, technology gadget, operational processes and human touch points are

all critical criteria to ensure an unforgettable stay experience for the guests. Hotels of all sizes

put in every effort to accomplish this initiative and also to build long and lasting loyal

relationship with the guest. This study reveals nine factors governing the effectiveness of the

CRM programs in the hotel industry, including value proposition, recognition, customer

orientation, reliability, relationship orientation, credibility, customization, personalization and

gestures (Jain & Jain, 2006).

Another research conducted on 17 hotels in UK who are promoting the use of their

hotel’s website shows that on the Internet, hotels’ objectives are to provide information to

customer and not to collect or gather information about the customer (Luck & Lancaster,

2003). Through this research questionnaire, hotel organizations were found to be

knowledgeable of the elements regarding E-CRM but hotels are not putting into practice the

knowledge they acquire when they really implement E-CRM in their organization.

Geddie and DeFranco (2005) in their studies of 77 articles on topics related to Guanxi

and relationship marketing found it is indeed useful to understand Guanxi while formulating

a CRM program for the hospitality industry. Bonding, empathy, reciprocity and trust must be

included in the CRM programs for customers to experience the excellent value added and

positive passion from the service provider. Through this, customer will spread the positive

experience of the service provided and increase their possibility of being a return guest. The

authors acknowledge relationship marketing is beyond technology advances and massive

customer database, rather it is a way to allow customer feel they are valued and being

provided with personalized services. Guanxi refers to the idea of forming connection in return

of securing personal favors (Luo, 2000). It is described as more than interpersonal

relationship since it requires interchangeable obligations for continual exchange of personal

favors. The job as an hotelier hence is to find out what are customer’s preferences to be able

to form that emotional bond with the customer. Employees are trained to detect these

preferences by talking to the customers while they are checking in; having breakfast at the

breakfast lounge and at various customers touch points. Employees are encouraged to note

these preferences in the database for further use to ‘wow’ the guest in their return stay at the

hotel.

There are many articles on CRM in the hotel industry but most of them relate to the

implementation of information communication technology rather than how the hotel takes a

holistic view about CRM practices and implementation towards a CRM goal of managing

customer relationships and creating value for shareholder (Ostrowski, 2005; Serlen, 2006;

Adams, 2001; Holtmann, 2006).

CRM goals

CRM is not short of attention from all the various industry (hotel, manufacturing,

financial services, medical services and retailing) and often time take center stage as a critical

strategy development for the organization. Successful CRM systems will have clear

economic returns and able to sustain a highly satisfied customer base. While a poorly

managed CRM system will invite trouble for the organization. As such, it is valuable to

develop CRM goals to guide the strategic initiatives. One basic CRM goals is to develop and

maintain excellent relationships with identified customers (Bang, 2005).

The idea behind CRM can be as simple as what Finch (2002) described as “it costs

less to keep a guest coming back than to attract a new one (p. 229).” Many large hotel chains

are collecting huge number of customer information, allowing them to understand who their

customers are, what their likes are, what their spending habits are and how much they spend

at each encounter. With today’s technology, information sharing is made easy to ‘sister’

hotels to capture all the history of customers in one shared database. Hence Finch (2002)

advocates the final goal of CRM is really to build customer loyalty to encourage returning

business from customer.

From a research conducted on 45 hotel managers in 17 Hong Kong hotels, all except

one indicate fostering ‘repeat customers’ as the CRM goal (Lo et al., 2010). Other goals

include bonding with customers; focusing on the right targeted customer; identify areas for

improving customer services; creating a feeling of coming back to a home and increase

customer satisfaction. Improving organization profitability, developing new customers,

influencing existing customer to remain are all effective goals of implementing CRM

practices (Christopher et al., 1991; Heskett, et al., 1990; Reichheld, 1996).

Implementing CRM best practice using CRM value chain

Modified version of Buttle’s CRM value chain.

For this study, a modified version of the Buttle’s CRM value chain as discussed in Lo

et al. (2010) is used. Buttle’s model was chosen because other models took on a more

strategic CRM focus or focus their attention on the role of ICT. Buttle’s framework as shown

in Appendix D provides a detailed value chain to understand the CRM practices at different

operational level and activities. It also show how by getting all these activities together, a

successful CRM practices is achievable. The best part of this framework is Buttle provides

four supporting conditions to guide the CRM implementation at the property level.

