Impact of Customer Satisfaction Strategies on Customer Retention: A Case of National Social Security Fund (NSSF). Tanzania

This paper investigated the effect of customer satisfaction measures on customer retention, and the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) Ilala office in Tanzania was used as a case study. In particular, it examined how relationship marketing, service quality, and customer relationship management (CRM) affect customer satisfaction and retention, also examined how customer satisfaction mediates these relationships. The study followed the case study design and focused on NSSF employees and members. A sample of 50 respondents was chosen by means of simple random sampling. Structured questionnaires and reviews of documents were used as sources of data collection. To analyse the primary data the Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) was used, and multiple regression analysis was performed to establish relationships between independent variables (relationship marketing, quality of service, CRM), mediating variable (customer satisfaction), and dependent variable (customer retention). The results showed that service quality and CRM had a positive, significant effect on customer satisfaction and customer retention, and relationship marketing had a smaller or less significant impact. Additionally, customer satisfaction emerged to have a critical mediating impact and enhanced the influence of service quality and CRM on customer retention. The paper concludes that service quality practices and high-quality CRM systems are the key to improving the satisfaction and retention of members of social security institutions. It recommends that NSSF should consider staff training on relationship marketing, continuous quality improvement and CRM systems to improve customer experience and customer loyalty. The research can be extended to other regions and pension schemes in future to provide comparative data.