Measurement of cross selling performance from customer relationship perspective

Customer loyalty and company's profit marjins are decreasing due to increased competition and use of internet. Under these circumstances companies need to differentiate themselves from their competitors in order to incerase their profits. Considering that there is not much difference at product's functionnel specifications, only solution becomes service differenciation. In order to do that, companies need to be customer oriented which means making all decisions, creating products and services based on customers needs and desires. Customer is defined as the person who has requirements and whose requirements to be met are important in terms of both the enterprise and the customer. Each has different needs, desires and expectations and there are important differences between their profitability. These different needs can be met by personalizing marketing activities. Customer orientation and customer relationship management are on the basis that these customers are major assets to be managed by the company. Before the understanding of customer relationships, the process of marketing involved the transactions including of the sale of the product to the customer. However, with a new perspective brought into the marketing, the scope has been enlarged and it has been turned into a process based on a reciprocal relationship with the customer. The objective of marketing based on a one-time sale in the salesfocused marketing has given a way to creating a continuous customer relationship. Customers are also regarded as the company's assets according to point of view of the customer relationships. Just like other assets, the contribution of the customers to the company is also valuable. This evaluation is based on the long term profitability. The objective of developing long term relationships with the customers also creates the basis of customer-orientation. Customer relationship management is an institutional approach aiming at the understanding of customer behaviour in the best way and effecting the customer behaviour in order to increase customer loyality and customer profitability as well as customer acquisition and protection. If we make a more detailed description; it is all activities containing of turning the customers who are not purchase all the time into loyal customers in order that they purchase again by offering service or product that anticipates or exceeds their needs. In fact, history of customer services and relationship management depends on getting the relationship again in the periods, when there were commerce as well as sincerity established between merchants and customers on a small scale before. Definition of CRM term includes instinctively the most important point in this approach: Management of Relationship with Customers- key word here is the relationship. Many Companies claim that they establish a good relationship with their customers but the only thing established is only the connectivity. Established connection is a communication on the transaction level including service and product Some companies benefit from cross-sell ratio, when measuring the crossselling. It is a division of number of products sold to the number of customer; in short it is the number of product per customer. However, sometimes when taking number of product in this calculation, consideration of only the products, which increase profitability and continuousness of relation or when taking number of customer, consideration only the household not the customer may be more appropriate. Most of the researches approach cross-selling from the perspective of data based marketing. Besides other sectors, at finance many research were conducted about choosing right customer for cross-selling. Some researches, approach crossselling from the customer perspective and investigate factors that effects customers cross-buying behaviors. This research aims to examine direct antecedents of employees cross-selling performance and by focusing on banking sector. In this context factors (role clarity, motivation and self-efficiacy) that directly effect cross-selling performance were taken into considiration. Role clarity can be defined as employees having a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities. Self-efficiacy is the self judgement of how well they can fulfill required actions. Motivation is the amount of effort to fulfill their responsibilities for the job. When performance is being measured, evaluation is required to be made by benefiting from both financial and non-financial methods. Although Using disputes from time to time a subjective approach of the person, who makes assessment when using non-financial methods, achievement of the company, they require using both assessments. When performance is assessed, efficiency and effectiveness, which are two concept of productivity, are used often. The effectiveness is a result-oriented and is related whether the organization reaches the objectives or not. Effectiveness is related to the use of economic resources and costs. Because direct contribution of marketing activities to the company's performance cannot be determined, in some of enterprises, marketing in Company may be sometimes ignored. There are three main problems in measuring of performance and efficiency of marketing. First, effect of marketing activities can be seen in a very long-term. Second this situation is the difficulty of assessment leaving from the other activities carried out within company of marketing activities. In addition to these, it is inaccuracy of measuring on the basis of only the financial methods of marketing performance. When measuring, to make assessment by benefiting from both financial and non-financial methods is the healthy one. Because there is an effect specifies attitudes to the firm in consciousness of the customers and there is an effect, in which contribution of marketing activities cannot be seen directly. Despite all the obstacles in measuring marketing performance, there are highly important benefits for companies. In the Companies, which can measure the performance of marketing, the role of the marketing in reaching the company's strategic objectives can be seen. In addition, as a result of performance measurement, as a result of feedbacks taken, marketing decisions are also improved as well as intercorporate learning and marketing performance and activities, whose result can be measured, are assessed and applied. In addition to direct antecedents, managerial factors (incentives and management commitment) that have a effect on direct antecedents were included. Hereby, it was hoped to contribute to cross-selling literature and give a perspective to managers to take better actions in order to increase cross-selling performance of employees. Additionally demographic factors that effect cross-selling performance were examined. Datas were obtained through customer representatives working at banks via surveys and analyses were conducted to find factors that have a effect on cross-selling performance. Research aimed to reach as many participants as possible thus both medium and large sized deposit banks were chosen Those banks would have more similar properties such as product diversification, number of employees and branches. The reason for choosing deposit banks is they are seperated from others as products served, number of customer and asset size. Surveys were sent to customer representatives as they have a direct contact with customers and they are the ones who perform cross-selling. In order to increase sample size representatives were reached and asked to direct survey to other representatives. Research consists of 7 sections and 35 questions, following to scaled questions demographic questions were asked. In order to measure variables 1-5 likert scale was used as 1= strongly disagree, 2= disagree, 3= undecided, 4= agree 5= strongly agree. Surveys were sent via e-mail and also applied to representatives by visiting branches of banks. A cover letter was added to the beginning of the survey that can be found at annex. Surveys were sent to 13 banks and 135 of them were answered. 120 of 135 surveys were accepted to be usefull for the research. The thesis is discussed in three sections. In first section information about customer relationship management were given. At the following section information about cross-selling performance was given. Finally research methodology, analyses and findings were presented. Cronbach Alpha test measures reliability of the variables. The relationship between socio-demographic features and performance is determined by using T-test and Anova test. Correlation and Regression Analyses used to determine relationship between performance and variables. %51,7 of participants were male and %48,3 were women. %81,7 of them were graduated and under graduated , %18,3 were post graduated. %14,2 of participants had a experience at that bank less than 1 year, %36,7 had 1-3 years, %35,0 of them had 4-6 years, %14,2 of them had more than 10 years experience. Also as total experience %27 had 1-3 years, %32,5 had 4-6 years, %25,0 of them had 7-9 years, %15,0 of them had more than 10 years experience. As the result of research positive and meaningfull relationship was found between role clarity and motivation. However, there appears to be no meaningful relationship between incentives and self-efficacy. This unexpected outcome could be because of another factor which has more effect on self-efficacy than incentives or a result of limitted feedback to the research. A positive and meaningfull relationship was found between management commitment and self-efficacy, role clarity and motivation. Additionally, a positive and meaningfull relationship was found between performance and role clarity, motivation and self-efficacy as expected. A positive and meaningfull relationship was found between experience and performance. Performance is increased as experience increases. However there appears to be no meaningful relationship between performance and gender, education. To increase cross-selling performance less experinced employees could be motivated, expectancies from them could be clarified and necessary support could be gives in order to make them feel more competent. Key words: 1) Customer Relationship Management 2) Cross-selling 3) Performance