The mobile telecommunication sector in India is witnessing significant developments in the last few years. Due to intense competition the service providers are forced to cut tariffs and shift their focus from merely providing voice call services to various data services. The market is also getting saturated with decrease in net subscriber addition resulting in considerable reduction in the profit margins of the service providers. The high cost of acquiring new customers and the challenge of retaining a loyal customer base have urged telecom operators to be more customer–centric and provide the best service quality to customers. This present study is a descriptive and exploratory research that focuses on describing the profile of mobile telecom customers and identifying the CRM dimensions in mobile telecom sector. A sample of 766 respondents of five service providers was taken from five districts of Northern and Central Kerala. This study attempts to assess the effectiveness of the mobile service providers in managing customer relationship. Four dimensions of CRM like Key customer focus, Technology, Business process and Knowledge management have identified in this study and the service quality of five major telecom service providers are also evaluated in terms of reliability, responsiveness, assurance and network quality. The study also analyses the influence of CRM practices of the service providers on customer loyalty. The research instrument was constructed using Likert scaling technique and the reliability and validity of the instrument were tested using Exploratory Factor Analysis. The study provides useful information regarding the CRM practices in telecom sector and opens up new avenues for future research.
