EFFECTIVENESS OF RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT ON CUSTOMER LOYALTY: A STUDY OF LEADWAY ASSURANCE PLC., FCT, ABUJA

Abstract

Relationship Management (RM) is a strategy and tool that can assist Insurance companies with increasing customer loyalty by tracking satisfaction levels, defection and retention. However, In-spite of several relationship management measures adopted by various insurance firms such as empathy, responsiveness and trust aimed at sustaining their loyalty to the firm, they are still not loyal to the insurance firms. The study thus investigates the effectiveness of relationship management (RM) on customer loyalty using expost-facto research design and ANOVA statistical tool. Structured questionnaires were administered to 213 customers (who insure with Leadway Insurance PLC) to generate data meant for the empirical analysis. Findings from the study,revealed that empathy has a significant effect on customer loyalty with Leadway Assurance PLC services. Responsiveness was also found to have a significant influence on customer loyalty with Leadway Assurance services. In-line with these findings, recommendations from the result are that insurance operators are advised to use empathy as their major business strategy. The importance of using empathy as business strategy is that it does not lead to additional cost to sustain customer loyalty and gaining competitive advantage. The insurance firms are also encouraged to sustain their customer service structure so as to respond promptly to the customers’ complaints, issues, and suggestion at the right time. This would ensure that delays do not take place during the processing of customer complaints to boost their loyalty to the insurance firm.