Automating Customer Relationship Management System As Value Indicator In Service Delivery In Water And Sanitation Companies In Western Kenya

Heightened competition in the business environment with competitors seeking for market share and the ever changing customer behaviour and market dynamics coupled with rapid innovations in technology calls for strategies to help businesses guard their existing clientele from losing them to the competition. Automation of customer relationship management system in businesses is a key strategy of dealing with this challenge. There still exist service gaps in the water service industry such as mechanical billing process that mainly dependent on the meter reading officers who manually establish the actual reading of number of units consumed by the customer. Human errors arising from mechanical processes take long to be rectified if noticed and leads to customer dissatisfaction and finally loss of revenue by the company due to disconnections and inactive accounts. The purpose of this study was to investigate automating of Customer Relationship Management System as a value indicator in customer service delivery in water and sanitation industry in Western Kenya. The study was guided by Innovation Diffusion Theory and Organizational Theory. Data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Software version 24. The study adopted descriptive survey research design with a target population of 32,392 (thirty two thousand three hundred and ninety two) broken into: 265 (two hundred and sixty five) employees and 32,127 (thirty two thousand one hundred and twenty seven) external customers from which a sample size of 246 respondents was achieved. Study results were presented in the form of frequency distribution tables, graphs and pie charts that facilitated description and explanation of the study findings. Results of the study showed that automating of Customer Relationship Management System b= 0.755, t = 15.639, p=0.000 <0.05), had a strong positive and significant association with customer service delivery. It was therefore concluded that when automation of customer relationship management system services like SMS short code for giving alerts and acknowledgement of receipt of payment to customers, real time information sharing, prompt customer complaint handling procedure and digital selfservice menus are incorporated well and implemented in NZOWASCO then the service delivery would drastically improve. The study recommends full automation of CRMS at NZOWASCO systems in order to improve customer satisfaction and profitability.