THE ROLE OF CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP IN OFFICE TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT (OTM)

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

For any organization, either it’s a public sector; private sector or semi public, there is a need to understand what kind of service or products it offers, and for whom. The traditional marketing approach concentrates on the first term (the kind of services or products). Questions such as “whether the products are relevant to the customers?” ”are the customers have the willingness to pay the amount of money stack on the products?", "are the products or services meets the customer expectation?”, “what’s the value created to the customers?” as these have not come to the minds of producers or business managers. Over time there has been a gradual move in marketing thoughts and practices , from product centric approach to customer centric approach, and from concentrating on selling as much products as possible to acquiring , keeping , retaining and delighting as many customers as possible. This change in marketing prospective is taking place because of the high competition and the numerous alternatives provided to the customers. “The globally competitive market place provides today’s customers with choices never before imaginable by previous generations” (Hoots, 2005). Moreover, the customers in the new marketing approach moved toward the top of the pyramid with new terminologies like “customer is the king” and “customer always right” are intensively used by managers in today’s business environment. Hence, “the goal of every enterprise, once it strips away all the activities that keep everybody busy every day, is simply to get, keep and grow customers. Whether a business focuses its efforts on product innovation, operational efficiency and low price or customer’s intimacy, that firm must have customers or the enterprise isn’t a business”. (Peppers  & Roggers 2004).  

 “As more and more enterprises realize the importance of becoming customercentric in today’s competitive economy, they embrace Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as core business strategy” (Wu, 2008). Where CRM is away of “developing a comprehensive picture of customers needs, expectation and behaviors and managing those factors to affect business performance” (Hoots 2005). Or it is “about managing customer knowledge to better understanding and serving them”.(Rahimi 2008). It is also involves “continues use of refined information about current and potential customers in order to anticipate and respond to their needs and draws on a combination of business processes and information technology IT to discover knowledge about the customers and answer questions such as “who are the customers?”, “what do they do?”,and “what are they like?”. With such effective use of information and communication technology, organization can offer their customers a variety of products, lower prices and personalized services, at the same time in order to market effectively to the individual customers, companies gather information from both internal and external sources and use it to provide a unified view or profile of the customers for target marketing purposes” (Karakostas, et al., 2004). 

For granted, these information will help the organization to better understand its customers and tailor the services or products to meet their expectations and deliver high customer values.   

Referring to the above definitions, most CRM initiatives were for the private sector. The scope of this research shall discuss the possibility of applying CRM in a semi public enterprise working in Gaza Strip – Palestine the “Coastal Municipalities water Utility OTM”. OTM is a Semi – Public entity financially independent, responsible for the water supply services, wastewater treatment and disposal and storm water collection systems. The OTM is a consolidation of the Water Services of 25 Municipalities of Gaza five Governorates, and it seeks to become the only provider of water and sanitation services in all Gaza Strip localities.

In the case of the OTM, the definition of CRM may be slightly different; since the OTM is considers being the sole services provider for water and sanitation services and no competitors are apparent in the future horizon. The definition of CRM here could be adapted to “improve the level of services, optimizing the cost, and deal with customers as partners”. The problem in applying this concept is that the customers may resist such approach from semi public organization delivers public services. This approach may direct the OTM to apply much more creative ideas to ensure that the adoption of CRM concept will ensure its success in building long lasting relation with its customers, which consequently leads to effective customers' acquisition, satisfaction, retention and eventually decreases customer’s loss.