Progress in customer relationship management adoption: a cross-sector study

Businesses across sectors use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to capture and manage their customer data, yet many published studies focus on single industries so their generalizability is limited. In this article, the authors take a multi-sector view of CRM implementation in three areas of the UK services sector: banking and finance, professional services, and the government/public sector. The study is designed to capture differing degrees of progress in the CRM journey, contributing to existing knowledge through its cross-sector view of CRM implementation, addressing the need for more generalizable findings; applying an existing framework of CRM implementation to tease out progress in relation to: people (ie: the company’s staff), the company itself, the customers (and customer data), and the technology; and using this framework as the basis for greater insight into the variations in CRM practice and progress across sectors. Implementation recommendations are presented for managers whose organizations have reached different stages in the CRM journey.