Research On The Customer Maintenance For China Unicom

With the development of China Telecom Industry, the competition has been shifted from comparative quality in the usage of network resources to differentiated quality of customer services. This is a new challenge for all of the service carriers in terms of content, execution, quality, operation management and service quality awareness, etc. Customer Relationship Maintenance(CRM) has become the effective way for companies to enhance their core business competition. And customers have become the most valuable resources for these telecom companies.The enhancement of Customer Relationship Maintenance will increase the profit-making capacity of the enterprise to a larger extent. Therefore it places emphasis on the market share that the agency customers occupy in this trade and the high-value customers occupy in the whole. The higher the market share is , the stronger the profit-making ability of the enterprise becomes. On the other hand, the Customer Relationship Maintenance equals to the emphasis of the long-term value. It could increase the continuous developing ability of the enterprise. Research shows that Customer Relationship Maintenance will bring long-term customers, and have close relations with the profit-making ability. Good customer relationship brings loyal customers and makes great contributions to the enterprise.This thesis will concentrate on China Unicom's competition environment and thus, by applying the theory of Customer Relationship Maintenance, analyze the existing CRM problems. In short, the CRM solutions are not a simple process, but the improvement on management vision, organization structure, technological support and on-going service reformation, etc. This thesis pointed out the importance of creating an "Ultimate Customer Satisfaction" corporate culture, and the comprehensive solutions of UnicomCRM which are the main findings of this thesis.1. The competition environment of China Telecom Industry and thenecessity of CRMThe China Telecom Industry is consisted of China Telecom, China Netcom, China Satcom, China Unicom, China Railcom, China Mobile(the six major players) and other 4000 service providers. In the past years, the market shares of the four major players have become stabilized. All in all, the core business competition will rely more on the advantages of the service competition. The competition has been shifted from comparative quality in the usage of network resources to differentiated quality of customer services.The competition advantages of the telecom industry mainly depend on the customer maintenance of the enterprise. From the external environment of telecom enterprise, the customer maintenance is extremely necessary in the market competition. From the internal angle of telecom service players, customer maintenance is the necessity for the enterprise existence and development. By applying the theoretical analysis of microeconomics, with the breaking of the telecom market monopolization, the profitable service provider during monopolization will drop to the average profit level in the market. Under this circumstance, the importance of CRM emerges.2. China Unicom current CRM and the problemsSince the foundation of China Unicom, Unicom has gradually realized the importance of CRM in the telecom market competition. A scientific service system is setting up in order to meet the need of customers and make most customers feel satisfied. By applying the "Customer Satisfaction" concept, the core competition power will be increased, and the promotion of Unicorn's continuous development will be realized.CRM has attracted a large deal of attention in China Unicom, However, there are still some aspects of disadvantages existing in the specific work ofCRM. First, severe market competition upscaled the price war. On the one hand, the competition attacked the opponents' markets. On the other hand, it might contradict the existing sales policy of ourselves. It only benefits those customers who kept moving in different companies and took advantages of different charges. Second, the different aims between agency and Unicom led into the difficulties in CRM though the agents could help attract new customers. The main manifestation is the false customer information and the different service quality. Last, because of the unclear responsibility and the rough operation flow, there are some blanks in CRM.3. The CRM solution for China UnicomIt could be concluded from the degree of service satisfaction and loyalty that telecom service providers could obtain loyal customers only through the improvement of their own service level and increasing the degree of service satisfaction. Maintaining customer loyalty means the promotion of the contribution value of customers to the enterprise. It also makes the competing opponents unable to contend this part of the market share. Maintaining customer loyalty not only brings direct economic profits for the enterprise but also increases the brand value of the enterprise, decreases credit risk and enhances core competivity. Sales are not the ultimate goal of marketing. Sales should be taken as the chance for the service carriers to establish a lasting and helpful brand relationship and finally realize the brand loyalty.Individualized services should include: establishing customer managers, setting up information and marketing network, constructing detailed customer files and carrying out individualized service strategy, etc.CRM also needs the support of a powerful technological platform. Through the establishment of customer interaction platform, customer intelligence platform and data-excavation system, the analytical CRM could be set up. Its aim is to help the enterprise know the customers and understand...