Page 108 - DMGT308_CUSTOMER_RELATIONSHIP_MANAGEMENT

Unit 4: Customer Retention, Acquisition and Expectation

In a situation when employee resources are no limitation to a company, main attention may be Notes
directed to inter-organisational customers (buyers, bistomers2, and other stakeholders). In an
extro-reactive strategy their expectations are handled in a parallel way to that discussed earlier
in connection with intro-reactive strategy. The extro-reactive strategy can further be divided
into extro-intrareactive and extro-interreactive strategies. In the former, expectations within
one relation are in focus while in the latter, the network of relations is taken into account.
Co-reactive strategy refers to a situation where all relation parties in a dyad or network act on
short term basis and expectations become an issue mainly in case of a business transaction or
when parties express their dissatisfaction, i.e. complain. Then and only then, issues are negotiated
to settle the somehow adverse situation. This is the case in many buyer-seller relations where no
commitment exists.

Intro-proactive strategists focus heavily on the future of a company or organization and the
well-being of the staff. They recognise the role of satisfied, innovative employees, and deploy
their creativeness to develop the company. A genuine intercommunication exists; organisational
research is a solid part of the overall action, not an ad-hoc hobby. Knowledge acquired by the
research is implemented in existing systems and operations. Intro-proactive strategy requires
stable market conditions.
An extrovert strategy is appropriate in situations where the company management can rely on
the employees’ commitment, and need to concentrate on gaining or defending its market share
or share of customer. Market and competitor intelligence, as well as identification and utilisation
of weak leads become crucial when implementing this strategy. In the organisation, management
is preferred to leadership, and the measures used tend to be mainly financial.

Extro-proactive strategies are dividable into extro-introproactive and extro-interproactive
depending on the number of collective actors taken into account. Extro-introproactive parties
pay a considerable attention on the future expectations of the other party or parties in a relation
while being only reactive to the expectations of their own company and employees.
Extro-interproactive strategists deploy a wider perspective to the contextual expectations, for
instance, those of the industries and societies. Tactics in implementing this strategy add to the
earlier mentioned ones leadership to the extent that is needed to ‘keep the engines going without
ongoing maintenance’.
Co-proactive strategy in managing expectations is the one needed in committed relationships.
From the managerial point of view, both management and leadership play crucial roles. The
parties understand the importance of intercommunication both inside their organisation as
well as in other stakeholder relations. All kinds of expectations are identified as well as their
role in the future of intra-organisational, customer and other relations. The process of expectation
development must be familiar to the organisation’s all management levels. This is crucial
because, as we have stated earlier, otherwise we may fall into a trap of taking things for granted
and not paying enough attention to important issues. In long institutionalised relationships this
may be the fact. However, in the new competition companies have to ‘earn’ even their
relationships over and over again.

Task What are customer’s expectations from a product?

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