Customer Relationship Management Model in Higher Education: A Case of Malaysia

Customer relationship management (CRM) is becoming imperative strategic for organization in every sector of business. Educational institutions are also realizing how important their operation and interaction is, with their customers who includes students, alumni, donors, faculty members, and staff members. Therefore, in universities satisfying of alumni members is essential through improving long term relationship with them. Alumni liaison unit (ALU) was established to help university as center of service to alumni members for satisfying their needs; however without an appropriate CRM strategy it will not be attainable. Basically, this emphasis that there should be a suitable model for guiding this unit to realize one to one relationship with each key alumni member to customize their services toward them. Therefore, in the current paper a new model of CRM strategy was developed. Interview and questionnaire conducted with university technology Malaysia (UTM) ALU and its alumnus. The findings indicate that the current relationship between the alumni organization and UTM alumni is just for a short time, due to the reasons from the alumni members that most of them cannot be satisfied with the ALU after a short period of time. The questionnaire was as novelty to be conducted in this study which presented us clearly the suggestions result from the alumni members for some certain factors that cause to improve their needs which will enhance and maintain the relationship between the alumni organization and the UTM alumni.