Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Literature Review Analysis

This literature review explores Customer Relationship Management (CRM) within business organizations. It begins by introducing CRM as a crucial process for interacting with customers, aiming to acquire and retain them. The review highlights the significance of CRM in establishing a competitive advantage, emphasizing the need for organizations to understand their customers deeply. It discusses the importance of communication, relationship development, and feedback mechanisms. The review then identifies key issues in CRM implementation, such as the absence of proper CRM software, implementing the wrong project team, undefined goals, and unrealistic data collection requirements. It proposes solutions to these issues, emphasizing the importance of appropriate software, skilled teams, defined goals, and realistic data collection. The review concludes by identifying gaps in the literature and highlighting the importance of CRM in today's business environment. The paper also examines the issues, proposed solutions, and current research perspectives on CRM.

Running head: LITERATURE REVIEW
Literature Review on Customer Relationship Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Introduction to topic...............................................................................................................2
Highlighting the issues in Customer Relationship Management...........................................4
Proposed solutions to the issues.............................................................................................7
The current situation from the perspective of a researcher....................................................9
The gap in the literature.......................................................................................................10
Conclusion................................................................................................................................10
References................................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
The concept of Customer Relationship Management or CRM is one that is utilised in
almost all business organisations nowadays. This is a process that describes how a business
organisation has been interacting with their customers. These customers have been either
existing, or these have been the customers that the business organisation wants to acquire. It
is often thought that Customer Relationship Management for CRM is a particular process or a
system that is intending to capture all the information about the customers. The business
system also wants to acquire potential customers (Denizci & Shi, 2019). Therefore, following
would be the review of relevant literature about Customer Relationship Management or CRM
in organisations based on the various researches that different people or researchers have
conducted to find out the importance of Customer Relationship Management or CRM within
an organisation. This is what forms the highlight of the issue regarding the Customer
Relationship Management, and thus the literature review would focus on the relevant topic of
highlighting the facts when an organisation does not understand the implementation of
Customer Relationship Management. Besides, it would describe how could the issues have
resolved with proper solutions. The review would also be conducted to find out the current
situation from the perspective of a researcher and conclude with finding gaps within the
literature.
Introduction to the topic
The concept of Customer Relationship Management or CRM is implemented for
creating a competitive advantage to an organisation with presenting them with the ability to
understanding their customers in a much deeper and better way. This is often contemplated
with establishing proper communication between the customer and the organisation, the

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development of existing relationships with the previous customers comma delivering the
exact products or services that the customer requires and also by establishing the idea that the
organisation is open to all kinds of feedback, be it positive or negative (Wang, Cavusoglu &
Deng, 2016). The customer needs to be presented with the idea that the negative feedback
provides it against the services of products delivered to them by the organisation would be
taken as a constructive way, and the organisation would utilise the negative feedback to
deliver a much better product or service the next time to the customers.
However, it is just not only having to gather the information about a customer, but it
is also dependent on the organisation on how the information is utilised for serving the
customers in a much better way. Better than what the organisation has been doing right now.
However, before that, the company also needs to understand what customer means to the
organisation (Dewnarain, Ramkissoon & Mavondo, 2019). It is not just the relationship
between the company and the customer that is established due to Customer Relationship
Management; but also, the company has a better understanding of all the customer is
associated with the business to understand their needs and requirements or any expectation
that they are having right now from the organisation.
Since right now, this Customer Relationship Management and the techniques that
organisations have been utilising them within the business system is making researchers go
through the various methods by which organisation has been employing the strategies. Based
on this, the author Rahimi and Kozak (2017), has represented in one of the researches that
they have conducted according to the ability of Customer Relationship Management or CRM.
It has a considerable prospect of providing an organisation with a substantial competitive
advantage. An organisation with no strategy developed for Customer Relationship
Management is not considered as competition in the market; rather than an organisation

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which has developed an extreme policy for improving Customer Relationship Management to
ensure proper communication and understanding between the organisation and the customer.
The authors Greve and Schlüschen (2018), have also found that the organisations are just not
utilising the strategy to keep their relationship harmonious with the existing customer of the
organisation. However, with the utilisation of CRM strategies, the organisation is also
looking forward to the implementation of the CRM strategies for acquiring all the potential
customers of the organisation. In the management field, Customer Relationship Management
is right now being considered as a substantial strategic advantage that an organisation can
implement to customise all the services and products according to the requirements of the
customers. It is just not necessary that the organisation understands the needs of the customer
at one go but having a Customer Relationship Management system implemented within the
communications and understanding system of the customers, they can receive any positive or
negative feedback. It is essential that an organisation utilises positive feedback as a strength
towards the company and also take negative feedback as constructive criticism. This would
make sure that the organisation learns from the negative feedback provided to them by the
customers so that they could avoid providing the customers with such services anymore.
Highlighting the issues in Customer Relationship Management
According to author Soltani and Navimipour (2016), Customer Relationship
Management or CRM is often implemented within an organisation to establish the
relationship between the company and its customers but the process has to have an
implementation of technological advancements to gather much more information, secure
communication and help the company come much closer to the customers. Many
organisations who have been trying to make sure that their customers are always connected to
them making use of Customer Relationship Management software systems to make sure that

