IJMSS
Vol.04 Issue-07, (July, 2016)
ISSN: 2321-1784
International Journal in Management and Social Science (Impact Factor- 5.276)
CRM IN SAUDI TELECOMMUNIATION SECTOR: Customer views about service providers.
Dr. Venkata Sai Srinivasa Rao Muramalla, Assistant Professor, College of Business Administration,
Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, Hotat Bani Tamim, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Email:
&
Prof. G. Naveen Kumar, Head of the Department, Malla Reddy College of Engineering and Technology,
Hyderabad.
ABSTRACT
In advent of internationalization of telecommunication sector across the world, quality of services
offered has become the means of differentiation to achieve success. Service providers in the telecom
business are adapted new technologies to outperform their competitors. CRM is of more emphasis on
identifying value adding processes and adapting IT to move towards customers. It is of a simple logic of
retain your customers in business portfolio. This paper is on CRM and how it helps the service providers in
telecommunications to serve better. Perceptions of 85 customers using mobile services in Saudi Arabia
are analyzed to know the impact of services on their loyalty and satisfaction. Findings of the study
revealed that the quality of customer service has significantly affects customer loyalty and satisfaction
which in turn result the overall effectiveness of CRM practices of the selected companies.
Keywords: Services sector, Customer retention, Customer satisfaction, Customer loyalty.
I. Introduction
Customer relationship management (CRM) identifies the needs of customers and stretching ways to
satisfy them. It focuses on creating value in transactions and expecting pay for that value. By using CRM,
knowledge about markets, customer segments and product usage data can be gathered by
organizations. Many companies thrive on this data as it enables them to design the right kind of
marketing and promotional strategies to get attention of the customers. Even advertising and
promotions can be instrumental in influencing the purchase decision of customers; but if the company
has built a long-term relationship with its customers, advertising and promotion can become more
effective in delivering market returns.
The whole idea of CRM is to develop business models that would enhance the quality and improve
interaction with their customers leading to more satisfied and loyal customers. Therefore CRM becomes
more and more important to organizations with fierce competition over customers (Mendoza et al.,
2007). CRM helps organizations to understand their customers' requirements, and it is considered a tool
for improving the competitive advantage and to enhance innovation capabilities (Lin et al., 2010). CRM
also helps organizations to become more effective and efficient when dealing with customers (Beldi et
al., 2010). With CRM, organizations can increase profitability and also boost customer satisfaction and
loyalty (Pezeshki et al., 2009). Nowadays, technology provides businesses with information systems that
can help companies track customer interaction with firms and allow employees to quickly retrieve all
information about the customers. This concept is called a CRM system and if used properly, it could
enhance a company’s ability to achieve the ultimate goal of retaining customers and so gain a strategic
advantage over its competitors.
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In the telecom market of Saudi Arabia, there is huge customer base consisting of nearly 5 million
subscribers of fixed telephone lines and around 53 mobile telephone subscribers. The fixed broadband
subscriptions reached to around 2.21 million and mobile broadband reached 11.73 million. The number
of Internet users grew from around 1 million in 2001 to an estimated 15.2 million by the end of 2012.
Internet penetration increased to 52 per cent of the population by the end of 2012. Hence, the purpose
of this paper is to provide the conceptual understanding of CRM and its importance from the view point
of customer satisfaction and loyalty in the mobile telecommunication services sector.
With this introduction, section II contains the review of earlier studies, section III discusses the status of
telecom sector in the Saudi Arabia, section IV briefs on methodology and study variables followed by the
analysis of the sample study and findings, section V has the conclusion. Tables are appended last for
clear understanding of the study analysis.
II. Review of earlier studies
CRM activities are playing a vital role in telecommunications, insurance, banking and finance, travel and
tourism, information technology, hotel, airlines and hospital services. For the purpose of the study
some of the earlier studies on CRM in services sector have been presented in this section.