The CRM goal is changed from Buttle’s original customer profitability to customer

value and retention. Creating value for the customer through the compensations receive in

return for the price paid and sacrifices (Zeithaml, 1988), is an important byproduct of the 5

primary and 4 supporting conditions (Lo et al., 2010). Network development, consisting of

developing a relationship between suppliers, employees, owners and investors, is considered

not appropriate for creating value for the customers or meeting CRM objectives especially in

the hotel industry (Lo et al., 2010) and was removed from the modified framework. Along

this line, Sigala (2005) did mention the importance of internal marketing (employees) to

ensure successful CRM implementation. The employee relationship management portion will

be mention in the supporting condition “people’. One last change is the additions of the

evaluation and control stage in the modified framework. Evaluation and control is consider an

important stage where actual performance is tracked against plan and feedback are channel to

management to analyze result and provide appropriate corrective actions where necessary

(Wheelen & Hunger, 2000). See Appendix F for the modified CRM framework.

Five primary stages.

Customer portfolio analysis.

Hotels are beginning to understand customers have different relationship value and

hence it is not viable for them to meet or exceed each customer’s requirement and

expectations even though they would like to give ‘unforgettable’ experiences and services to

all customers ( Zeithaml, Rust, & Lemon, 2001). Each customer have different contribution

potential to the hotel, some have greater potential while others lesser. Customer portfolio

analysis asked the question: “who are the hotel’s strategic customers?” Without the

appropriate customer data, hotel cannot segment the customers to understand the projected

contribution from individual segment. All hotels, in one way or another, collect customer data

at the reservation counter during customer enquiries, at front desk when guest check in and

out, and even during the stay when they request for services or eat in any of the hotels’ F&B

outlets. Three types of customer information were collected including customer profile

information, unconstrained information which the guest gives voluntarily and transactional

information input by the employee whenever the guest make a transaction (Minghetti, 2003).

The amount of details collected will be dependent on the invested system. In the 17 Hong

Kong hotels studied by Lo et al. (2010), all hotels keyed in customer profile and transaction

information in the property maintenance system (PMS) and restaurant management systems

(RMS). Customer must be segmented into their ‘profitability’ level for management to target

the appropriate types of services or offerings to maximize profit for the hotels (Buttle, 2009).

Customer intimacy.

Most hotels have customer data and use such data in one way or another like geo-

demographic, complaint, service recovery and preference data to service the guests when they

stay in-house at the hotel or when they make reservations with the hotel. Therefore it is

critical hotel must be efficient in acquiring, storing and distribute these data for different

department or sister’s hotel to use. Research has shown that communication with customer is

an important element to improve customer intimacy (Lo et al., 2010). Customer intimacy

refers to an idea where having the intimate information on individual customers helps to

promote customer loyalty and develop a personalized experience that satisfy the individual

customer’s needs (Zeithaml, Bitner, & Gremier, 2009, p. 197). The challenge for most hotel

at customer intimacy stage is to use the data to analyze all the question mark about customer

service (who, what, how, and when to serve) so as to delight the customer (Buttle, 2009). If a

hotel can perform data mining intelligently, the hotel will be in a better competitive landscape

than the rest. This will also allows a more detailed customer portfolio analysis to be carried

out by the hotel (Buttle, 2009). “Data mining is the process of extracting patterns from data.

Data mining is becoming an increasingly important tool to transform this data into

information. It is commonly used in a wide range of profiling practices, such as marketing,

surveillance, fraud detection and scientific discovery” (“Data Mining,” 2010, para.1)

Value proposition development.

At this stage, hotel will understand which customers to serve and starts to build

customer experience that meets or exceeds customer expectations, using a value star showing

all the sources of customer value to identify the correct competitive advantage for the hotel

(Buttle, 2009). Hotel is a long term business investment; hence hotels that can influence,

satisfy and retain customers will survive better than those who cannot. In their research where

they hand out questionnaires to travelers leaving the Hong Kong International Airport, Choi

& Chu (2001) found that customer satisfaction and repeat purchase is highly correlated with

employee’s service quality level, quality of rooms and customer value being the most

important factor to succeed.

In this respect, customized services and communications, guarantees of services and

service recovery program are all important and critical value added CRM practices (Lo et al.,

2010). Customization of services and communication requires hotel to provide certain level

of adaptations and tailoring to meet individual customer’s requirements (Shostack, 1977).

Service guarantees are often used to complement service recovery, serving as an

efficient tool to complement the service recovery strategies (Zeithaml et. al,, 2009, p. 235).

Hotel need to ask the following questions before making service guarantee (Zeithaml et al.,

2009, p. 239): what is the expected quality standard? Is the guarantee’s cost sustainable by

the hotel? Is customer’s risk high? What is competitor doing, also offering a guarantee? Is

this guarantee not in line with the hotel’s culture?

