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 Interested? Please contact Dr. Allen Teh (019-3523082) for a discussion

Customer Management is at a crucial point in its development. It is emerging into, potentially, a management tool of great strategic importance. The future development of Customer Management depends not simply on more investment in IT, but on understanding how Customer Management really works; building transferable knowledge and turning it into effective practice.

We have all known for a long time that providers of both goods and services have to focus on the needs of their customers and try to build a long-term relationship with them. The relationship that the brand holds with the end consumer is equally important to overall success. Therefore customer satisfaction at multiple levels is the real key to competitive advantage in business today. However, most companies continue to be driven by more basic metrics such as short-term profitability and, even more basic, gross revenue. Therefore it is worth looking at how others try to manage the customer interface and extrapolate from that to glean the key learnings which can be then adopted more widely.

The first point to note is that there is still a long way to go across the spectrum – only 24% of companies, when asked, saw management time spent with customers as important and only a third offer any form of customer training for their staff. Sadly the key point we can take from this is that, while organisations may wish customers to be loyal to them, in reality they are not willing to invest in the return relationship. Anyone who has tried to get lost luggage returned, renegotiate a mortgage, return a product without a receipt or ask for a reduced rate on an insurance renewal will be only too familiar with this conundrum.

So, having concluded that customer management is worth embracing, what climate is needed to make sure it can be a success? Like any new initiative, balanced foundations need to be in place otherwise it may fail to gain roots within the organisation. These need to be evaluated prior to the implementation of a customer management system and continually monitored  throughout to ensure that the environment is ideal for prosperity. The three main factors to consider here are IT conditions, marketing strategy conditions and culture / climate conditions within the organisation.

Open University Malaysia, being a visionary in leading edge managerial development in Malaysia, realises the great need for more management personnel to be inspired, skilled and knowledgeable in the area of Customer Management. John C. Maxwell said, “Everything rises and falls on leadership”. Open University Malaysia, through the MBA in Customer Management, aims to transform more managers into Service Leaders, having the passion, ability and knowhow to who will champion the customer agenda, design and deliver exceptional service models that enable employees, owners, and customers to thrive simultaneously.