CRM in services sector
Service sector includes several activities. In recent years, this sector has been growing rapidly and CRM
has become an essential and very important factor in the service sector. Inseparability is a distinctive
feature of services. Services produce and consume simultaneously and therefore instant delivery of
qualitative services is an important element of any service businesses (Czepiel, 2006). Customer
develops relationship with a service organization and they expect to receive satisfactory delivery of core
service. Customers derive long – term relationships with service firms in addition to the benefits
received from core service. In the process of building long – term relationships between services firms
and customers, a kind of friendship often occurs. A customer realizes the feeling of comfort and security
in developing a relationship with service provider. These feelings of trust and confidence appear to
develop over time only after a relationship has been established between the customer and the service
provider (Jackson, 2007). Different types of relational benefits exist through effective CRM. A successful
CRM programme in services sector addresses four key areas of business: strategy, people, technology
and process. Each area is significant and important in the services industry (Tapan K Panda, 2003). It is
also very important to understand customers by analyzing existing customer feedback regarding various
customer segments. Customer expectations are difficult to manage and often are the causes for
customer dissonance which leads to loss of existing customer base. Understanding customer
expectations, especially regarding service delivery is essential for maintaining long-term relationships
(Michael Porter, 2005).
Many organizations are still not aware of the impact of CRM strategy across organizations and are
unable to identify the gaps for developing further customer centric organization. This is because CRM is
always viewed as technical development rather than strategic development. An integrated CRM
programme covers product development, channel management, sales automation, customer
acquisition, customer fulfilment, inventory management, customer service, customer billing and
invoicing, payment management, credit management and prevention against fraud and customer
retention (Crosby et al., 1990). CRM provides a communication platform enabling the sales force to
communicate customers’ needs and product requirements accurately (Argwal et al., 2004). Relationship
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marketing focuses on maintaining a continuous relationship with customers and building long-term
relationship bonds. It certainly provides a strategic foundation for CRM. CRM suggests companies to
reduce the costs of expensive mass marketing efforts and increase results from their CRM efforts (Darrel
et al., 2004). CRM is a business strategy that goes beyond profitability, revenue and customer
satisfaction. Its main objective is to use a wide set of tools and technologies and adapt various
procedures aims at promoting its relationship with the customer. Thus, CRM is to attract, maintain and
enhance customer relationships (Berry, 1993).
Role of IT in CRM
Companies are operating globally as well as in local markets. They have been investing in technological
initiatives for managing customer relationships. The companies that have invested in IT enabled
technologies have been successful in reaping the fruits of better managed relations and competitive
success (Thiwaites et al., 2007). IT competence in CRM initiatives of a company refers to two aspects: (a)
comprehensiveness of IT construction within the firm for CRM, i.e., CRM technology, and (b) IT
competence related to knowledge management, i.e., knowledge maintenance and facilitation of
knowledge creation in the CRM process (Coltman, 2003). CRM technology essentially demands IT base
technology for managing customer relationships. CRM technology components include front-office
applications that support sales, marketing, service, a data depository, and back-office applications that
help integrate and analyze the data (Han et al., 2006). Sales support permits the sales management
team to provide information related to the customer. The sales force uses CRM to manage sales through
multiple channels by tracking product availability and delivery (Killen et al., 2007). Marketing support for
CRM is consisting of marketing planning, execution of campaigns, and measurement of campaign
performance (Darshan Desai et al., 2007). Service support CRM is useful in helping the customers (Jain et
al., 2006). The front-office or customer interaction solutions help to manage the customer data
repository and software (Sher et al., 2004). Data warehouse is an important constituent of CRM
technology. It consists of the basic infrastructure on which data mining and other analytical applications
are run. Data warehouse helps in taking crucial decisions relating to improvising customer relationships.
A well-designed data warehouse is useful to a company for building and aiding successful CRM
applications (Chaudhari et al., 1997).
Data mining is another form of information technology which undertakes the day-to-day transactions of
a company. Banks and insurance companies are having the information pertaining to their customers
already known to them. Data mining provides the intelligence and the knowledge to understand
customers and their behaviour from past interactions. To provide better services to the customers’ data
mining technologies help in providing relevant information (Thearling, 1999). Information technology
affects the performance of CRM. IT has the positive effects on CRM performance (Greenberg, 2001).