Customer complaints are found to create opportunity for information gathering which

are useful for modifying product to suit the customer, improving services to delight the

customer and to design measures to prevent similar occurrences (McAlister & Erffmeyer,

2003). Most hotels agree service recovery is a critical task in the CRM value chain, have

formal procedure to handle service recovery and require their employees to response to

customer log-in complaints within 24 hours (Lo et al., 2010). Many hotels also agree that

giving employees the opportunity to handle customer complaints is a way of empowering and

motivate them.

In Lo et al. (2010) research, it shows different tariff hotels use different ways to

distinguish themselves. Hotel with medium tariff distinguished themselves as offering a good

deal to customer compared to the dollar paid; high tariff hotel concentrate on the quality of

their services and still others offered highly personalized and superior services to the guests.

Some hotels create opportunities for their employees to interact with the guests at various

touch points like at the lobby area or at the main entrance area. Others have their sales

manager taking turns to greet customers at the hotel lobby, ensuring the sales manager will

have deeper relationships with the customer. As competition build up on meeting revenue and

marketing return on investment (MROI), hotel sales person will be required to manage their

time correctly to prioritize their responsibilities ranging from looking for prospective sales to

CRM activities within the hotel (Beck & Knutson, 2006).

Managing customer lifecycle.

There are various ways to explain customer lifecycle but generally they all attempt to

do the same thing, i.e. they try to describe the growth of relationship with a customer over

time. There are three major activities in managing the customer lifecycle: acquiring new

customers; retaining existing customers and developing customer value. Buttle (2009)

suggested organization adopt a trio marketing plan (customer acquisition, retention and

development plan) to manage the customer relationship. With available data mining

technology, information is available to assist in acquiring new customer and for cross-selling

to promote new products and services.

In designing a customer acquisition plan, these are the questions to be answered:

which prospective new customers to target; how to approach these potential new customers;

and what offer to be made to these new customers (Buttle, 2009). Some important questions

to be considered when putting the customer retention plan together are: which customers are

to be retained; what strategies are used to retain these customers; and how to measure the

success of the customer retention performance (Buttle, 2009). Lastly customer development

plan is the process of multiplying the value of retained customers. Companies can opt to

cross-sell (selling extra supplementary products or services to existing customer) or up-sell

(selling greater value or higher profit products or services to existing customers) (Buttle,

2009).

Strategies which organization use can be either negative or positive retention method

(Buttle, 2009). In negative retention, customers are imposed with a switching cost if they

chose to deviate. For positive retention, loyalty programs and customer clubs can be used.

Frequent customer programs are general marketing strategies use to acquire and retain

customers. Most of the hotels researched have some kind of programs to acknowledge and

compensate their frequent guests (Lo et al., 2010). Developing customer loyalty rather than

only encourage repeat patronage must be the goals for some of these loyalty program

(Hallberg, 2004). Some of these program although meet the objectives of improving customer

loyalty to hotel but they are rather costly to implement (McClearly & Weaver, 1991).

Evaluation and control.

Lo et al. (2010) study found evaluation and control is perceived as a critical activity in

this CRM value chain. Tracking the performance of the different department in a hotel and

monitoring customer evaluation of their services experiences are two important steps in

evaluation and control. Most of the hotels have customer survey form distributed to the

guests upon their check out or after a meal at the restaurant. Some hotels gave incentives to

encourage participation from customers and they used these survey forms to continuously

improve their services to the customers.

Four secondary supporting activities.

Leadership and culture.

The role of leadership in this CRM value chain includes allocate resources and

financials to the program; prioritize and push for the CRM programs within the organization;

supervise the whole project and remove any hindrances from cross functional department

(Buttle, 2009).

Sometime the background of management provides a guide on to what CRM

programs and practices to implement in the hotel. Market-orientation, which is the

organizational cultures and behavior that create an atmosphere to drive the necessary attitude

to develop high value for customers and efficient organizational performance, varies across

different hotels (Narver & Slater, 1990).

Some hotels adopt a customer focus culture where employees have strong ownership

responsibility to satisfy the customer. Customer orientation happens when customers can feel

the hotel is sincerely caring about them and takes extra pride in reflecting their actions into

practices. Highly delightful customers will remain loyal, increase return possibility and share

their good experiences with others. The goal of all hotels services is to increase the

customer’s opinion of the service provided (Jain & Jain, 2006).

