Company Introduction

Carillion Alawi LLC is a company incorporated in Oman. The company ownership type is private. It provides civil, electromechanical and plumbing contracting for buildings, infrastructure, and marine projects. It also carries out restoration work. Through main subsidiaries provide real estate property and facilities management. The company has had a name in the construction industry. The company is a service providing company. The customers and consultants are the main stakeholders of the company. The company’s main areas of concern are quality management and customer relationship management (Carillion Alawi, 2010).

 

Main issues at Carillion Alawi LLC

As we have discussed company takes various construction, plumbing, infrastructure, and marine projects from the customers. The business of a company is wholly dependent on customer requirements. Each customer is considered a separate project. Currently, the main area of concern for the company is customer or consultant relationship management. The company is not meeting customer specifications, deadlines are not usually met. The reason for all this mismanagement is the communication gap between the company and the customer.

The failure faced by the company is due to the lack of Public Relationship Manager Interest in customer relationship management. In service organizations, like Carillion Alawi LLC the customer is considered “GOD”. The reason is that the existence of the company is wholly dependent on the revenue generated from customers. The quality of the service provided to the client is the other main challenge. The quality is highly dependent on the skills, knowledge, and expertise of the employees that are directly in contact with the customer.

The factors influencing the cause of the major issue

The mismanagement of customer and consultant relationships may be due to a lack of proper communication channels between them. The service nature of business is highly dependent on targeting the right customer needs. The research department should be there, to survey the current customer requirements (Bryman & Bell, 2015). So that company should adapt itself to cope with any change. This is one of the proactive techniques. The customer is attracted by specific marketing techniques (Hill & Alexander, 2017). This is only possible by assessing the customer’s needs.

The communications skills of the customer service department are of high importance. They should be very cooperative, friendly, and meet all customer queries immediately (Bellingkrodt & Wallenburg, 2015). Likewise, the main objectives of the public relations manager or any representative dealing directly with clients, taking customer orders, and noticing all its requirements of budget, quality, and deadline are to meet its requirements. The main issue for loss in customer goodwill is due to the lack of effective communication skills by the public relations department or manager. The competition is very high in the market, and the company can lose its existing market if this risk is not properly managed by the company. A detailed appraisal should be done of the human resource department, and why they have hired such an un-effective Public Relationship Manager at the most critically important position (Mitrega & Pfajfar, 2015).

Why has any training, performance management, or appraisals not been carried out before? Why bad things are not reported timely. There seems to be a lack of effective reporting mechanisms in the organization. The main authoritative body above the Public relationship manager, why they haven’t taken reports on the performance of managers below? The company’s major clients are usually immigrant and foreign consumers in Oman. There should be a separate public relations department with skilled, trained employees with excellent convincing power and communication skills.

This is important because in order to have a strong communication channel it is important to understand the priorities and the approach of the client. As there are many different clients with different ethnic cultures and backgrounds it should be focused on understanding them. If the person on the front end is capable of convincing the client that the company is there to help him in achieving the goals he is trying to achieve it would be much simpler and easier to run the company. It will definitely expand the business of the company and will make the company earn more profits (Quirke, 2017).

Recommended Techniques:

The Customer Relationship Management techniques should be used. The customer relationship management software is also there, that is designed to meet the customized needs of the user. This is a business strategy, with the aim to understand, forecast, and manage the current and potential requirements of the customers. This is an integrated approach for all areas that have a direct or indirect link with the customer. The areas such as sales, customer service, and field, support should be integrated with the support of people, processes, and technology. This approach is necessary for the retention of customers for a long time. The company can implement CRM with all its applications to resolve this issue.

 

Value Analysis

The main purpose of CRM is to create value for the customer. This can be done by value–analysis techniques. This works by eliminating all non-value-adding activities, processes, and people, retaining only value-providing activities, processes, and people. So, the Human Resource manager, after analyzing the continuous bad performance of the public relationship manager, should make procedures to fire him from the company (Mostafa & Gould-Williams, 2014). When customers value the services of the company, they will never switch to other construction companies.

Gain Competitive Advantage

Customer relationship management can enables a company to gain a competitive .advantage over other competitors. That provides similar services. According to Porter’s five forces model, there are many forces in the market that can prevent you to gain a competitive advantage (Yunna & Yisheng, 2014). This method can tell us the profitability of our strategy. The company is dealing with foreign clients means that the local market space is already saturated. The competitive rivalry element of this force is relevant here. The company if cannot properly handle its mismanagement can face severe competition, low customer switching costs, and loss of customer loyalty (Kandampully, et al., 2015).

Long-term Relations as Important Assets

Customer relationship management can be used to build long-term satisfactory relationships with the customers. The challenge today is to build and retain your customer base. The major customers have great bargaining power over the company (Fabbri & Klapper, 2016). So the organization must become customer-focused. The organization should be prepared to adapt itself to the changing customer requirements. Market research should be done to assess customer needs.

Not All Customers Are Important

Customer relationship management focuses only on strategically important customers. Most of the company’s clients are foreigners. So the risk of meeting their specific requirements is high. Due to changes in culture, lifestyle and income. The company should provide value for customer money (Hussain, et al., 2015). The major clients should be on priority, then other ones. Focusing on small customers may waste time and cost.

