Improving customer satisfaction, layalty and retention through relationship marketing : the case of Botswana railways

Abstract

Relationship marketing reduces emphasis on the sales focus that organizations traditionally place on profitability, shifting towards a campaign that emphasizes customer relations and retention. The aim of this study is to determine how relationship marketing can be used to assist Botswana Railways to address issues pertaining to customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention, and at assessing how customers currently perceive the quality of service rendered to them. The extant literature emphasizes that trust is the main pillar of a relationship between customers and service providers. This relationship is nurtured though constant communication to manage expectations as well as perceptions, including therein some consideration for the seven (7) P's which are central to most service marketing concepts. Data for this study was collected by means of self-administered questionnaires which were completed by a broad spectrum of Botswana Railways customers. The questions were designed around a Likert scale technique, with the data then being processed using the Statistical Program for Social Sciences (SPSS). The findings of the study reveal that although a reasonable number of customers are relatively satisfied with the service-delivery aspects they get from Botswana Railways, there was little to no communication between their businesses and Botswana Railways, and that the various aspects that are integral to the realization of relationship marketing do not exist in the organization. This is supported by the fact that most of the customers interviewed have revealed that there is no system of communicating carriage policies and informing them about new products. These findings suggest that a number of initiatives must be introduced to enable the organization to move from transactional-based activities to relationship-based activities.