McDougall American Marketing Association as “a function of the organization which

involves setting up the processes for developing, conveying and providing value to
the customers in an attempt to manage the customer relationships to the benefit of the
organization and its stakeholders”. This definition revealed that customer relationship
is a very wide concept that involves the whole organisation and involves the efforts of
many areas. Organisations carry out certain specific tasks which are aimed at
providing more satisfaction to the customers so that they patronise the organisation,
its brand and products so that organisation flourishes and achieves its goal. Gronroos
(1994b) has pointed out that the core aim of any customers relationship management
activity is and should be to increase profitability of the organisation. If required,
organisations may need to make choices among the customers it wants to build
relationship with and those with which it would not with an objective to attain
maximum profitability. Durkin and Howcroft (2003) have insisted that organisations
need to implement both information technology based and non-information
technology based solutions so that the efficiency of the organisation is increased. This
should enable the organisation in better fulfilling the needs and expectations of not
only the customers but also the other stake holders in the organisation like distributors
and suppliers etc.

Customer relationship management has come a long way since its introduction in
1980’s and has also undergone many changes and modifications ever since. Some big
professionals have entered the field to provide customised solutions to the
organisation so that they can perform the task of customer relationship management
effectively.

The competitive state of affairs in the market and the emergence of large market
players have initiated a process of change which is here to stay for very long time
duration. Marketers are required to use the technology so that customers are gain
more satisfaction and favour the practicing organisation over the others in the
competition. Smith (2006) further points out that organisation need to use the
technology so that the value of customer relationships across channels and product
lines is maximised. The three most important elements which require CRM
applications pertain to marketing automation, sales force automation and customer
support and field service. Gurau (2003) firmly put forward that Internet due to its
flexibility and interactive nature has great potential for collecting vital information
about online customers and their experience for the organisation.

Rowley (2002) said that customer relationship management is a long term process that
continues till the time the customer is maintaining a relationship with the
organisation. It starts from the point where customer places an order for a product and
goes on till delivery of the product at customer’s desired destination and even extends
upto the after sales services in many cases. Accordingly many information storing and
processing systems are required by any organisation so that customer relationship
management could be implemented effectively.

In addition researcher has also some research works on banking industry also since
the research related to banking. Bolton (2004) maintained that banks are usually
required to keep track of large data of transactions, checks and withdrawals etc. But
the banks are required to maintain more data than this as none of this pertains to
customer relationship. Analytical based customer relationship management shall give
solutions to bank regarding customer’s banking habits, needs and expectations other
than helping in profiling and segmenting the customers accordingly. Scholars
maintained that it is very important for banks to identify and retain profitable banking
customers and analytical based customer relationship management helps banks in this
regards. Storbacka (1997) conducted an empirical study involving two Nordic retail
banks and discovered the segmentation strategies of both banks to be based on
relationship volume and absolute profitability. This showed that banks are practicing
customer relationship banking to enhance their profitability.

But the research aimed at finding out the practical side also. As rightly pointed out by
Smith (2006), customer relationship is acts as a bridge that fills the gap between the
customer and the organisational prospective. It joins the two so that a mutually
beneficial relationship could be developed between the customers and the prospects.
Accordingly the researcher also felt that it was important for the purpose of the
research that the opinion, views and feedbacks of both the organisation and the
customers be taken. It was therefore decided that two separate surveys of both the
customers and employees would be conducted and the conclusions shall be drawn.
5.2 CUSTOMER SURVEY

Amazingly, most of the customers think that they were not given enough attention by
their respective bankers. Since the respondents were account holders with many banks
at the same time, it should show that most of the banks were not giving enough
attention to their customers or were not customer oriented at all. Banks need to
identify and respond to the customer needs and expectations to gain competitive
advantage.

Customers have been banking with more than one bank at the same time. This simply
showed that no single bank has been able to satisfy all the needs and expectations of
its customers. This should also mean that competition is very tough and the customers
are very demanding. If any bank ignores the customers, it is bound to lose its share in
the market to its competitors. Multiple account holders can be more sensitive to others
in the sense that they shall continue to hold an account whereas divert most of the
transactions to other bankers they have been holding their accounts with. As per
Bolton (2004) banks may afford to lose customers but not good and profitable
business and that is why most of them are expected to practice analytical customer
relationship banking i.e. maintaining customer relationship profitably.

In a part of the survey, respondents were asked to tell their most likely course of
actions in certain conditions. This gave some very interesting results. Customers said
that they may not switch banks in case they are not given the due importance and care
but shall definitely stop transacting with the bank, hence reducing profitability of the
accounts. Alternately it can also be said that if banks provide better and more effective
customer care and customer support services, they would be able to generate more
business from the existing customers only. This is one very important key to banking
business. Since customers do not have the tendency of reporting the matter to higher
authorities, it should be expected that banks need to be proactive and extremely
sensitive to customer’s needs and expectation.