Competitive CRM performance refers to managerial perceptions about the competitive performance of
CRM (Jaychandran et al., 2001). CRM technologies enable an organization to present a single point of
contact to its customers (Jain et al., 1999). The ‘point of contact’ retains the previous interactions of the
customer with the organization and uses this information to tailor its future interactions (Meta Group
whitepaper 1999). CRM is carried out across the customer lifecycle with the help of information
technology (Day et al., 2002). The important aspect of CRM is the association with technology to handle
the long customer bases properly (Srivastava et al., 1999). Successful customer relationship
management focuses on understanding the needs and desires of the customers and placing these needs
at the heart of the business by integrating them with the organization’s strategy, people, technology and
business process (Flanagan et al., 1998). These contextual peculiarities of CRM got important
implications for the competitive performance of its process (Darshan Desai et al., 2007).
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Philosophy of relationship marketing and CRM
CRM has its roots in relationship marketing. Relationship marketing is a philosophy and has an
orientation towards customer retention. CRM is the practical implementation of relationship marketing
(Christopher et al., 1991). In other words CRM is technological infrastructure, both hardware and
software, to manage a large quantity of customer data. But relationship marketing is a way of doing
business. So, it is not a surprising fact that many CRM projects fail to deliver the return on investment,
because of the inability to understand the business needs. CRM is just an enabler of relationship
marketing (Grönroos, 2004). Relationship marketing is ‘an integrated effort to identify, maintain, and
build up a network with individual consumers and to continuously strengthen the network for the
mutual benefit of both sides, through interactive, individualized and value-added contacts over a long
period of time’ (Shani et al., 1992). The idea of developing and fostering relationship with customers is
not something revolutionarily new (Batterly, 2003). This phenomenon is as old as the history of trade
and commerce (Rich, 2000). While relationship has been rediscovered in the western world, they have
remained a fundamental part of exchanges in many eastern cultures (Ohmae, 1989). Many firms
discover relationship marketing for the first time; this is because many larger firms lost sight of the
individual customer, believing that it is more efficient to market to them on a mass scale (Now
Grossman, 1998).
III. Telecommunications sector in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia privatized telecom sector in 1998. In 2001, Saudi government, in preparation for opening
the telecom market for competition, established the regulation authority for the telecom sector market
and called it Communication and Information Technology Commission (CITC). Saudi Arabia opened its
telecom market for competition in 2005. The second mobile telecom service provider, Etihad Etisalat
popularly known as Mobily, was licensed to work in Saudi Arabia. Two years later, the third mobile
company Zain was licensed. In particular, customers of various mobile network services in Saudi noticed
a great improvement in the level of services provided by Saudi Telecom Company (STC), Mobily and Zain
companies. Being a government owned company, STC also worked hard to improve its customer
services to compete in the mobile telecom market. Because STC inherited most of its employees from
the governmental sector, it was very challenging to change its culture from a government style to a
profit – oriented organization. The company had gone over several strategic shifts to incorporate
customer satisfaction into its internal culture. In fact, telecom companies in Saudi Arabia catering
various services for four distinctive markets: fixed telephone market, mobile telephone market,
broadband (fixed and mobile) market and internet services market. The status of these markets by the
year end 2012 is discussed further.
i. Fixed telephony market
Fixed telephone lines stood at 4.8 million by the end of 2012, of which around 3.4 million or 70 per cent
were residential lines. This represents a household teledensity of around 67.7 per cent, while the
population teledensity is about 16.4 per cent. However, the rate of demand for fixed line service has
been relatively stable since 2004, according to CITC. The main reason is the rapid spread of mobile
telecom services, ease of subscription, and the gradual decrease in prices; which has led to the lower
number of requests from consumers for a fixed telephone service. However, the demand for fixed
services, especially in major cities, is expected to grow as a result of growing demand for broadband
services, especially for the fiber-optic network (FTTx) services.
