Customer relationship management and service quality: Influences in higher education

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has been developed in Business-to-Business (B2B) to improve effectiveness and quality of service in handling organisational responses to customer inputs, the tracking of their orders, complaints handling, building direct communications with existing and potential customers, and maintaining satisfaction and loyalty. CRM, as a customer-focused and technology-oriented strategy, is of growing importance for electronically-driven B2B and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) sectors. However, there are relatively fewer publications in the literature about CRM's impact in the higher education sector. Therefore, this paper applies principles of CRM and service quality in a research study undertaken at a single University in the UK. From the literature, six construct themes for measuring CRM were suggested, and interview data from focus groups from a university in the north of England were analysed using a thematic template analysis technique. The study showed that an effective CRM programme to improve service quality has the ability to induce positive advocacy behaviour from its international students. The paper makes a recommendation to embrace investment in CRM for policy makers in the higher education sector.