A Comprehensive Model for Customer Knowledge Management Mechanisms

In order to implement customer knowledge management concepts, companies need to deploy several mechanisms through the development and integration of currently available ways. Although customer knowledge management has been discussed in various circles, fewer studies have tried to discover a comprehensive set of customer knowledge management mechanisms. This chapter proposes a comprehensive taxonomic model that acts as a reference in the area of customer knowledge management. By using this model, companies can manage their customer knowledge in e-commerce or non e-commerce domes. The proposed model is based on blended methodology and contains a vast look at the three different dimensions of customer knowledge through additional details as well as introducing the comprehensive set of “technological” and “non-technological” mechanisms in accordance with each identified types of customer knowledge.

The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Knowledge-Enabled Customer Delight

The research found a relationship between emotional intelligence, knowledge management, and customer satisfaction. National and corporate culture influenced such relationship. The findings of this research therefore add a new dimension (namely, national and corporate culture in the Gulf Region) to the concepts of emotional intelligence, knowledge management, and customer satisfaction.

Effective Tools for Customer Knowledge Management

Customer knowledge management (CKM) is becoming vital for organizations’ operative and innovative performance. Currently, organizations are transforming their business strategies from mass production to mass customization and customer focused strategies to respond to business pressures and achieve a competitive advantage. Customer knowledge enables organizations to develop effective business strategies and achieve a competitive advantage. The capability of organizational knowledge management is assessed by incorporating tools that support knowledge management. Based on the experience of customer service managers’ perspective in successful CKM organizations, this chapter discusses effective tools for customer knowledge management that add value to organizations. Specifically, the chapter examines the most effective IT tools and non-IT tools (organizational mechanisms) that support the acquisition, storage, transfer, and application of customer knowledge. The chapter also examines the impacts of CKM tools on organizations.

Integrating Customer Relationship Management, Performance Management, and Knowledge Management through Balanced Scorecard

This chapter is primarily based on literature review or secondary research and analysis. The objective of this study is to extend and amalgamate the three major business management concepts: CRM, PM, and KM.

The Relevance of Customers as a Source of Knowledge in IT Firms

The overall aim and contribution of this chapter is to identify the main sources of knowledge generation in IT-related SMEs and the organizational elements that support this process. Knowledge generation occurs through external knowledge acquisition and internal knowledge creation. The latter process is facilitated by personal motivation and the learning opportunities it offers to the organization’s employees, who play a key role as initiative and suggestion carriers. In order to evaluate the phenomenon under study, which the literature review reflects as an incipient stage, two-step exploratory research was conducted. In the first stage, eight interviews were conducted in four firms. The objective of the second phase was to validate some of the insight from the first stage, so a questionnaire designed for the research purpose was administered. The results show that knowledge in SMEs in the IT sector is generated mainly by employee self-learning, meetings and customers as an external source. These activities are strongly supported by the employees’ opportunity to learn and by organizational culture.

The Importance of Collaboration in Knowledge Management in Public Services

The methodology was based on qualitative data gathered from three case studies and collected from semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted in the three municipalities. These, in turn, were selected from the participants in the Simplex program. This chapter highlights the role of national programs in the transfer of knowledge to the local municipalities as well as its importance in the development of their knowledge absorption capabilities.

Perceived Risks of Customer Knowledge Management

Customer knowledge management (CKM) has become an important topic for both academicians and practitioners in recent years as customer knowledge is vital for improving customer service and enabling the company to make appropriate strategic business decisions. CKM applications, some of which may be accessible online, support the exchange of customer knowledge. However, embedding CKM applications that customers may access within a company’s website may actually be an obstacle to the increase of e-commerce as it could cause an increase in consumers’ risk perceptions about that website, and in turn, a backward step in customer’s purchase intentions through that site. The objective of this chapter is to analyze the differences that might exist in CKM tools when they are implemented in a website and compare the results in two different moments of time 2005 and 2010. The results obtained from this research will be useful for managers to analyze which CKM initiatives are more advisable to obtain and manage customer knowledge management in the future.

A Knowledge Management Approach to Marketing and the Advent of Customer Knowledge Management

This chapter is intended to give an overview of knowledge management (KM), and to explore its extension to the marketing discipline. It is basically aimed to set the stage for the conceptualisation of knowledge-based complaint management rather than to provide a thorough and exhaustive literature review of the KM theory per se. Therefore the contribution of the chapter in hand lies in the fact that it integrates the concept of customer knowledge in the field of complaint management.

An Enterprise Model for Customer-Centric Knowledge Management and Knowledge-Oriented Customer Relationship Management

Knowledge management and customer relationship management are two key ingredients for value creation in the new economy. The merging of these business strategies has created two enterprise perspectives, customer-centric knowledge management (CCKM) and knowledge-oriented customer relationship management (KCRM). CCKM concerns the processes of managing customer knowledge, whereas KCRM concerns the application of knowledge to enhance CRM processes. Enterprise modeling provides a compositional framework for requirement specifications of interrelated components of an enterprise. This chapter presents an enterprise model for CCKM and KCRM that provides an integrated framework for customer knowledge and operational assets, spanning the different levels of an enterprise and across the various dimensions of the CRM ecosystem.

Unarmed Prophets Have Come to Grief

The chapter also examines the literature on the managerial conception of trust in organizations. It shows that management is more concerned with developing structured trust systems to facilitate command and control and is less concerned with individuals working towards developing trustworthy relationships with others for their own benefit and ultimately for the success of their organization.