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ii. Mobile telecommunications market
The total number of mobile subscriptions reached around 53 million by the end 2012, with penetration
rate of 181.6 per cent. Prepaid subscriptions constitute the majority (over 86 per cent) of all mobile
subscriptions. The observation here is the decrease of the number of subscriptions due to the
implementation of CITC new decision on regulating the sale and activation of pre-paid SIM cards, as
companies deactivated a large number of unidentified SIM cards, thus affecting the total number of
subscriptions and penetration rate.
iii. Broadband market
Recently, demand for broadband services has increased significantly compared to previous years, due to
the society's need for broadband services, especially after the government strong support to the high
tech projects, which require a good digital infrastructure. In addition to this, many government services
are being made through e-government transactions. The widespread use of internet in the society is
another factor that led to this growth, where internet has become a major source of hundreds of
thousands of applications that are downloaded to smart devices such as social networking, business
applications, word processors, chat programs, security tools, games and more. Service providers are
currently providing broadband services through both fixed and mobile networks.
a) Fixed broadband services:
Fixed broadband subscriptions including the DSL, Fixed Wireless (WiMax), FTTx and other fixed lines
have grown to around 2.54 million subscriptions at the end of 2012. The Fixed broadband penetration
rate was about 40.8 per cent of the total households.
b) Mobile broadband services:
The total number of mobile broadband subscriptions reached 12.28 million by the end of 2012,
representing a population penetration rate of 42.1 per cent. The mobile broadband market continues to
gain momentum in the Kingdom. The key reasons for this growth are the strong competition, the
healthy expansion of smart phones, and the offering of various data packages by mobile operators. It
has become easier to access the internet via mobile devices such as smart phones. The mobile networks
are also improving, as the 3.5G (HSPA) continues to be deployed and as wireless broadband
technologies (4G) emerge over the next few years.
iv. Internet services market
The estimated number of internet users in the Kingdom is 15.8 million users at the end of 2012, with a
population penetration of 54.1 per cent. It is expected that the demand for internet services will
increase significantly in the next few years due to the availability of fiber-optic networks (FTTx) at very
high speeds, initially in large cities, growing Internet content, and the spread of handheld smart devices
and applications.
Contribution of ICT to the national GDP
The growth of capital investment, development in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and expansion and of
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) networks has significantly contributed to the national
GDP. This has been the result of liberalizing the telecommunications sector and opening its market to
competition in 2005 which in turn has led to attract investments and growth of the sector. The
deployment of modern technology and availability of applications has the positive effect of raising the
efficiency of other economic sectors as well. According to CITC of Saudi Arabia estimates, the
contribution of the ICT sector is around 2.75 per cent compared to 4.4 per cent in 2007. Yet, the
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percentage of added value has been rising over the past three years. The decrease in the ICT sector
contribution is a result of rising oil prices and production rates. If however, the economy has neutralize
the oil and mining sector components of the GDP, it is estimated that the ICT contribution to the
national GDP (excluding oil and mining) would go up to 7% in 2012. In addition, studies show that there
is a direct correlation between the prevalence of broadband services and the rate of growth in GDP. It is
estimated that a rise in the spread of broadband services by 10 per cent could result in the growth in
GDP of around 1.3 per cent.
Revenues of telecom sector
Telecom services revenues in Saudi Arabia have been steadily growing at a Compounded Annual Growth
Rate (CAGR) of around 12 per cent, increasing from about Saudi Arabian Riyal (SAR) 20 billion (US $5.3
billion) in 2001 to SAR 71 billion (US $18.9 billion) in 2012. Mobile services revenues represent about 78
per cent of all telecom sector revenues in the Saudi market. In addition to revenues from the domestic
market, investment by Saudi licensed telecom companies in foreign telecom markets have led to a rapid
growth of revenues for the sector from foreign operations, from SAR 455 million in 2007 to around SAR
18.7 billion (US $4.98 billion) in 2012. Domestic revenues, however, still represent over 79 per cent of
the total telecom sector revenues of SAR 90 billion (US $24 billion) in 2012.
