The Link between Internal Marketing and Customer Relationship Management : A Case Study of one Nordea Call Center in Sweden

Abstract: Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to increase the understanding of the link between internal marketing and customer relationship management by conducting a case study of one Nordea call center. Background: Keeping existing customers is less expensive than acquiring new ones. Nowadays, up to sixty percent of marketing budgets are being dedicated towards retaining customers. So forth customer relationship manage-ment is slowly beginning to penetrate the banking industry as sustaina-ble relationships between organizations and their customers are becom-ing more evident. Theory: The case study is based on an internal marketing model by Bansal et al. (2001) which shows how managers can influence the job satisfaction of their employees through six dimensions. Based on the previously men-tioned model, customer relationship management theory and the service marketing triangle by Kotler et al. (2002), the researchers present their our own model, at the end of the theoretical section, which seeks to en-hance the understanding of the link between internal marketing and cus-tomer relationship management. Method: Since there was lacking theoretical evidence in how to link internal marketing to customer relationship management, the study was of exploratory nature. Qualitative data was collected by conducting two fo-cus groups (independently of each other) at one Nordea call center. The first focus group was composed of five managers and the second focus group of three frontline employees. Conclusion: Nordea has been used as an example to illustrate that customer relation-ship management, such as using sales opportunities to strengthen rela-tionships with customers, is dependent on managers‟ ability to “sell” the organization‟s customer relationship management ideas to its front-line employees. Moreover managers have the ability through the six dimensions of internal marketing to affect job satisfaction which in turn will determine how frontline employees make use of the sales opportu-nities provided by Nordea‟s content management system (CMS).