شناسایی مسائل در مدیریت ارتباط با مشتری در مرک - مدکو

This paper reports the results of a study designed in close collaboration with Merck-Medco to identify key barriers to the success of their customer relationship management. To identify the key factors, we first used focus groups of principle users of the system to brainstorm and generate a list of scenarios and issues. A team of managers, supervisors and customer service representatives then consolidated this list. A 54-item survey was derived from the list and used to collect 1460 responses from the user groups within the company. Data were equally divided into two sets. Exploratory factor analysis was used with the first data set to identify principal factors that explained the majority of problem areas. Structural equation modeling was used with the second data set to further examine and confirm the initial list of factors. The study results suggest a seven-factor 21-item model describing barriers to the success of customer relationship management in terms of ‘standard operating procedure compliance,’ ‘accountability and ownership,’ ‘callback information content,’ ‘customer contact process,’ ‘ billing issues,’ ‘dispensing and replacement process,’ and ‘queuing procedure’. These factors explained the majority of customer relationship problems in the company. These measures can be used by the company to plan and monitor remedial response. Evidence of reliability and construct validity is presented for the measurement models and decision-making implications are discussed.

There are great expectations for what CRM can accomplish in terms of customer profile, product information, rapid response, predicting customer needs, retaining customers, conducting market research, promoting sale, and reducing cost. However, despite considerable organizational and executive commitments these expectations have not always been met. The perception of a widening gap between the potential of customer relationship management (that is, what it can ideally achieve) and its actual accomplishments has increased the need for better understanding of the nature of the problem and for better measures of factors that influence outcomes. This research was designed to address the perceived gap that exists between the potential of customer representative management and what it actually accomplished in a large U.S. pharmaceutical company. Although this research is company specific, we believe that our findings have relevance to other CRM environments (similar to [20] and [32]). Merck-Medco is a wholly owned subsidiary of Merck and Co. Inc. that specializes in prescription benefit management. Merck focuses on discovering breakthrough medicines and subsequently manufacturing, marketing and selling them. Merck-Medco dispenses medications produced by over 60 manufacturers on behalf of its clients. Merck-Medco clients include major employers, government agencies, health management organizations, and insurance providers. The employees or members of these organizations are provided with a prescription drug benefit that Merck-Medco manages on behalf of its clients. Currently, Merck-Medco represents over 60 million Americans through its various clients and fills over 500 million prescriptions per year. In this paper, we report the results of a collaborative effort between academe and practice to improve customer relationship management at Merck-Medco. With a few exceptions such as BP and IBM [13] and [31], very few studies of this kind are reported in research journals. This study was designed to accomplish two objectives that together will help management develop strategies for increasing CRM success. The first objective was to identify primary factors that result in member dissatisfaction with customer relationship management, more specifically with the call center. The second objective was to produce a reliable and valid set of measures that can be used by the company and others to monitor employee training effectiveness and remedial plans. The methodology, sample, and procedures were decided with these objectives in mind. The subjects in this study were people who directly interacted with the system on a daily basis to make decisions and serve customers. Through close collaboration with the firm, we collected a large sample that represents over 75% of all user groups. The level of participation was influenced by the users' desire to improve the system and management involvement in the study. In the following section we will review the literature on CRM and clarify the construct. The literature review describes call center issues in a broader perspective of customer relationship management. Section 3 provides the background for Merck-Medco. Section 4 describes research methodology followed by Section 5 that describes data analysis and results. Discussion and conclusions are provided in 6 and 7, respectively.

This study identifies factors that affect the success of customer relationship management at a US pharmaceutical company, Merck-Medco. Through a close collaboration with the company, we generated a comprehensive list of potential issues, developed a survey, collected company wide data, and used multivariate methods to determine salient factors that caused problem in their CRM. Results of the exploratory factor analysis suggest seven factors (standard operating procedure compliance, accountability and ownership, callback information content, customer contact process, billing issues, dispensing and replacement process, and queuing procedure) that describe CRM issues at Merck-Medco. A confirmatory analysis with a separate sample validates the results of exploratory analysis and suggests opportunities to further refinements and improvements. These factors are summarized and discussed in organizational and technical contexts. More research is needed to better understand the interaction between the technical and organizational dimensions of technology application. This study used customer representatives as respondents. Future research should consider the use of actual customers for collecting data. This study also benefited from management involvement for data collection. Data collection using actual customers will eliminate that intervention and its possible influence.