JAMES MARVIN EARL E.

CASTRO
MBA 2
MARKETING MANAGEMENT RESEARCH 2007
SLU CAC
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a new system that is different from the traditional
marketing research. Far from using traditional methodologies in research, CRM uses a more interactive
tool which is co-creation, whereby customers share their ideas with the business firm. Their ideas and
opinions about the services they acquire serve as feedback and are used by the firm to enhance their
product or service. The information is gathered through forums, inquiries or blogs in virtual communities
mainly because the use of the internet is becoming more prominent in the market. This way it can be
easier to gather first hand raw data and the respondent participation is bigger. The downside however is
that there is no safeguarding from false or unqualified respondents and there is also risk from
manipulated feedback from competitors, which can be detrimental to the firms business.
In public service organizations such as the government, there is no direct competition simply because it
is the sole provider of certain services. However, in agencies such as the Professional Regulation
Commission, being a national government agency that has regional branches, the challenge is more of
becoming the best office in the entire city, in the entire commission, and possibly, in the entire country.
The reason behind is that performance is measured in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. The
revenue generated is remitted directly to the national government; this determines effectiveness,
employee performance and savings from expenses determines efficiency. These factors are directly
affected by the number of applicants as manifested by the volume of transactions it handles for and
with the general public and other agencies involved.
Indeed it is becoming harder to decipher the modern customer through traditional market research
alone. And although we are a service and non profit oriented organization, we still have to treat the
public the way private firms treat their clients. Aside from that, we are not exempted from the ever
changing trends in communication and e-commerce brought about by globalization. This implies that we
must either catch up with the trend or be the first in government to innovate changes in electronically
transacting with the public because undeniably have a huge number of registered professionals working
abroad. The only means by which they can transact with PRC is though the Internet. For minor
transactions such as license verifications, license renewals, and ratings/eligibility verifications can
potentially be done online.
The best way to back this up is to gather first hand data from the transacting public. We hear ideas,
suggestions and opinions through one on one transactions and through phone transactions but the best
way to gather and collate all of these is to put up a blog site, a virtual community or a separate website
for PRC Baguio Regional Office where we can gather comments and suggestions, answer queries and
post media advisories pertaining to our schedules, regulations, changes in procedures, or any other
important information that we need to divulge to the public. This can benefit both PRC and the public as
it will provide us direct feedback to improve our services, give the public a channel to voice out their
ideas that could probably minimize, if not, eliminate the tendency of getting bad press, administrative
problems, and even prevent the spark from turning into a fire in terms of anomalies and other
irregularities which may cause as a window for corruption that can cause serious damage to the
Commission.
I f we can improve our services, then maybe other regional offices can benchmark on our systems and
maybe even be the organization by which other government agencies can base their standards from.
Using CRM can greatly improve and help us turn our services into world-class quality. Through the
tradition of action research we can apply developmental action inquiry to help us develop new form of
leadership because among our pool of employees, it is notable that most of us staff are good front liners
but we still have a weak bench for potential administrators. We can also use reflective practice to focus
on how our staff reflect on their own actions, and lastly, the evaluative inquiry which focuses on inquiry
that generates organizational learning. These things need to be given attention because even though
they may seem irrelevant to our busy schedule, they may even be the change agents that we need to
improve our services.