Q.

1 Online Service Providers (Cleartrip and Travelocity)– Customer

Relationship Management Strategies

By- Anirvaan Dutta Gupta

Roll No 09927849

Introduction

For the purpose of identifying and articulating CRM strategies for two online service providers, I
have chosen – Cleartrip and Travelocity. The approach taken is to first define CRM in the
context of these two service providers, then individually identify and analyze the CRM
strategies that these two have implemented.

Customer Relationship Management in the context of online travel agents

Cleartrip and Travelocity both are in the business of providing online booking facilities for
travellers. The services provided range from booking flights, hotels and trains. In general,
important CRM objectives are
- Customer Retention
- Generate larger business from existing customers
- Acquire more customers through goodwill generated by existing customers

In the context of the online travel bookings service providers, the CRM objectives can be
achieved through
- Leveraging technology to present an easy to use interface to travellers.
- Deals for regular customers (loyalty points)
- Analytics for understanding customers
- Effective marketing communication

Hence an elaborate study on the use of above tools for an effective CRM strategy for the two
companies follows

Cleartrip.com

a. About cleartrip

Cleartrip is an Indian online travel company that allows online booking of airline tickets, hotels
and train tickets. The company's products include search and booking for domestic and
international flights, search and booking for over 5,500 domestic hotels and 109,000
international hotels, railway tickets, insurance services for travel and global destination guides.
'Small World' , Cleartrip's travel guide, showcases 3.2 million unique destinations around the
world, with helpful features such as maps, photos, local time and temperature, and flight and

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hotel information. Cleartrip.com also hosts a unique travel feature for both air and trains - the
air and train calendar, which displays fares between destinations for up to 3–6 months ahead.
(Source: Wikipedia).

b. CRM initiatives –

Since inception, Cleartrip has taken many initiatives to bolster its CRM strategies, some of these
initiatives are

1. Leveraging technology

Cleartrip has signed contract for their Sales force automation project with Veon Consulting
Private Limited, a leading commercial-open source consulting firm based out of Hyderabad.

The engagement aims at implementing one of the popular open source CRM solution as per the
custom requirements of Cleartrip. It is not only cost effective but also customized as per the
business requirements.

The open source CRM solutions provide their customers to totally enable their marketing and
customer facing departments and help automate the processes around the following business
requirements.

- Sales Force Automation

- Customer Support Team
- Call Centre Operations

Apart from providing rich custom features and ability to be heavily customized as per the
business requirements of the customer and the vertical. For basic requirements the product
and license fees is saved for small and medium enterprises, which make it a favorable choice for
these customers.

2. Leveraging Social Media

Cleartrip has leveraged social media for reaching out to its customers. The platforms that it uses
are

a. Cleartrip blog - http://blog.cleartrip.com/

It highlights and promotes all news items relating to cleartrip as well as promotes new features
available on cleartrip.

b. Twitter - http://twitter.com/cleartrip
c. Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/cleartripfanpage

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 3. Service Extensions free of cost

In order to acquire the loyalty of customers, Cleartrip offers service extensios free of cost. Some
of these service extensions are graphical comparisons for airfares, travel calendars, travel
guides etc. These service extensions are free of cost and are aimed at making the travelling
experience of a customer, right from choosing a destination to booking tickets as easy as
possible. Some of the initiatives that cleartrip has taken are

a. Small world - travel guide Small World is a comprehensive mash-up, with partnerships
with Yahoo, Flickr and Lonely Planet for content. Small World had first been launched by
Cleartrip in 2006, in partnership with Loney Planet guide. What Small World does very
well: it gives you instant access to comprehensive information, on over 3.2 million
unique places, according to Cleartrip. I was in Patna over the weekend, and a search for
Patna reveals the following: The temperature (tepid, at 42 degrees), currency
conversion, minimum Airfare from Delhi to Patna for the next 5 weeks, average room
rate in a 3 star hotel in the city, Photographs from Lonely Planet and Flickr, Hotels rates
and user rating, and interesting places to visit.
b. Mobile Cleartrip
c. SMS ticketing