Managers play an active role giving guidance to employees on how to make customer

happy although some employees are empowered to do so. There are many definition of

empowerment. Conger & Kanungo (1988) define empowerment as: “a process of enhancing

feelings of self-efficacy among organizational members through the identification of

conditions that foster powerlessness and through their removal by both formal organizational

practices and informal techniques of providing efficacy information (p. 471).” Others

describe empowerment as the reallocation of power regarding decision-making from a senior

group to another junior group (Baldacchino, 1995). Appropriate training must be given to

employees before managers empowered them. Customer compliant handling must be timely

and the process of service recovery is important in influencing the perception of the

experience and satisfaction (Spreng, Harrell, & Mackoy, 1995).

People.

People are involved in developing CRM strategy, choosing and implementing the IT

strategy, hence people must be able to work cross functionally to ensure CRM meets its goals

of customer satisfaction and retention by creating and maintain customer database to design

appropriate marketing programs for the appropriate segments of customers (Buttle, 2009).

Employees have an important and critical role in delivering the CRM practices. Even

managers from technologically strong hotel would agree highly motivated and passionate

employees are required to deliver the CRM practices. Resources to recruit, train and retain

employees are essentials for the success of CRM practices. Sigala (2005) did mention the

importance of internal marketing (employees) to ensure successful CRM implementation.

Information technology (IT).

Business operations need data in the daily operations like processing of orders,

handling of enquiries and even customer analysis (customer portfolio analysis). For Buttle’s

five primary stages to work, data must be available to support each and every stage and hence

need to be highly accurate and precise (Buttle, 2009). IT consists of the applications from

front and back office that linked to allow proficient analysis of data (Greenberg, 2004).

Having the right technological tool will certainly assist the hotel manager in managing the

CRM program more effectively (Lo et al., 2010).

Processes.

Process is how operations are completed within an organization which leads to the

importance of developing processes and implementing it across all functions so as to create

value for the customer and meet the CRM goals and objectives. Processes includes the front

office where customer communications happens and back of the house where all department

work together to deliver excellent services to the different guests. Hotels should be proactive

in finding out the preference of the customers prior to providing the actual services.

Conclusion to Literature Review

Despite all the interest from academicians and practitioners, there is still no consensus

on what CRM is. CRM means different thing to different people. To some, it is about

creating marketing activities using knowledge about customer from a data warehouse. For

others CRM is technologically oriented. Despite all the different descriptions, definitions and

viewpoints about CRM, most definitions constitute two things, i.e. customer relationships and

information technology. Using the Payne and Frow (2005) CRM continuum, CRM is define

from three perspectives, ranging from narrowly and tactically defined (CRM is all about

putting in practice technological solution) to broadly and strategically define (CRM is about

applying a holistic approach to customer relationship management to create value for the

customer).

Researchers did many studies on CRM and CRM is also implemented across various

organizations like manufacturing, financial services, medical services, retailing and hotels.

But there is no consensus regarding a common framework for the implementation and

appraisal on how effective is the CRM practices. For the purpose of this study, the author

adopts a modified version of Buttle’s CRM value chain model.

Modified version of Buttle’s value chain was chosen because other models took on a

more strategic CRM focus or focus their attention on the role of ICT. This framework as

shown in Appendix F provides a detailed value chain to understand the CRM practices at

different operational level and activities. It also show how by getting all these activities

together, a successful CRM practices is achievable. The best part of this framework is there

are four supporting conditions to guide the CRM implementation at the property level

Focusing on CRM goals to produce customer value and retention, Buttle’s five

primary activities and four supporting conditions is most capable to create the best CRM

practice within the hotel industry in Singapore. This is holistic approach as every customer

touch points are reviewed in details. IT alone is insufficient to create a customer experience

that leads to customer value and retention.

PART THREE

Introduction

Part Three consist of the result from the personal communications with executives

from three prestigious properties in Singapore. A proposed best CRM practice is developed

for the Singapore hotel industry followed by recommendations and conclusion for the study.

Methodology

The methodology used consists of personal communications with 3 industry CRM

practitioner in the Singapore hotel and service residence industry based mostly on their

experiences and personal judgments. These 3 executives would like to remain anonymous.

Using the modified version of Buttle’s CRM value chain, the author’s communications with

the 3 individuals focus on CRM questions related to the 5 primary stages and 4 supporting

conditions. The findings from these 3 individuals and the academic journals and articles on

topics related to CRM are used to form a proposed best CRM practice for the Singapore hotel

industry.

Result

The characteristic of the property from the three individuals is shown in Appendix G,

ranging from an independent to chain hotel to a service residence. Three individuals from

three different departments (operations, housekeeping and marketing) gave their views about

CRM in their property. All 3 individuals indicate the most important goals for their property

CRM practices are related to increasing service performance, creating customer value and

increasing repeat customers. Other minor goals include helping property to focus on the right

targeted customer; identify areas for improving customer services; creating a feeling of

coming back to a home and increase customer satisfaction. The result of the personal

communication with the 3 individuals on their property’s CRM practices is recorded in

Appendix H and I.

