Identifying the range of customer listening tools: a logical pre‐cursor to CRM?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of listening tools by several large companies to obtain information about customers' needs, preferences, and perceptions of their performance in order to facilitate customer relationship management (CRM), and identify some best practices, which are salient activities for managing customer perception and satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach – In‐depth case studies of two multi‐national corporations and two other large companies in the UK were conducted. Semi‐structured personal interviews were carried out with key executives in these organisations. An analysis was undertaken of the current situation within these firms in relation to identifying customer needs and requirements. The range of customer listening tools was not definitive at the outset. Findings – Large companies in the UK constantly use multiple customer listening tools to glean feedback from customers. These companies use their extensive understanding of customers to build products and services that meet customers' needs and expectations. They are also able to monitor competition and innovation to improve their operations and customer satisfaction management. However, as one would imagine there is no universal use of a particular set of tools. Research limitations/implications – It would have been perhaps more beneficial to the research if more firms had been included in the study. Practical implications – Practical initiatives that can be considered as guarantees or promises for successfully managing customer perception and satisfaction are provided. This includes a set of listening tools that can be used as a basis for interventions in other large organisations. The findings from this research should be useful in the design of future CRM software. Originality/value – The primary contribution of this research is its discussion of a variety of different customer listening tools used by firms, along with introducing potentially new customer listening tools to the literature, and indicating why and how the sub‐set of tools are administered by best‐practice companies. This research has created two overall frameworks that capture essential characteristics of each tool and its administration by the companies as the basis to facilitate CRM.