Electronic customer care: The innovative path to e-loyalty

In this paper, the authors argue that the use of an electronic customer relationship management system (eCRM system) enables traditional ‘physical’ customer proximity to be substituted by ‘digital’ proximity, within the scope of a multi-channel approach. This method of substitution presents enormous potential for cost reduction, profit maximisation and customer loyalty. The main intention of the paper is to illustrate how electronic customer care tools can be used to create customer e-loyalty in the field of private internet banking. The knowledge is supported by findings of a questionnaire survey based on a sample of 45 bank experts involved in eCRM and private internet banking in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the USA. This empirical study of the capability of electronic customer care technologies to enable individual customer banking relationships in the private internet banking field demonstrates the potential for customer loyalty specifically for the internet channel of distribution.