ABSTRACT
Despite growing interest in customer relationship management (CRM) and all the benefits that it offers to companies, various studies reveal high rates of failure when implementing CRM schemes. An urgent problem facing both academics and managers is how CRM expenditure can be more effectively and consistently translated into meaningful business and profits. A study by Nucleus Research (2012) showed that 80% of expected CRM returns are yet to be achieved. These failure rates and lack of key success factors in organisations implementing CRM remain poorly conceptualised and understood. Work with CRM organisations has demonstrated that the indicators of organisations’ CRM performance can be developed through a number of factors, such as strategic emphasis, technology and integration of market knowledge. To achieve effective results, firms must combine the richness of information with the rigour of organisational learning and subsequent strategic implementation. However, studies have also revealed implementation pitfalls, or a dark side, leading to failure. These stem from a number of areas, including relationship conflicts, opportunism, dependence and relationship asymmetry (John, 1984; Meunier-FitzHug et al., 2011; Zhou et al., 2007). Few studies have adapted organisational-level research to examine how organisational capabilities can influence firms’ pursuit in overcoming the darker side of CRM (Villena et al., 2011). The purpose of this chapter is to explore how this CRM paradigm – using
knowledge and learning approaches – might be adapted to the needs of firms adopting CRM. By employing experiential learning theory, the chapter aims to explain an approach to overcome the dark side of CRM, with the concept of learning behaviour arising from failure, in order to improve firms’ CRM performance.