Spending on ICT services
CITC estimates that the volume of spending on the ICT services is up to SAR 94 billion in 2012 compared
to SAR 21 billion 2002, resulting in an average annual growth of about 14 per cent. The spending on
information technology is around 30 per cent of the total volume of expenditure, mostly concentrated in
spending on hardware and IT services. This spending on ICT products and services is expected to grow by
more than 10 per cent in 2013, driven mainly by expected strong growth in demand for smart phones,
high speed networks and interactive applications resulting in strong growth of investment in the sector,
implementation of government projects, all of which will lead in turn to the growth of support services
in the sector.
IV. Methodology, study variables and findings
The customers of three companies viz., STC, Mobily and Zain offering mobile telecom services are
become the sample population of the study. Users of prepaid and postpaid mobile network services of
three companies in the vicinity of Hotat Bani Tamim in the Riyadh Region of Kingdom Saudi Arabia are
taken as sample coverage for the present study. A questionnaire was randomly distributed to 110
respondents. A cover letter explaining the purpose of the study was enclosed. Out of the distributed
ones, 90 were received and among them only 85 are usable questionnaires for analysis. A pilot study has
been conducted before finalizing the questionnaire. The final developed questionnaire is divided into
four parts. The first part contains demographic questions such as gender, age and education level. The
second part contains general information about respondent’s mobile service usage. The third part
measures respondent’s usage of customer service channels (call centers, service offices and web sites)
used by mobile companies to receive and process the complaints and provide various services to their
customers. The last part assesses the customer satisfaction and loyalty which in turn used for rating the
overall effectiveness of CRM practices of the companies. Independent and dependent variables are used
for the purpose of study to construct the overall rating of CRM effectiveness. The constructs in the
questionnaire use a five point Likert scale where 1 represents strongly agree, and 5 represents strongly
disagree. By using Cronbach’s Alpha the construct is tested against the scale reliability function in order
to evaluate the internal consistency. Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient value for the first construct is 0.898
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and for the second construct is 0.806. Both values exceeded 0.7 as suggested by Nunnally (1975). The
coefficient values suggest that both constructs are internally consistent and reliable.
Construct variables of customer satisfaction
a) Independent variables
To compute the first independent variable, respondents were asked to express their opinion on the
following factors using a five point scale:
a. Comfort and ease of getting connected to the phone operator (X1).
b. Attitude of phone operators in responding to customer queries (X2).
c. Expertise of operator in responding to the customer queries (X3).
d. Response rating of operator in providing solutions to the customer problems (X4).
e. Advisory knowledge of operator to the customer problems (X5).
f. Awareness of customers regarding company website services (X6).
g. Speed of information downloading from the company website (X7).
h. Problems arose in the access of company website (X8).
i. Availability and ease of access to the customer supporting office staff (X9).
j. Customer friendly behavior of customer supporting office staff(X10).
k. Knowledge of supporting office staff in handling problems of the customers (X11).
l. Professional approach of office staff in handling customer complaints (X12).
m. Responsiveness rate of service provider in handling customer complaints (X13).
n. Speed of timing factor to resolve the customer problems and complaints (X14).
o. Overall rating on behavior of customer support staff (X15).
An aggregate score for perceived service quality was computed from the above 15 factors and labeled as
X Servqual for consequent analysis.
b) Dependent variable
The dependent variable of this construct is overall satisfaction with mobile service provider.
Construct variables of customer loyalty
a) Independent variables
a. Overall satisfaction with call center operations of the company (X1).
b. Overall satisfaction with customer service offered by the company (X2).
c. Overall rating of the company services to provide more satisfaction to customers (X3)
d. Overall rating in the improvement and development of company services (X4)
An aggregate score for customer satisfaction was computed based on the above 4 factors and labeled as
X Satisfaction for consequent analysts.
b) Dependent variable
The dependent variable of this construct is customer loyalty to their mobile telecommunication service
provider.
