What lies behind the concept of customer relationship management? Discussing the essence of CRM through a phenomenological approach.
| Autor | Pedron, Cristiane Drebes |
| Cargo | Report |
INTRODUCTION
Customer Relationship Management [CRM] has recently become one of the most discussed issues in the Information Technology [IT] field. Following the path of Enterprise Resource Planning [ERP] implementations, CRM is now a buzzword, and many consulting firms have been profiting by selling this kind of solution, which promises to guarantee a competitive advantage by using IT to support a close relationship between an organization and its customers.
However, many companies that have adopted this solution have not obtained the return they had hoped for. Payne (2006, p. 20) shows that:
* 69% of CRM projects have little impact on sales performance;
* Companies think that their CRM projects are significantly less successful than their consultants or suppliers;
* 70% of CRM initiatives will fail over the next 18 months;
* 60% per cent of CRM projects end in failure.
Attempting to explain these statistics, several authors (Boulding, Staelin, Ehret, & Johnston, 2005; Newell, 2003; Ngai, 2005; Payne, 2006) point out some problems that lead to CRM failure, such as:
* Lack of skills in building and using the new IT-based CRM systems;
* Inadequate investments, as many projects dramatically exceed their planned cost and sometimes even their scope;
* Poor data quality and quantity, mainly for companies that are at the early stage of CRM development;
* Failure to understand the business benefits--many managers perceive only the high cost of CRM adoption and fail to understand the potential financial benefits at the earlier stages of the CRM project;
* Lack of leadership and top management involvement;
* Inadequate measurement systems--sometimes organizations do not know exactly what they want from a CRM adoption;
* Cultural problems--many organizations need to change their main strategy (vision, objectives, etc.) to focus their efforts on customers.
These reasons for CRM failure provide some clues, but, in an attempt to understand why this type of technology has resulted in such a high level of failure, these elements need to be questioned, above all: What does CRM really stand for? There is a solution being sold, but for what sort of problem? What kind of phenomenon are companies and academics dealing with?
One of the assumptions of this article is that one of the main reasons for CRM failure is the lack of understanding about the true meaning and implication of practices for managing relationships with customers. This assumption includes the view that, in the market, CRM is now seen as a technological tool/issue, while it should be considered as a strategic and even a philosophical matter that stretches far beyond the IT arena. Therefore, questioning the essence of CRM itself and discussing the very concept of relationship is of paramount importance.
With this research focus, the main goal of the article is to discuss the CRM essence through a phenomenological approach (Ciborra, 2002; Dreyfus, 1994; Heidegger, 1962; Husserl, 1970; Introna & Ilharco, 2004). As its main results, it is expected to invite both academics and practitioners to reflect on the different facets and aspects of the CRM phenomenon, not only as a matter of IT applications, but also as a strategy and even as an organizational philosophy. The study assumes that this type of reflective and critical view can help to better evaluate the objectives and expected outcomes of CRM projects.
In the academic field, the discussion helps to point out several assumptions and questions for future research, as indicated in the last section of this article.
In this paper the CRM phenomenon with a critical and dialectical view is being analyzed. Therefore, the next section presents the adopted methodology, according to the phenomenological approach. The rest of the article is developed as follows: in the next section the current definitions of CRM are also analyzed, and the meaning of relationship is explored and discussed; at the end, there is a final discussion pointing out implications for research and practice.
METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH
This study is exploratory and has adopted a phenomenological approach as a methodology for inquiry.
Phenomenology encourages us to back to the things themselves, it means, to approach phenomena that present themselves directly to us as conscious human beings, and attempt to understand their essences. It has at its centre "the initial recognition of essential intuition as the necessary condition for locating the experiential world that philosophers seek to understand" (Natanson, 1973, p. 25).
A phenomenon is what humans directly experience (Crotty, 1998; Myers, 2004). Once a person approaches a phenomenon and his/her initial understanding of it, in sequence the phenomenological method proposes to question what is usually take for granted. It proposes that (as best as one can) the prevailing understanding of the phenomenon under study should be set aside and we should review the immediate experience of it as a possibility for finding new meanings or an enhancement of a current meaning (Crotty, 1998; Husserl, 1970; Introna & Ilharco, 2004; Manen, 2002).
