Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of research is to explore the various factors/determinants/variables that influences customer loyalty. Based on the various factors/determinants/variables that influences customer loyalty the most common factors/determinants/variables – value, quality, customer service, customer experience and customer satisfaction are selected to establish relationship with customer loyalty and find out the influence these factors/determinants/variables have on customer loyalty in the context of Indian telecom industry. Once the relationship is established the research aims to build a model of customer loyalty for Indian telecom companies.
Design/ research methodology/approach – A non-probability purposive sampling technique was employed to conduct survey through in-person questionnaire distribution method among 300 customers of five telecom operators chosen based on the higher market share in Bangalore. A mono quantitative method was adopted to conduct this research.
Findings – Most of the respondents are not happy with their current telecom operator. The major reasons for those customers not being happy include poor service quality, poor customer service, poor customer experience, poor customer value and poor customer satisfaction. Among all these majority of the respondents replied that poor service quality is the most common reason for being unhappy with present telecom operator. Since the switching cost is zero, 71.38 % of the total participants said they would like to change their telecom operators. In fact, 81.52 % of the participants had already switched to other telecom operators in past one year. The respondents scored timely response as the most important determinant for customer service. Likewise, for quality service, knowledge of staffs about the products or services was scored the highest determinants. In customer value, polite, friendly and approachable were the most highly scored determinant. For
5
customer satisfaction, quality of service and value of customers were the most highly scored determinant. For customer experience, value of customers was scored as the highest determinant. The respondents said that better customer service leads to customer loyalty. The respondents also agreed that value, quality, customer service, customer experience and customer satisfaction are interconnected. All these determinants hugely influence customer loyalty. It is therefore all these factors should be included in building customer loyalty model for Indian telecom industry.
Originality/Value – The research adds to the previous research on the theory of customer loyalty in Indian telecom industry and proposes value, quality, customer service, customer experience, customer satisfaction and price as the most common and important determinants in building customer loyalty model for Indian telecom industry.
