The impact of customer knowledge and customer relationship management on service quality

Purpose – Enterprises realize that customers are their most important asset and recognize that a high level of customer satisfaction can only be achieved by enhancing service quality. Thus, how enterprises acquire customer knowledge by which to initiate and maintain customer relationships, as well as to enhance service quality has become an important issue. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – This study uses a questionnaire and statistical analytical techniques to explore the impact of customer knowledge and customer relationship management (CRM) on service quality. Findings – The results indicated that customer knowledge has a positive influence on service quality and CRM is the partial intervening variable between customer knowledge and service quality. That is, customer knowledge enhances the CRM, while CRM, in turn, increases service quality and provides competitive advantages. Research limitations/implications – This research explored the impact of customer knowledge and CRM on service quality based on the company's perception and there was no validation on the customers' perception of the company. Therefore, it is suggested that future research should involve company staff, current customers, and latent customers to strengthen the triangulation. Practical implications – The results found that customer knowledge is indeed an important source of competitive advantage. Hence, enterprises should acquire valuable customer knowledge in order to enhance the relationship with customers, as well as enhance their service quality. Originality/value – There is still little related literature investigating the relationships amongst customer knowledge, CRM, and service quality. Hence, this study applies questionnaire methods as the main research tools in order to conduct an in-depth investigation into the influence of customer knowledge and CRM on service quality. Furthermore, this research is expected to provide enterprises with valuable suggestions for management practices.