In this study of the CRM phenomenon, a Heideggerian phenomenology has been followed. To Heidegger, the phenomenon shows some appearances, although the essence of it is behind such appearances.
Heidegger, in contrast to Husserl's (1970) phenomenology, claims that it is not possible to acquire adequate evidence and complete freedom of prejudice when dealing with a phenomenon. Prejudice and preconceptions do not lead to false interpretations of the world, but are instead necessary conditions to form a background for interpretation (Winograd & Flores, 1987). To Heidegger, there are no such things as wrong or right interpretations; life is always interpreting. Phenomenology, thus, is hermeneutic, which means, it is interpretative (Dreyfus, 1994; Gadamer, 1992).
Hermeneutics can be considered as a theory or philosophy of the interpretation of meaning. It is primarily concerned with the meaning of a text or text-analogue. A text-analogue is anything that can be treated as a text, such as an event, an action, an organization or a culture, and even an Information System (Boland, 2002; Myers, 2004). The origin of hermeneutics lies in the concern with interpreting ancient religious texts (Boland, 2002; Klein & Myers, 1999; Myers, 2004), but its main objective is "human understanding: understanding what people say and do, and why" (Myers, 2004, p. 103).
According to Dreyfus (1994), Heidegger proposes a hermeneutics of everydayness that involves the understanding of everyday practices and discourse, but in a deep sense, since the fundamental aspects of our existence hide their structure behind common sense. Researchers have to be suspicious and try to get a deeper and a clearer understanding of them. Researchers must be prepared to revise radically their traditional accounts of objects, subjects, language, space, truth, reality, time, etc, on the basis of the phenomena revealed by their interpretation. According to these propositions, Heidegger (in the initial phase of his work) claims a phenomenology of suspicion.
This philosophical and methodological approach indicates the necessity of approaching organizational phenomena by questioning the models and concepts taken--for granted about them, and to pay attention to the unexpressed aspects of organizational life, observing the flow of events and considering that "the everyday apparitions should instead be looked at as symptoms, pointers to an organizational phenomenon that does not manifest itself directly. Both appearances and apparitions are generated by the underlying phenomenon to be unveiled" (Ciborra, 2002, p. 178).
According to Manen (2002) phenomenological studies cannot be formalized into a series of technical procedures. However, a variety of activities may be identified that can help in making a phenomenological inquiry. There are two main types of activities: empirical and reflective methods:
Empirical inquiry activities aim to explore the range and varieties of pre-reflective experiential material that is appropriate for the phenomenon under study. Reflective inquiry activities aim to interpret the aspects of meaning or meaningfulness that are associated with this phenomenon (Manen, 2002, p. 1).
Considering empirical activities, this study is based on previous works (both in consultancy and in academic research) by the authors, about CRM. This previous empirical experience has been considered and the following reflective phenomenological methods have been applied (Manen, 2002):
* Conceptual analysis--this is the process of examining a complex conceptual or linguistic entity into its most basic semantic constituents, considering that the meaning of a concept lies largely in its usage. In this study, the different definitions and concepts about CRM presented in the literature were revisited, as well as the ideas related to this concept, including: relationship, trust, communication, etc. (see next section, especially item The Meaning of Relationship).
* Etymological reflection--Frequently the words that are used to refer to a phenomenon have lost some of their original meaning. Being attentive to the etymological origins of words may help the researchers to understand the origins and the essence of concepts that are usually taken for granted. In this sense the origins of the term relationship have been analyzed, as well as its meaning and all that a relationship implies (see next section, especially item The Meaning of Relationship).
* Collaborative reflective discussions--this type of discussion is helpful in generating deeper insights and understanding about a concept. Themes and insights can be examined, articulated, reinterpreted or reformulated. The author's empirical experiences, both in consultancy and in academic research in the field of CRM and Information Technology applied in organizational processes have...
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