Determination of Customer Satisfaction using Improved K-means algorithm

• Published in: Soft computing (Berlin, Germany) Germany), 2020-11, Vol.24 (22), p.16947-16965
• Main Authors: Zare, Hamed, Emadi, Sima
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Algorithms; Artificial Intelligence; Brand loyalty; Cluster analysis; Clustering; Computational Intelligence; Control; Customer relationship management; Customer satisfaction; Customer services; Customers; Data mining; Datasets; Engineering; Indicators; Marketing; Mathematical Logic and Foundations; Mechatronics; Methodologies and Application; Methods; Optimization algorithms; Robotics; Vector quantization
• ISSN: 1432-7643; 1433-7479
• DOI: 10.1007/s00500-020-04988-4

Effective management of customer’s knowledge leads to efficient Customer Relationship Management (CRM). To accurately predict customer’s behaviour, clustering, especially K -means, is one of the most important data mining techniques used in customer relationship management marketing, with which it is possible to identify customers’ behavioural patterns and, subsequently, to align marketing strategies with customer preferences so as to maintain the customers. However, it has been observed in various studies on K -means clustering that customers with different behavioural indicators in clustering may seem to be the same, implying that customer behavioural indicators do not play any significant role in customer clustering. Therefore, if the level of customer participation depends on behavioural parameters such as their satisfaction, it can have a negative effect on the K -means clusters and has no acceptable result. In this paper, customer behavioural features—malicious feature—is considered in customer clustering, as well as a method for finding the optimal number of clusters and the initial values of cluster centres to obtain more accurate results. Finally, according to the organizations’ need to extract knowledge from customers’ views through ranking customers based on factors affecting customer value, a method is proposed for modelling their behaviour and extracting knowledge for customer relationship management. The results of the evaluation of the customers of Hamkaran System’s Company show that the improved K -means method proposed in this paper outperforms K -means in terms of speed and accuracy.