Customer Relationship Management (CRM) practices in Financial sector: Role and implications to commercial bank performance in Zimbabwe (2008-2009)

This article presents findings from an action research which sought to explore the subject customer relationship management paying particular attention to practices and how they can be applied in the financial service sector to attract and retain valuable clients (corporate). Special attention has been made to Key Account Management practices as a strategy to lock valuable customers. Related literature has been reviewed chief among the authorities are the works of Gummesson, Payne as well as Adrian who are the proponents and developers of CRM .A descriptive research design has been adopted and SPSS package used to analyse data & results point to positive effect of customer relationship management and customer retention and ultimately leading to better bank performance. The write up show the importance of different types of CRM practices in locking customers and increasing switching costs to defecting customers thereby enhancing long term values to commercial banks. Key Words: CRM practices, financial sector, Retention, Bank Performanc