A Study On Methods Of Customer Recognition And Support Platform For Customer Services

In the age of economic globalization, enterprises face more and more drastic competitions. It is very imminent for enterprises to implement Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and draw support from customer services to strengthen competitiveness of enterprises and products. Manufacturing-Distribution Enterprise (MDE) is a specific kind of enterprise. The circumstances of MDEs'marketing and service are very complex, and have a lot of particularites and difficulties, so there are many unresolved problems both academical and practical that deserve to be studied. Based on theories and methods of CRM, Data Mining, Operational Research, Information Analysis, and Platform Method etc., by taking MDEs as the subject to be investigated, this thesis studies systematically and deeply on issues of customer recognition methods and support platform for customer services.First, characteristics and taxonomy of customer services in MDEs are analyzed. By using service blue print, all sorts of customer services of MDEs are depicted. Framework model for customer service of MDEs is proposed.Second, actions and values of enterprises and customers in customer recognition are analyzed. Different models of customer recognition are studied. Categories and content of customer information and customer value are analyzed. By analyzing peculiarities and particularities of customer recognition in MDEs, a customer funnel model which is segmentation of customers according to their status of relationship and behaviors is proposed. Based on the customer funnel model, methods that follow different models of customer recognition are proposed. Then the two kinds of methods: customer selection and customer targeting are studied deeply.Two aspects of customer selection i.e. evaluation of continuous customer value variable and determinant of discrete customer class variable are studied. The phenomenon of 20/80 in some of MDEs is not prominent, so dimensions and their measurement of evaluating customer value, methods of describing and defining key account in MDEs are proposed. The processes of determining class of customer which are based on customer funnel model are proposed. The problem of customer information shortage in MDEs is analyzed. The processes of determining class of customer under conditions of customer information shortage are studied. The method of optimizing acquisition of customer information and allocation of customer services are studied to handle shortage of customer information. The static models and dynamic models of customer targeting are analyzed. Factors and their relations of customer targeting models are studied. By analyzing characteristics of the two kinds of models, considering their advantages, shortcomings and complementation, the probability of combinatorial applying them is analyzed. The combined model for customer targeting is proposed. Through application to real data, the combined model show better performance in comparison with the single dynamic model. The combined model for targeting contributes to the literature of customer targeting.New customer services development and design is another important part of the framework of customer service. Characteristics of customer services innovation are analyzed. The processes of customer services innovation are studies. The platform method which made great success in products innovation is applied to innovation and implementation of customer service in MDEs. The principles of application are proposed. The customer service platform is constructed, and its structure and functions are studied.Customer service support system is the kernel and main center of customer service platform. All the functions like customer recognition, innovation and design of customer service are operated with the support of customer service support system. By assumptions and simplification of the real circumstance of MDEs, business flows and system demands are analyzed. Framework, functional model, and data model of the prototype system are designed. The prototype system is realized under the framework of B/S. Finally, an applying example is given.