Customer Satisfaction and Customer Privacy

Customer relationship management (CRM) has become critical for modern business organizations because of the value of potential and current customers. Despite the significance of CRM, service providers tend to overlook the contribution to satisfaction from other customers in the service environment because of difficulties in creating a customer mix. Customer mix basically provides insights regarding customer segments currently being serviced by the business organization. Firms can manage the customer mix by determining the desired optimal behaviors from customers. Businesses should determine the behaviors they desire from customers in terms of participation in the service delivery process, customer-to-customer interactions, and the treatment of service personnel (Fisk, Grove & John, 2013). This should be followed by developing a clientele that fits the portfolio. The next step in this process would involve identifying the right customers, customer education, and ensuring compatibility with other customers as part of producing a satisfying customer experience.

Since the process of managing the customer mix entails identifying customers that fit the desired optimal portfolio, firms may collect confidential information about customers. Customer privacy relates to managing the customer mix in terms of access to and handling confidential information about customers. Some of the privacy issues that need to be addressed when creating a customer mix include confidentiality of customer information, the use of such information, information sharing, and data protection practices. Therefore, businesses need to establish proper safeguards to protect the privacy and confidentiality of customer information. Business organizations need to ensure that customers personal data is handled in a manner that does not violate privacy and confidentiality. This could involve informing customers about the type of data collected about them and how it is going to be used.

Reference

Fisk, R.P., Grove, S.J. & John, J. (2013). Services marketing: An interactive approach (4th ed.). Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.