Develop a best CRM practice used at hotel property level

From the literature review of the 4 framework for implementing and evaluating the

effectiveness of CRM practices, the modified version of Buttle’s CRM value chain is most

suitable and appropriate to design a CRM practices at the property level. The simple and easy

to understand value chain systematically map out the stages and conditions to consider when

designing a CRM practice for the hotel industry. Start by identifying the CRM goal, follow

by putting the primary stages (customer portfolio analysis; customer intimacy; value

proposition development; managing customer lifecycle and evaluation and control) into

practice. Without the supporting conditions from leadership and culture, people, information

technology and process, the CRM practices will not be successful. Appendix J shows the

CRM practices in a pictorial format. Beside all the best practice captured from the personal

communications with 3 industry CRM practitioner in the Singapore hotel and service

residence industry, Appendix K are additional recommended customer centric practices,

strategies and programs, tools and techniques to build a strong co-operative and partnering

relationship with customers.

CRM goal.

A successful CRM requires CRM vision and goal to build strategy and hence put in

place the respective infrastructure to guide and lead the organization towards customer value

and retention. Suggest hotels have goals like improving customer value, increasing customer

loyalty and improving organization profitability. CRM goal is a critical success factor for

CRM implementations.

Customer portfolio analysis.

Hotel can start by collecting detail information about the customer at different

strategic customer touch points to ensure a meaningful customer portfolio analysis. Data

collected include guest profile, data provided voluntarily by guest and transactional data. See

Appendix L for types of information collected. Data collected but not fully utilized to analyze

the customer profitability defeat the purpose of painstakingly scouting for this information.

To help hotel crunch the huge amount of customer data, hotel can use the 80/20 rule where

20% of customer produces 80% of sales or profit. Plot these 20% customer into a graphical

representation characterized by their profit contribution. See Appendix M on characterization

of customer profitability and customer analysis. After understanding the profitability of the

customer, it is only appropriate to segment the customer into 4 basic groups like sack, invest,

re-engineer and nurture. Appropriate strategies can be designed for the different customer

segments. Another point to note is to provide a ‘single view customer database’ for

employees to facilitate customer portfolio analysis.

Customer intimacy.

Most of the hotels do well in communicating with customers. The challenge is to

further perform a more detailed customer portfolio analysis to understand what to serve, how

to serve and when to serve the customer. Investing time and resources in data mining

intelligently will be a good competitive footage for the hotel. See Appendix N on how this

can be done.

Value proposition development.

At this stage hotel is ready to build customer experience that will meet or exceed

customer expectations. Use a value star to identify sources of customer value to identify the

correct competitive advantage for the hotel. See Appendix O for an example of a value star

for hotel industry.

Customized services and communications, guarantees of services and service

recovery program are all important and critical value added CRM practices. Service recovery

as a critical value added CRM practices is a combinations of various strategies working

together to deliver recoveries that will delight disappointed customers. Hotel while designing

their service recovery strategies should include the following (Zeithaml et al., 2009, p. 227):

consider an error free service; promote complaints tracking; don’t wait act promptly; give

customer sufficient explanations for the service failure; show no bias to customer; nurture

customer relationships; take note of all lessons learn from service failure/ recovery and lost

customers. See Appendix P below for the service recovery strategies.

Manage customer lifecycle.

Organization relationship with customer evolves overtime, from strangers to

acquaintances to friends to partners. At each stage, different marketing goals, strategies and

services are used to satisfy the customer. Hence it is critical for organization to understand

the different issues applicable to each different level of customer relationships and hence able

to manage the customer lifecycle efficiently (Johnson & Selnes, 2004). See Appendix Q for

the evolution of customer relationships and the respective marketing goals and product

offered.

It is a good practice to have customer acquisition, retention plan and development

plan. Be cautions not to focus only on returning guest. In this way first time guest may not be

enjoying the ‘wow’ factor to turn them into a loyal and returning customers.

Evaluation and control.

It is a good practice to evaluate not only guest satisfaction but also to evaluate the

performance of employees who are providing the services. Results of surveys are used to

further improve the quality of the services and products. It is recommended to enlist a third

party to perform guest evaluation after the guest has checked out. Last but not least design a

CRM dashboard. Make it simple and eye catching to provide a bird’s eye view of where the

organization stands in terms of meeting the CRM goal.

