2. Yes, I do think customer relationships evolve over time.
In the business world, creating and fostering relationships is considered one of the most
important skill sets a worker can possess. Strong business relationships lead to greater financial
success, increased customer loyalty and improved brand image - aspects that are necessary for a
company to thrive in today’s business climate that we like to call, “The Relationship Era.”
Companies that flourish today succeed because they were built with relationships in mind.
However, over the years, we’ve seen that the ways relationships are developed and maintained
by companies have evolved and shifted. Now the goal of marketing is to create strong
relationships between a company and its customers. And the reason that one to one marketing
and user based segmentation are so valuable is that they help strengthen company’s relationships
with their customers. Over the years, we’ve seen that business priorities have evolved to become
more focused on customer relationships than ever before.
Good customers experiences help create an intense feeling of loyalty toward the company and its
products and services. There are several stages of loyalty as customer relationships develop over
time. The customer lifecycle is a term that describes the different steps a customer goes through
when they are considering, buying, using, and remaining loyal to a particular product or service.
So I want to share my experience with Grameenphone and the relationship life cycle stages i
went through.
Grameenphone, widely abbreviated as GP, is the leading telecommunications service provider in
Bangladesh, with more than 74 million subscribers and 46.3% subscriber market share. It is a
joint venture between Telenor and Grameen Telecom Corporation.
Stage 1: Awareness
I get to know about Grameenphone through an advertising in the TV. It was due to a promotional
ad in 2007 about internet services and its benefits. It really attracted me because at that time
getting a good internet service is a big thing with some extra offers. And during that time
2007/2008 Grameenphone was the first telecom company who was able to do coverage all over
the Bangladesh
Stage 2: Exploration
In the exploration stage, I get to learn more about the Grameenphone or its products. I visited
their website to learn more about its features and services. They frequently send us the user’s
message about their new offers. They always tried to convince people with their attractive offers.
They always promised the customers to give better network service always.
Stage 3: Familiarity
In this stage, I was already a customer of theirs and had done several transactions and I knew
Grameenphone’s policies, pricing, flexibility etc. I was really frequent to avail their offers and
services as I was a regular customer back then. And they used to offer frequent offers and
discounts at this point. As a customer I hadn’t that much transaction but in that time I had done
2-3 times flexi load a month. And as their call rate was very high students like me didn’t do that
much transaction. But buying internet packages was a regular transaction as it was new and
people was getting more attracted during that time. The price was not that much flexible but as
there was not that much telecom on that who could provide better service than them so people
was regularly using it.
Stage 4: Commitment
After experiencing a considerable number of highly satisfactory encounters with a company, I
developed a fierce loyalty or strong preference towards Grameenphone. Even I used to tell my
friends and family to try out their services and offers and how amazing and satisfied I am with
their services. Sometimes Grameenphone used to make concessions on prices or terms.
Customer’s value used to worth more to them than the costs of these concessions. As we know
most of the operators was not able to provide better service than them so we always
recommended them with highly satisfactory and became a loyal user’s of Grameenphone in that
time.
Stage 5: Separation
Over time, the conditions and terms that made me attracted and loyal to them changed. As the
call rate that was before getting higher day by day and as I was a student it was a bit expensive
for me. So I switched from Grameenphone to Airtel. As other operators started giving low call
rate which was very much appreciated and accepted by all. People of low-mid family started
converting into other operators than Grameenphone. So do I. And if we see in other hand that in
case of 3G network providing Grammenphone was not in frontier of it. As they brought the 3G
network after facing a lot of government issues. Also in case of 4G network.
