Correspondence: Merlin Stone, Nowell Stone Ltd. 41–42 Foley Street London W1W 7TS, UK. Tel: +44 (0)7968 271937; e-mail: merlin@nowellstone.com

¹is one of the leading international academics in service quality and customer satisfaction measurement. He has completed several consultancy projects for UK's esteemed marketing companies on CRM, customer satisfaction and financial business performance. He is the author of numerous articles on customer satisfaction and services branding appearing in the Journal of Business Research, European Journal of Marketing and others. He is a senior lecturer of Management at the University of Surrey.

²was one of the earliest practitioners in Database Marketing from the late 1970s. His company, Marketpoint, opened its doors 25 years ago, and was probably the first to provide web-based sales and marketing support to its clients over ten years ago. Today, the company continues to lead the way with software innovation the main driver for global Business-to-Business development for a range of large 'Blue Chips'.

³is one of UK's top consultants, lecturers and trainers in marketing, sales and service. He is a Director of Nowell Stone Ltd, and of The Database Group Ltd. He is Professor of Marketing at Bristol Business School and a visiting professor at Brunel, Leicester, Luton, Portsmouth and Southampton Business Schools.

Received 5 February 2007; Revised 5 February 2007.

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate users' perception of Salespoint.com, which is a web-based CRM software application developed by Marketpoint, UK. An online survey was administered to 206 users from six international companies. The findings of the study suggest that usefulness of marketing database search, ease of navigation and usefulness of statistics functions are the key aspects of overall satisfaction with Salespoint.com. Users' intention to recommend is positively influenced by usefulness of marketing database search, ease of navigation and degree of customisation. The study discusses theoretical and practical implications for improving the quality of web-based CRM softwares from the user's point of view.