Study analysis and findings
The demographic information of the respondents is shown in Table 1. Out of the total 85 respondents
92 per cent are male and only 8 per cent are female. The age of the respondents is ranged from below
18 years to 64 years. Of the total respondents, 40 per cent are between 18 to 24 years old followed by
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34 per cent in the age of 25 – 34 years old. About 15 per cent of respondents are belongs to 35 – 44
years old. Only 2 per cent of the total respondents are below the age of 18 years and merely 1 per cent
is belonging to the age range of 55 – 64 years. To know the educational background of the respondents,
which is an important factor to know the awareness levels of the respondents towards the mobile
services offered by various companies, it came to know that nearly half of the total respondents i.e. 49
per cent completed their undergraduate studies, 27 per cent completed the graduation and above
studies, 20 per cent completed education up to secondary school, only 4 per cent are educated up to
primary school.
Respondents’ usage of mobile services
Table 2 shows the nature of respondents’ usage of mobile services of three companies. Out of the total
85 respondents, majority of the respondents i.e. 64 per cent are using the mobile services of Saudi
Telecom Company (STC), whereas 25 per cent are using Mobily and remaining 11 per cent are of Zain
company customers. To identify whether the respondents are using prepaid or postpaid services, the
distribution of respondents depicts that only around 43 per cent of total STC customers are subscribed
the prepaid plans of the company where as remaining 57 per cent are using postpaid connections.
Regarding the respondents using Mobily company services, more than half of the respondents i.e. 59
per cent are in the postpaid plans and about 41 per cent are using prepaid plans. It can be understood
from the above that the majority of respondents using the STC and Mobily company services are
preferred the postpaid plans rather a little less number of respondents are preferred the prepaid plans.
However, similar trend is observed in the respondents using the Zain company mobile services. In the
mobile services industry, the mobile network services companies are naturally considered the postpaid
customers as long term customers of the companies whereas the customers using the prepaid
connections of the companies are always considered to be the short term customers. Therefore it is
implied that the companies should maintain the long term relationship with the postpaid subscribers.
When it is enquired the respondents regarding their dependency on various channels to utilize the
company services to solve the network related problems and services, interestingly 70 per cent of the
total respondents depending on call centers of the mobile companies, around 15 per cent receiving the
services through the mobile company service offices and only 12 per cent of the total respondents are
depending upon the websites of the mobile companies to get the solutions to their problems and
therefore receiving the company services accordingly. Among the total respondents, as shown in Table
3, the respondents of Mobily are comparatively depending more on call center services of the company
(72 per cent) followed by the respondents of STC company (70 per cent) and about 66 per cent of the
respondents using Zain company services are using the call centers. Few respondents of all the three
companies (12 per cent) are depending on the websites of the companies to file the complaints and
getting solved the problems. Almost all the respondents are informed that they are satisfied with the
services of all the channels and the procedures in solving their problems.
Respondents’ satisfaction and loyalty towards mobile services
The basic assumption of the study is that, providing quality customer service leads to customer
satisfaction. Customer satisfaction in turn leads to customer loyalty. In other words, quality customer
service leads to customer loyalty and hopefully customer retention. CRM plays a vital role in creating
loyal customers and retains them for a long time. Ten questions are included to measure customers’
satisfaction and loyalty (Factors of X). Table 4 shows the average ratings of respondents for each
company from customer satisfaction and loyalty perspectives. All the respondents’ evaluation scores are
added together for each factor and then divided by the number of participants of each company to get
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average customer responses for each company. Standard deviation is calculated for both indicators and
all have reasonable variation.
According to the study, Mobily scored the higher customer satisfaction rating (3.48 out of 5) customer
loyalty rating (3.29 out of 5) followed by Zain which occupied the second position with 3.16 rating in
customer satisfaction and 3.12 in customer loyalty. STC stood at third position with 2.65 rating of
customer satisfaction and 2.48 rating of customer loyalty. To analyze the perceptions of respondents on
the effectiveness of CRM practices of mobile network service companies, a question was placed at the
last stage of the questionnaire which is stating that How do you evaluate the overall customer
relationship management carried out by your mobile service provider?. The respondents have 3 choices
to answer such as excellent, fair and poor. Each of the three companies got 3 points for each excellent
rating, 2 for each fair rating and 1 for each poor rating. The responses are then added representing the
ratings of each company and then the ratings are divided with the total points on the basis of number of
respondents for each company which are represented in percentage of values as shown in the Table 5.