Identify how CRM practices can be effectively administered

Leadership and culture, people, information technology and process are critical

supporting block to ensure the CRM practices can be effectively administered within an

organization. Appendix I captures the good practices from the personal communications with

3 industry CRM practitioner in the Singapore hotel and service apartment industry. See

Appendix R on a summary of how CRM practices can be effectively administered.

Identify the gaps existed in one service residence in Singapore

From the personal communication and a comparison against one service residence

where the author has experience working in, there seem to be a huge CRM practice gap

between Singapore hotel and service residence. There are plenty on CRM practices where

service residence can learn and implement to the property. A summarized view of the gap

analysis is shown in Appendix S.

Conclusion

As mention in Part one, this paper has three objectives. The objectives are develop a

best CRM practice used at hotel property level; identify how CRM practices can be

effectively administered and identify the gaps existed in one service residence in Singapore.

CRM is not all about technology alone. Technology is an enabler and not an end to

CRM. This study highlights 4 different frameworks for implementing and evaluating the

effectiveness of CRM practices in a hotel environment. Buttle’s modified value chain

framework is best suited for this study because the value chain framework makes it easy to

single out all the necessary process that must be implemented to ensure an effective CRM

practices for the hotel industry.

Buttle’s five primary stages (customer analysis portfolio, customer intimacy, value

proposition development, managing customer lifecycle and evaluation and control) and four

supporting conditions (leadership and culture, people, information technology and process)

are necessary components for customer value creation and ensuring profitability for the

organization. Hence, this model is strongly recommended to the hotel industry when they are

reviewing their CRM practices.

Recommendation

It is recommended that this framework be put to a real test in the Singapore hotel and

service residence context. More study and survey need to be conducted in the hotels and

service residence environment to verify the modified Buttle’s CRM value chain in the

Singapore context. Study should be done across one to two years to see the real result of the

hotel’s CRM practices. Lastly, it is highly recommended the management from service

residence should learn from the hotel management on best CRM practices.

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Appendix A

The CRM Continuum

Frow, P., (2005). A strategic framework for customer relationship

management.

Journal of Marketing, 69(4), 168

Frow, P., (2005). A strategic framework for customer relationship

Appendix B

Five generic inter-related process steps

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management. Journal of Marketing, 69(4), 171

Appendix C

Strategic, operational or analytical CRM

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Appendix D

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Appendix F

Modified CRM Value Chain

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Appendix G

Characteristic of the property from the personal communication

Characteristic Property A Property B Property C

Person communicated Operations

Director

Housekeeping

Director

Marketing

Director

Type of property 5 star hotel,

Independent hotel

Luxury service

residence

5 star hotel, Chain

hotel

No. of properties in Singapore 1 2 1

No. of guest rooms 511 412 749

No. of F&B outlets 2 0 6

No. of employees 700 200 1000

No. of employees per room 1.37 0.49 1.34

Appendix H

Result of personal communication (5 primary stages)

Customer portfolio analysis

All 3 properties scouted information about their customers at different touch-points: at reservation;

during check in; when check out and during stay

All 3 properties collect the following information about customers: guest profile data; information

voluntarily provided by the guest and guest transactional information (input by staff into the system)

None of the properties use the information collected to segment their customer by profitability. All 3

properties segment by purpose of stay

None of the properties provide a ‘single view customer database’ for their employees

Customer intimacy

All 3 properties agree understanding the need of customer is the route to a successful CRM decisions

All 3 properties uses data collected about customer (e.g., preferences, special requests, complains) to

service the guests while they are in house

All 3 properties use a computer based systems to help store customer’s information. One as simple as

an excel spreadsheet

All 3 properties encouraged their employees to continuously collect customer’s information and input

them religiously and diligently into the system

All 3 properties make it a point to ensure customer’s information are made available only to employees

who are involved in operations, sales, service and marketing to protect customer' privacy

All 3 properties agree communication with customers (e.g., through e-marketing) is an important

component of enhancing customer intimacy

All 3 properties agree that insufficient staff to interact with customers and perform data crunching is a

main hindrance to customer intimacy

Value proposition development

2 properties in the 5-star hotel category differentiate themselves by providing excellent products and

customized or personalized services.

