Role of Customer Relationship Management in Employees’ Customer Orientation of Sport and Youth Offices in Golestan Province

The purpose of this work was to investigate the role of the customer relationship management in the employees’ customer orientation in the Sport and Youth offices of the Golestan Province.The research method is descriptive correlation, and the statistical population consists of all the employees of the Sport and Youth offices in the Golestan Province. For data gathering, the questionnaires of the customer relationship management and the customer orientation are used. In order to analyze the data obtained for the research variables, the structural equation modeling the Smart PLS software is used. The findings show that the focus on the key customer and knowledge management has a positive and significant effect on the customer orientation. Another research finding has shown that the organizing customer relationship management and the customer relationship management based on technology do not have significant effects on the customer orientation.

Today, the sports organizations such as the non-sports organizations are experiencing a new era of competition. In this situation, the need for the sports customers are changing, and the most important challenge facing sports organizations is to gain the customer satisfaction and loyalty, and ultimately achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. To be more successful in this competitive environment, sports organizations are required to focus on their customers. Given the importance of the customers, the sports organizations such as the Sport and Youth offices require a customer relationship management. The customer relationship management can provide better services to the customers of sports organizations by improving the employees’ customer orientation.

The research method was descriptive correlation, and the statistical population included all the employees of the Sport and Youth offices in the Golestan Province; 132 employees were selected as the research sample. For data gathering, the questionnaires of customer relationship management (Hong-kit et al., 2005) and the customer orientation (Donavan et al., 2004) were used. In order to analyze the data and identify the effects of the research variables, the structural equation modeling Smart PLS software was used.

The findings showed that the focus on the key customer and knowledge management had a positive and significant effect on the customer orientation. Another research finding showed that the organizing customer relationship management and the customer relationship management based on technology did not have significant effects on the customer orientation. According to the research results, it can be concluded that the customer relationship management can play an important role in the employees’ customer orientation of the Sport and Youth offices in the Golestan Province. Hence, it is suggested that the managers of the Sport and Youth offices by choosing a powerful customer relationship management system increase the customer orientation of their employees.