Exam 7: Building Customer Relationships

The primary goal of relationship marketing is to build and maintain a base of profitable and committed customers through attraction, retention and customer enhancement.

The Marriott Hotel introduced Express Check-Out service in response to customer frustration at waiting in long checkout lines. A guest's credit card receipt and hotel bill is left under his or her room door the morning of his or her scheduled departure. After checking the accuracy of the bill the guest simply leaves his or her room key in the room or in one of the key drop boxes at the front desk before leaving the hotel. Marriott's Express Check-Out allows the hotel to engage in:

Every month the pest exterminator does a monthly spraying at Mike Wade's house. Every month Wade gripes that he is being ripped off by the exterminating company and how he's going to find a new one. But he never does change service providers due to:

As a result of relationship marketing, customers experience specific relational benefits. These include:

Describe the level 4 retention strategy that builds a relationship bond that is the most difficult to imitate.

The _____ of a customer is the increased value or profit that accrues for each additional customer who remains loyal to a company rather than defecting to the competition.

Moonlight Catering has increased the deposit it requires before agreeing to cater an event to $300. This amount is nonrefundable and must be paid when Moonlight Catering is hired for the job. This increase in deposit will help Moonlight Catering achieve its goal of:

Following the acquaintance relationship in the evolution of customer relationships is the customers as _____ stage.

Often, _____ are created by providing customized services to the client that are technology based and make the customer more productive.

In which evolutionary stage of customer relationships is customer retention fostered by a service provider consistently provides customers with quality goods and services as well as good value over time?

The ability to segment customers narrowly based on profitability implications also raises questions of privacy for customers.

What are the three of benefits firms enjoy through relationship marketing?

Aramark is a food service company that supplies meals to more than 200,000 hospital patients daily. To improve its service, it created a database that tracks patient preferences individually by hospitals, regionally and nationally. The accumulated database is used to provide better menus. Aramark's kitchen staff deliver the food and are referred to as hosts. All hosts have a minimum of 40 hours of training to teach them how to be courteous, efficient and quick. These trained hosts deliver customized meals from carts preloaded according to room number. According to patient surveys, Aramark has boosted patient satisfaction by almost 10 percent by providing customized meals. Aramark is using _____ in its customer retention strategy.

Which of the following is one of the ways an organization benefits from maintaining and developing a loyal customer base?

For the organization, relationship marketing increases customer purchases, lowers costs and creates free word-of-mouth advertising.

With relationship marketing, customers receive the specific inherent benefits of receiving service value and nothing more.

Jade Taylor has run an advertising agency long enough to understand that the customer is not always right. He is interested in identifying his profitable customers. Define the four profitability tiers that might help Jade to analyze his customer base?

Retention strategies built around customization bonds:

Why is the 80/20 rule significant to a service provider that is trying to improve its profitability?

How do service providers use the profitability tier?