One property concentrate more on quality of products (e.g. rooms and location)

One property even has a separate reservation line to handle restaurant reservations

None of these properties provide a service guarantee statement in their hotel’s websites

All 3 properties have well-designed procedures to handle complaints

Only 2 properties empowered their ground employees to take ownership to handle complaints

All 3 properties agree service recovery is important

Manage customer lifecycle

All 3 properties have some form of loyalty program or guest recognition program to recognize and

award repeat customer to come again and again

One property has loyalty program to recognize not only travelers but bookers

One property even have their guest relations staff to act as internal sales managers focusing on building

relationships, identifying guests’ needs, and servicing of in-house guests

All 3 properties appeared to concentrate primarily on returning guests. First time guest may not be

enjoying the ‘wow’ factor to turn them into a loyal customer

Evaluation and control

All 3 properties tracked the performance of their employees and customers’ evaluations of the

experience at the property

All 3 properties provide guest comment card in the rooms

One property randomly survey in house guest at different location of property

One property uses a third party to perform guest evaluations after the guest has checked out

All 3 properties used this information to monitor their performances and improve their services

2 properties were required to share this information with their sister properties

Appendix I

Result of personal communication (4 supporting conditions)

Leadership and culture

All 3 properties have strong customer and relationship oriented cultures

All 3 properties have their customer and relationship oriented cultures communicated to all employees

at orientation programs and on other training occasions

All 3 properties have identified certain managers or departments to be responsible in executing and

managing the CRM process. It is a joint effort from all department and not a silo department only

2 properties empowered their employee to handle customer’s issues with management providing the

guidance

People

All 3 properties emphasized that their CRM practices were sustainable only with capable and

passionate employees

All 3 properties believe in investing resources for recruiting new employees, for training employees and

for retaining them.

All 3 properties have minimal employee turnover contributing to the success of CRM

Information Technology

2 properties committed more resources to adopting technology as part of the CRM process

None of the properties provide a ‘single view customer database for their employees

All 3 properties agree the information system is a tool to assist the employee in their role and not meant

to be a substitute

Process

All 3 properties took a proactive stand in serving the customers by getting the customer preference

information prior to their arrival

All 3 properties did not provides a ‘single view customer database’ to ease the analysis purpose

Only 2 properties are proactive in sharing customer database with sister properties

Appendix J

Recommended best CRM practice for hotel in Singapore

Customer value

and

retention

Managing customer

lifecycle

Leadership and culture

People

Information Technology

Process

Appendix K

Customer centric practices

Primary stages Key points

Customer portfolio

analysis

- Ask the question “Who are the strategic customers?”

- To answer this, customer data are required (guest profile,

spontaneous data and transactional data)

- Customer portfolio are analyzed and segment by

profitability

- Provide ‘single view customer database’

- Sack unprofitable customers

Customer intimacy - Communication with customer

- Data mining

Value proposition

development

- Customized services and communication

- Guarantee of services

- Service recovery program

Managing customer

lifecycle

- Customer acquisition plan

- Customer retention plan

- Customer development plan

Evaluation and control -Evaluate employees

- Use result of surveys intelligently

Appendix L

Customer information matrix

Front Line Data Spontaneous Data Behavioral Data

Personal

information

Name, gender, home

address, birthdates,

contacts, nationality, credit

information, business name

and address if applicable,

etc

Special wants and

preferences (food dietary

preferences, associated

allergies, favorite

newspaper, handicap, etc.)

Language efficiency;

Types of guests (e.g.,

fuzzy, demanding, easy-

going, etc.)

Information

on all

aspect of

the hotel

stay

Reservation channel and

source; Arrangement of

rooms (like room types,

kind of beds preferred etc);

Length of stay; Room rates

(e.g. best available rate,

corporate rate etc);

Accompanying people

(number of people

accompany, their names

and relationships etc); F&B

expenditures.

Additional request for

furniture and additional

amenities (e.g. hard pillow,

work table etc); Request

for external services like

taxi, baby sitter, car rental

etc.)

Usage of the hotel

amenities and facilities

(e.g., F&B, shuttle bus,

meeting rooms, business

center, etc.)

Guest

complaints

and

opinions

Direct complaints,

customer satisfaction forms

Source: Minghetti, V. (2003). Building customer value in the hospitality industry: Towards the definition of a

customer-centric information system. Information Technology & Tourism, 6(2), 141-52

Appendix M

Customer characterization and Customer analysis

100%

80%

60%

40%

20%

-20%

-40%

-60%

-80%

-100%

Note: Size of bubble indicates the relative no. of customers

Profit Contribution

Source: Krakhmal, V., (n.d.). Customer profitability Analysis Model. Retrieved on 9 Aug 2010 from

http://pc.parnu.ee/~htooman/EuroChrie/Welcome%20to%20EuroCHRIE%20Dubai%202008/papers/CUSTOMER%20PR