Total Quality Management

The suggested technique to be used by the company is total quality management. Its objectives are to meet meeting quality expectations of the customers. The integrated organizational activities should be designed to improve the quality of processes at every business level. The service should meet the fitness needs of the customers. The evaluation of the price paid by the customer and the usefulness of services they receive should be done.

Customer satisfaction can be gained by the company by providing support or after-sales services (Pan & Nguyen, 2015). Certain parameters should be designed to meet the target needs of the users. The customers have different construction needs. Its layout, infrastructure, and the requirement of certain materials, glass or stone to be used in construction. The company should make sure of the availability of all resources to meet customer needs.

Service organizations like Carillion Alawi LLC, produce intangible products that must be experienced. The quality is determined by perception factors like courtesy, staff friendly attitude, readiness in resolving problems, reduced wait time, delivery of the project on time, atmosphere, and consistency in providing better quality service. These all factors are performance measures for service organizations.

 

The impact of the Problem on various areas

People

The company is severely affected by the risk of losing customers due to an ineffective performance by the public relations manager. The people of the company will also be affected by the company’s existence and may be at risk if it will lose all its customers. The human resource manager should critically assess the performance, and motivational factors for public relations manager bad performance (Van Dooren, et al., 2015). There is a need for effective leadership skills in the company, and a proper channel for hiring, performance evaluation, for assessing the training and continual professional development needs of all managers of the company. Career management plans and other learning opportunities should be there to raise creativity and innovation among the managers. The interest of the employees should collaborate with the company’s interest known as goal congruence. The team approach should be used to solve various problems (Dale, 2015).

Financial Aspect

By implementing Customer relationship management techniques and software. The overall cost of the company will rise, obviously in short term. But in long term, the benefits that may outflow from it may be of great advantage. Effective implementation requires acceptance from employees, which is more important than the cost of implementation. The additional staff may also be hired to take control of Total Quality Management strategies. The cost and benefit analysis shows the current cost of implementing this new system is not more than the benefit received from its operation in the long term (Boardman, et al., 2017).

Marketing

The loss of customers may be due to poor communication of the staff directly in contact with the customer (Grégoire, et al., 2015). Thus, the marketing cost may be raised when the issue is still there and it is not yet been resolved. The cost of marketing without satisfying customers is of no use. After effective mitigation of the problem, the marketing strategies should be designed to meet the specific customer needs. For effective marketing, benchmarking techniques should be followed (Wettstein & Suggs, 2016). This is possible by studying the best construction company’s quality of service. The marketing strategy should incorporate the quality factor, and ease of use, such as instructions, maintenance, and safety. The advertisement of post-sale services or other seasonal offerings or packages may attract large customers.

Strategy

The change can be effectively achieved if it is incorporated at the strategic business level. The implementation of a Customer relationship management system and software can only be done by incorporating it into the business-level strategy. The implementation objectives are assigned to various organizational managers, to take the role of a transformational leader, and transform the company to meet the needs of the customers. The macroeconomic environment of the company consists of various factors, political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal. This is the PESTEL model for assessing the company’s external environment before designing a customer retention strategy (Yuan & Wang, 2016).

• Political factor: This includes any governmental action or law for protecting the customer’s value for money. Any customer of political influence can damage the image of the company if, a communication channel for proper negotiation is not been established.
• Economic factor: The Total quality management and customer retention strategy should be cost-effective. The initial cost of its implementation will be high. The market forces of the high bargaining power of customers should be considered. The exchange rates or inflations are of great importance as the company is dealing wholly with foreign customers. Any regulation on imports and export can affect the company. The high prices of materials to the company due to low economic conditions and high inflation can adversely affect the implementation of any change in the business.
• Social factor: The customer’s domestic income, expenses, lifestyle, and quality of life expectations can be judged by their class and social demographics. The marketing strategies should be designed that is customer-focused. A different strategy for adult, and young customers.
• Technological factor: Technology is evolving very fast. The software is there for managing customers Thus cost and benefit analysis should be done for its effective implementation.
• Environmental factors: The impact of customer retention strategy may or may not have any direct impact on the environment. But the construction business of the company may damage the natural resources used in the construction.
• Legal factors: Any laws or regulations should be considered in the effective implementation of the business-level strategy. The regulation is related to customer or consumer protection.

Operations Management

The risk of loss of existing customers can impact the various operations of the company (Reason, 2016). The procurement of the material and other services may be done by the supplier in cash or on credit. But if the customer is not satisfied with the requirements it has specified. This may result in the cancelation of any contract between the company and the customer. The customer can sue the company. The company has to bear all the loss of not constructing according to the consumer requirements. This will result in the bad management of company relations with its suppliers and vendors.

 

Project management

The client projects for construction are the specific job assignment. Thus, all the strategies for effective project management should be used here. The time, cost, and delivery are the main elements of each project (Harrison & Lock, 2017). Thus, a spate project team should be assigned to meet the customer order or to implement any new system within the organization. The project manager has the responsibility to notify all the workings and procedures to start a project is complete or not. This leader will control a project team, which has to deliver the project to exact customer requirements on the due date.

Conclusion

Carillion Alawi LLC is the leading construction company in Oman. It is facing the problem of Customer Retention. The communication of a Public relationship manager is not effective to make offers to the customers according to their requirements. The communication gap has caused various disasters as the company has to bear the heavy costs, but it was not of customer needs and wants. The company has been implementing a customer relationship management system and software to need customer requirements.

If you need similar but plagiarism-free “customer relationship management”, then feel free to contact us!