Travelocity.com

a. About Travelocity.com

Travelocity is an online travel agency and wholly owned subsidiary of Sabre Holdings
Corporation,

According to Sabre Holdings, Travelocity is the sixth-largest travel agency in the United States
and the second-largest online travel agency. In addition to its primary US consumer site,
Travelocity operates a full-service business agency, Travelocity Business, and comparable
websites in Canada, Germany, France, the Scandinavian countries, Mexico, India and the
United Kingdom. Sister sites include lastminute.com in Europe and Zuji in Asia. (Source :
Wikipedia)

b. CRM Initiatives

The various CRM initiatives taken by Travelocity are

1. Leveraging Technology – Travelocity uses Software as a Service model by

Salesforce.com to engage with their marketing partners. According to a recent news
clipping

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"Our partner marketing group tripled in size over the last three years as we have significantly
grown our partner base. Before Salesforce, each of our team members was using spreadsheets
or various other methods to track partner data, so we had no way of knowing all the activities in
progress and how we could improve our efforts," said Markus Huber, director of partner
marketing at Travelocity. "It took us only three months to deploy Salesforce and now we have all
our critical business information right at our fingertips."

Travelocity launched its Travelocity Guarantee and Customer Bill of Rights last year to appeal to
consumers' desires for personalized service and offerings, is in the process of becoming even
more relevant by moving to an active data warehouse. Companies like Travelocity are
"activating" their warehouses by blending current and historical data from across the
enterprise, allowing them faster and comprehensive access to the information needed to solve
complex business problems. Travelocity's Teradata-powered warehouse, for example, will
enable the travel services company to gather actionable data in real time because it offers
complete data integration with shared views.

2. Social Media

Travelocity leverages social media to improve its reach to customers. The various platforms
used are

a. Blogs – Windowseat blog (http://www.windowseatblog.com/)

b. Facebook
c. Twitter

3. Loyalty Programs

Travelocity has launched a customer loyalty program, the first from an online travel site,
according to the company.

The program is called VIP and offers a dedicated customer service line, advance notice of sales
and special VIP-only promotions, airport shuttle and car rental discounts and everyday exclusive
discounts on hotels and vacation packages. In addition, VIP members will earn more Travelocity
Points on their purchases, including three points for every $1 spent on flight & hotel packages,
flights, hotels and last minute packages when they apply and are approved for the Travelocity
MasterCard.

Customers need five qualified bookings in a 12-month period to become a VIP. Anyone who
makes the qualified bookings automatically becomes a VIP with no sign-up or initiation fees
required. Since some reservations may count as two or three qualified bookings, it could take as
little as two transactions to become a VIP, according to Travelocity, Southlake, TX.

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Travelocity tested the program prior to launching and a recent survey of members showed that
the test group scored significantly higher than the control group in the "highly satisfied"
category.

Conclusion

Both Travelocity and Cleartrip have an active CRM strategy, however Travelocity innovations in
CRM usually exceeds those by Cleartrip. Initiatives like Loyalty programs are initiated by only
Travelocity .

Q.2 Offline Service Providers (Dominoes and McDonalds)– Service

Quality Dimensions

Introduction

Service quality is a concept that has evoked considerable interest and debate in the research
literature because of the difficulties in both defining it and measuring it with no overall
consensus emerging on either (Wisniewski, 2001). There are a number of different "definitions"
as to what is meant by service quality. One that is commonly used defines service quality as the
extent to which a service meets customers’ needs or expectations Service quality can thus be
defined as the difference between customer expectations of service and perceived service. If
expectations are greater than performance, then perceived quality is less than satisfactory and
hence customer dissatisfaction occurs. Always there exists an important question: why should
service quality be measured? Measurement allows for comparison before and after changes,
for the location of quality related problems and for the establishment of clear standards for
service delivery. Edvardsen states that, in their experience, the starting point in developing
quality in services is analysis and measurement.