OFITABILITY%20ANALYSIS%20MODEL.pdf

Customer characterization by profit contribution

Customer A

CustomerB

CustomerC

CustomerE

CustomerD

CustomerF

CustomerG

CustomerL

CustomerK

CustomerH

CustomerI

CustomerJ

Nurture: Currently

profitable but have no

future potential

Invest: Both current

profitable and future profit

potential

Sack: No current and

future profit potential

Re-engineer: Not

currently profitable but

will be profitable after

some relationship were re-

engineered

UNPROFITABLE PROFITABLE

FUTURE CUSTOMER

Customer Analysis

Appendix N

Data mining steps and tools

Data mining steps

Data Cleaning

Data Integration

Data Selection

Data Transformation

Data Mining

Pattern Evaluation

Knowledge Presentation

Process to keep the required information and remove unwanted data

Integrate data from various sources

Information relevant to problem is extracted

Data are translated into organized manner in preparation for mining

Algorithms are intelligently applied to extract patterns relevant to problem

Knowledge base process to single out the truly interesting patterns

Present the new intelligent knowledge

Source: Danubianu, M., Socacin, T., Barala, A., (n.d.). Towards a distributed data mining systems for tourism industry.

Retrieved on 8 Aug 2010 from http://steconomice.uoradea.ro/anale/volume/2009/v4-management-and-marketing/188.pdf

Appendix O

Value star

Servicescape Process

Location Room qualities

Communications People

Service quality Price

Value star (hotel example)

Appendix P

Service recovery strategy

Service

Recovery

Strategies

Act quickly

Learn from recovery

explanation

Treat customer

fairly

Make service

fail save

Source: Zeithaml, V. A., Bitner, J. M., & Gremler, D. D. (2009).

Services marketing: Integrating customer focus across the firm (pp.227). Singapore: McGraw-Hill

Appendix Q

Evolution of customer relationship

Enhance

the

relationship

Specially

designed product

customize to

individual

customer

Retain the

customer

Distinguishable

product designed

for specific market

segments

Satisfy

customer's

needs

Product offer

equivalent to

industry

standards

Attract and

acquire

business

Product offer is

attractive as

compared to

competitor

Strangers Acquaintances Friends Partners

Relationship Marketing goals

Level of customer relationships

Evolution of customer relationship

Appendix R

Ways to effectively administer CRM practices

Conditions

What is required

Leadership and

culture

Role of leadership include allocate resources and finance for the program; prioritize

and push for the CRM programs; oversee the whole project and remove any blockages

from cross functional department

- Build strong customer and relationship cultures

- Communicate customer and relationship cultures to all employees during employee

orientation training program

- All departments in a hotel are responsible for CRM

- Empower employees to handle customer issues with management providing the

guidance

- Customer compliant handling must be timely and the process of service recovery is

important in influencing the perception of the experience and satisfaction

People

Create a

n environment conducive for cross functional team work

- Build capable and passionate employees to sustain any CRM program

- Invest resources in recruiting, training and retaining employees

Low employee turnover will contribute to the success of CRM prac

tices.

Information

technology (IT)

- Data need to be highly accurate and precise (Garbage in garbage out)

- Deviate spending on organization CRM technology infrastructure to CRM innovation

effort.

- Commit people resources to manage the technology

- Provide a ‘single view customer database’ to ease the information finding for the

employees

- IT is a tool and not an end in CRM practices

- Bear in mind CRM is not a technology but rather a business strategy

Process - Processes includes the front office where customer communications happens and

back of the house where all department work together to deliver excellent services to

the different guests

- Adopt a proactive approach in serving the customers by getting the customer

preference information prior to their arrival

- Be proactive in sharing customer database with sister properties

- Process must be properly documented and file to ensure repeatability in service level

- Remember being customer centric is actually really a continuous process

Appendix S

Gap analysis

Stages or conditions Gaps

CRM goal - CRM goal is clearly not available

Customer portfolio analysis - Customers are segment by purpose of stay rather than profitability

Customer intimacy - Generally lacks communication with customer to improve

customer intimacy.

- Even if data are collected about customer but employee lacks the

discipline to enter the information into the database

- Customer database are not shared among sister properties

Value proposition development - Lack of service recovery program.

- Current program is very standard like fruit or chocolate basket

Managing customer lifecycle - No gaps noticed

Evaluation and control - No gaps noticed

Leadership and culture - Lack of strong customer and relationship cultures

- Employees are not empower or train to handle customer issues

appropriately

People - Lacking in investing resources in recruitment, training and

retaining employees

Information technology (IT) - Customer data are not kept systematically and in ‘single view

customer database’.

Process - Lack the pro-activeness in getting customer preference information

prior to customer arrival

- Some of the process are not properly documented and file