Documentation and continuous development of processes for customer management: Implications for profitable growth

This article examines how the systematic documentation and continuous development of customer management (CM) processes to be utilized by a firm’s customer-facing personnel, contribute to the firm’s profitable (sales) growth. The examination is based on management/organization theory on process management, as applied to CM processes. Testing their hypotheses with survey data concerning the customer acquisition and retention processes of a set of firms, the authors find that explicit process documentation contributes to profitable growth, in as much as it facilitates the daily work of the customer-facing personnel (especially sales and marketing people). In contrast, the direct effect of process documentation on profitable growth is found to be non-existent – suggesting that if the documented CM processes do not truly facilitate the daily work of customer-facing personnel, the process documentation may be counterproductive. The authors also find that continuous efforts to develop the CM processes have positive influence on profitable growth – as does sales personnel’s and market-analysis personnel’s participation in the process development. In conditions of high turbulence in the market environment, the continuous development of CM processes becomes even more important.

► We investigate the effects of firm-level customer management (CM) processes. ► In an empirical study, we analyze the CM processes of b-to-b service firms. ► Explicit CM process documentation can contribute to profitable sales growth. ► To do so, it needs to facilitate the daily work of the customer-facing personnel. ► In high market turbulence, continuous efforts to develop CM processes are important.