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they add benefits in streamlining all the sales processes for the organisation providing them
with the structured Customer Relationship Management framework. Many companies do not
understand the implementation of Customer Relationship Management within the
organisation. For this, they have to be guided through or otherwise would not in the
competitive advantage with the utilisation of the software systems. Following would be some
of the identification of the issues identified by the researchers that an organisation needs to be
aware of about the Customer Relationship Management or CRM:
The absence of a proper CRM software: It is required that an organisation needs to
develop an appropriate Customer Relationship Management between the organisation and the
customers with the help of CRM software. These are nothing but advanced spreadsheets that
are available at various forms and types ranging from one technological advancement to the
other. These are delivered for the management of customer base, follow up items and sale
cycles. The CRM software and its utility are dependent upon the spreadsheet that the
organisation uses to store the business and customer data. It is straightforward to store data
about the customers for any business information in spreadsheets, and they provide the better
solution of having a 360-degree view of the customer data stored in one database (Tsou &
Huang, 2018). There must be organisations that do not have any idea about the utility of
CRM spreadsheets and thus, fall behind the implementation of a proper CRM software and
cannot accommodate competitive advantage to the organisation and its business process.
Implementing the wrong project team for the CRM project: The organisations are
often found to purchase a CRM software but not understanding the needs that the
organisation would require and the appropriate software that should have been utilised for
implementation of CRM software. Sales management department is usually responsible for
choosing the correct time of customer relationship software. Organisations also have

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misconceptions regarding CRM implementation and mostly e picture the CRM software as a
solution. However, it must always be remembered that CRM is a tool, and it is not a solution.
CRM is a tool that helps in an organisation to reach an individual solution for establishing
good customer relationships. The team selected for the implementation of CRM must also
follow these rules to understand which people should be included in in the understanding and
application of the CRM within an organisation with the help of the selection process and
make the team acquire their own decisions regarding the selection of software CRM tools and
test them to analyse if these are the probable tools required.
Undefined and improper goals set for the company: According to Badwan et al.,
(2017), it is often found that the purposes that company sets in for the Customer Relationship
Management within an organisation are always not described as per the software features
implemented. The host that is related to establishing a relationship between a customer and
employee is entirely dependent upon the business goals and the business structure. Most
business organisations are found to get confused about the goal set by the organisation and
what the software suggests. They should not forget the fact that the software is only utilised
for handling the business information and the customer information, and it just features to the
business, not the total business goal. The goal that should be set for the organisations is to
understand the requirements of the company to understand which feature would be the most
suitable as the software serving for the Customer Relationship Management program. Thus,
this forms a lot of problem for any organisation when the real goal is not defined well within
an organisation to understand the requirements of the business and the proper implementation
of a CRM system.
Unrealistic data collection requirements: According to Siu (2016), it is often found
that the feeling of customer information within the CRM system is not at all comments in the

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best way possible, which game gives rise to the problems like feeding unrealistic information
within the CRM system. It will be absolutely this satisfactory for an organisation and even for
the customers to understand the requirements of the customers. The customers will also not
be able to understand what the company is offering as a service or product to them. This is
because it my talking that due to the unrealistic feeding of customer information the person
who does not need is being offered the same and the person who is under the necessity of a
particular product is not being provided as a service by the organisation due to improper and
irrational feeding of information. If an organisation does not understand how the business
operates through CRM software, it would be easier if the business sales team is first made
aware about the aspects of data collection including the implementation and the rationale
behind the CRM system. The software system available for CRM within an organisation is
enormous to the point and as it may offer that irrational feeding of data is causing a problem
it may also regard as a problem if no data is saved in at all. The problem related to these
issues is only subjected to the utility of Customer Relationship Management in an
organisation.
Proposed solutions to the issues
While it is understood that the Customer Relationship Management and its
implementation within the business organisation are useful for all these organisations to have
a proper blend of the relationship and communication between the customers and the
business itself; it is also identified from the above section that it also has various amounts of
it was associated with them that might have the potential of feeling the entire Customer
Relationship Management system that the organisation is trying to implement. This is why
specific solutions would be suggested to the problems identified in the above section so that
the implemented CRM software can be utilised to its full potential and help the organisation