Standard deviation is calculated to ensure reasonable variation among the ratings given by the
respondents. On the basis of the results obtained for the purpose of the present study, it is understood
that 50 per cent of respondents using Mobily services are rated the company as excellent in its CRM
practices. Moreover, nearly 12 per cent of respondents using STC services also rated that the company
has an excellent CRM practices. But majority of the respondents utilizing STC services are rated the CRM
practices of the company as poor which is recorded at nearly 33 percent of its total respondents.
However, comparatively the higher percentage of respondents using STC services are rated the
company as fair in its CRM practices, which is proportionately higher than the other two companies in
competition.
V. Conclusion
The results for this study show that perceived quality of service for customer service channels offered by
mobile telecom companies in Saudi Arabia yield the most influence to customer satisfaction.
Furthermore, we have seen that improvement of such customer service provides the highest customer
satisfaction in return. CRM certainly plays a major role in providing required information to customers
through phone in a timely manner and helps to track customer concerns to maximize satisfaction levels.
Also, improving customer services should lead to customer loyalty. Since customer loyalty is influenced
by customer satisfaction variation, there are other factors that might affect customer loyalty beyond
customer satisfaction factor. This might be an interesting subject to address in further studies. A further
study needs to be carried out to investigate root causes according to service provider perspective such
as CRM implementation, internal processes and related factors. Also, it might be interesting to find out
the reason why would Mobily for instance outperform STC who has been in the market for much longer
time and with much more capabilities and yet, in a few years Mobily was able to capture a considerable
percentage of market share.
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Table 1 – Demographic characteristics of respondents.
Demographic Variables
Gender
Male
Female
Age (in Years)
Younger than 18 years
18-24
25-34
35-44
45-54
55-64
Education
Primary school
Secondary school
Under graduation
Graduation and above
Nationality
Saudis
Non-Saudis
Frequency
78
7
2
34
29
12
7
1
3
17
42
23
68
17
Percentage
92
8
2
40
34
15
8
1
4
20
49
27
80
20
Table 2 – Respondents’ usage of mobile services.
Company
STC
Mobily
Zain
Total
Participants
54
22
9
85
Percentage
64
25
11
100
Prepaid plan
23
9
4
36
Per cent
43
41
44
42
Post paid
31
13
5
49
Per cent
57
59
56
58
Table 3 – Respondents usage of service channels in filing the complaints and getting solutions to their
problems.
Company
No. of respondents
Service channels
Call centers
Service offices
Company websites
STC
54
38 (70%)
9 (17%)
7 (13%)
Mobily
22
16 (72%)
5 (23%)
1 (5%)
Zain
9
6 (66%)
1 (11%)
2 (23%)
Total
85
60 (70%)
15 (18%)
10 (12%)
Table 4 – Respondents’ perceptions on the customer satisfaction and customer loyalty variables.
Company
Average
rating
of Standard
Average
rating
of Standard
respondents
representing Deviation respondents representing Deviation
customer satisfaction.
customer loyalty.
(Factor X analysis)
(Factor X analysis)
STC
2.65
1.16
2.48
1.12
Mobily
3.48
1.11
3.29
1.01
Zain
3.16
1.28
3.12
0.97
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Table 5 – Respondents’ rating for effectiveness of CRM practices of mobile telecom companies (factor x
analysis of dependent and independent variables).
Company
Participants Excellent
Fair
Poor
Weighted
Standard
Average
Deviation
STC
54
11.90%
55.39%
32.71%
59.73%
0.63
Mobily
22
50.34%
40.00%
9.66%
80.23%
0.66
Zain
9
37.04%
44.44%
18.52%
72.84%
0.72
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