However the difficulty with service quality is that it is still a subjective measure and quite
abstract in nature, hence the importance is on a quantitative assessment of the quality. For the
purpose of evaluation in this assignment I have used the SERVQUAL model.

About SERVQUAL model

SERVQUAL as the most often used approach for measuring service quality has been to compare
customers' expectations before a service encounter and their perceptions of the actual service
delivered. The SERVQUAL instrument has been the predominant method used to measure

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consumers’ perceptions of service quality. It has five generic dimensions or factors and are
stated as follows (van Iwaarden et al. , 2003):

(1) Tangibles - Physical facilities, equipment and appearance of personnel.

(2) Reliability - Ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately.
(3) Responsiveness - Willingness to help customers and provide prompt service.
(4) Assurance - (including competence, courtesy, credibility and security). Knowledge and
courtesy of employees and their ability to inspire trust and confidence.
(5) Empathy (including access, communication, understanding the customer). Caring and
individualized attention that the firm provides to its customers.

About Papa Johns

Papa John's Pizza is the third largest take-out and delivery pizza restaurant chain in the United
States, behind Pizza Hut and Domino's Pizza. It is based in Louisville, Kentucky. Papa John's
slogan is "Better Ingredients. Better Pizza."

Internationally, there are over 3,300 Papa John's establishments, including over 2,600 in the
U.S. and more than 500 in over 30 other countries

About McDonalds

McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving
more than 58 million customers daily.

A McDonald's restaurant is operated by either a franchisee, an affiliate, or the corporation

itself. The corporation's revenues come from the rent, royalties and fees paid by the
franchisees, as well as sales in company-operated restaurants. McDonald's revenues grew 27%
over the three years ending in 2007 to $22.8 billion, and 9% growth in operating income to $3.9
billion.

McDonald's primarily sells hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chicken products, french fries, breakfast
items, soft drinks, shakes, and desserts. In response to obesity trends in Western nations and in
the face of criticism over the healthiness of its products, the company has modified its menu to
include alternatives considered healthier such as salads, wraps and fruit.

DATA ANALYSIS

Type of Data: Primary data has been used through method of questionnaire
Sampling Method: Convenience sampling
Sample size: 110 respondents
Sampling Frame: Outlets located in Mumbai
Tools Used: SERVQUAL model followed by GAP analysis.

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RESULTS

SERVQUAL model for McDonalds

Gap Weighted
Dimension Expectations Perceptions scores Weightings Average
Tangibles 4.99 4.26 -1.4 0.17266436 -0.241730104
Reliability 6.91 4.36 -1.7 0.23910035 -0.406470588
Responsiveness 6.1 4.05 -1.69 0.21107266 -0.356712803
Assurance 5.6 4.58 -1.55 0.19377163 -0.300346021
Empathy 5.3 4.45 -1.52 0.183391 -0.278754325

Overall SERVQUAL GAP for McDonalds in -1.58

SERVQUAL model for PAPA JOHNS

Dimension Expectations Perceptions Gap scores Weightings Weighted Average

Tangibles 4.99 4.2 -0.79 0.17266436 -0.136404844

Reliability 6.91 4.1 -2.81 0.23910035 -0.671871972

Responsiveness 6.1 4.3 -1.8 0.21107266 -0.379930796

Assurance 5.6 3.9 -1.7 0.19377163 -0.329411765

Empathy 5.3 3.8 -1.5 0.183391 -0.275086505

Overall SERVQUAL GAP for PAPA JOHNS is -1.78

Conclusion

Based on the above SERVQUAL model analysis the GAP for Papa Johns is higher than
McDonalds, hence the service quality for McDonalds is higher overall than Papa Johns. However
the performance for Papa Johns is better in Tangibles section.

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