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in having a proper Customer Relationship Management system or CRM system established
within the organisation to make sure that the relationship between the customer and the
business organisation is well established, as well as the organisation, is gaining much value
due to the implementation of the CRM software. Following would be some of the suggested
solutions described below:
The answer to the employee engagement problem: While it was seen that the primary
issue behind every organisation and the required CRM implementation is the understanding
of the utility of Customer Relationship Management between the organisations and its
employees, this is not an issue that cannot be addressed or provide a solution to. An
awareness program should be set up within the organisation before the implementation plan
to show all the staff levels including the management department the utility and benefit of the
CRM system within the organisation and how can it help in improving the business further by
establishing a proper relationship between the customers and the company itself.
Unhappy customers because of faulty implementation of CRM system: The customers
might be the most affected people fallen victim to the wrong application of CRM systems
within an organisation without understanding the utility and the requirement of the
organisation. This can occur, and this would result in the company having unhappy
customers. The solution to the problem is increasing the systems within the organisation by
telling them in such a way that a proper and appropriate striking balance is maintained within
the efficiency and the personal contract to the customers and help the business serve them
better.
Unsuitable business requirements and CRM implementation: There is also a solution
to the problem that no organisation should overlook. Every organisation should look for
direct applications of technological advancements that have been helping the business

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systems in every way possible according to the changing business environment. This is
mostly identified to be implemented as a result of the technological advancements that
business organisations often face. An organisation should also look at all the improvements
and technical advantages that companies can gain through the CRM implementation. For
example, right now, it has been seen that the cloud-based CRM software packages are
enabling organisations to successfully gain customer data from various organisations
irrespective of time and location. There are other CRM software organisations as well who
provide temporary solutions and free access to the services for a limited period of time. Trial
and error procedure can thus be established within the organisations to understand the
requirement of the business about having the CRM software implemented to understand
better how and which CRM software would be the best in handling the customer relationship
of the particular organisation.
Business security issues: Since CRM software packages have been providing a
solution for maintaining customer relationships, it is quite natural that it would have security
systems as well, along with out of date information. There must be a photo utilisation of the
monitoring system for analysing any security issues that the organisation might face. This
would help the organisation in keeping the system absolutely robust and handle all the
sensitive information. At the same time, this will assure the customers that their data stored
within the organisation is safe. Online services do not offer 100% security endurance, and
this is why it is essential that proper day-to-day monitoring is drastically served to minimise
all kind of risks.
The current situation from the perspective of a researcher
It is imperative right now that the customers are retained within an organisation and
also the business organisations are focusing much more on winning new customers by

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acquiring them from various sources utilising the best amount of strategies developed. It is
often found that the business organisations worldwide are using different CRM software for
maintaining the loyalty for the existing customers and also using online system software to
ensure that the potential customers are also gathered within the organisation. Due to the
increase in competition from one organisation to another, it has become much more difficult
for an organisation to keep track of all of its customer and potential ones as well. This is why
the companies started utilising different kinds of advanced CRM systems and use them
within the organisations. The CRM software intended to be serving the organisations with the
help of software systems, but now it has transformed into cloud services as well. This cloud-
based CRM software is providing the organisations with advanced methodologies and
techniques of establishing relationships and maintaining relationships with the customers
with the help of the cloud services amalgamated.
A gap in the literature
After the thorough analysis of all the discourses in this regard for understanding the
implementation of CRM systems within an organisation it can be clearly said that all the
documentation that have been mentioned in this review and successful in establishing the
idea behind the implementation of a CRM system and the ways by which organisations utilise
the benefits of the system. However, there are also gaps in the kinds of literature that do not
provide the organisation with a step-by-step instruction to understand the requirements of the
implementation of CRM system and choosing the appropriate software by analysing the
demands of their particular organisation.

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Conclusion
Therefore, in conclusion, it can be said that after the realisation of the problems that a
customer can face and how it affects the business as well, companies and understood the
utility of a CRM system within an organisation. It is physically not possible to keep records
of all the business information along with the customer information. However, it is
imperative that the customers are given priority based on their needs and requirements from
the organisation. This also helps the customers in having a proper expectation about the
services that they are to receive from the organisations. The above literature review had
research various available articles found on the Customer Relationship Management that
strengthens the bond between the customer and an organisation. They have been multiple
researchers about the same where the organisations need to understand the utility of CRM
software that would serve as a helping hand to the business organisation in maintaining a
good relationship between the organisation and the customer. Therefore, the above literature
focuses on the sole service of a Customer Relationship Management the understanding that a
business has about the establishment of a Customer Relationship Management and its utility.
The literature review also highlights the mean if you about Customer Relationship
Management that organisations often face throughout implementation and before the
application. The next section in the literature review identifies all the factors by which the
identified issues can be e eradicated or treated. The literature review also explains the current
situation of CRM within an organisation and the current situation view from the perspective
of a researcher. The gap in the literature is also established with analysing all the research
papers and teaching and conclusion about the CRM system and its implementation in an
organisation.