Book Description
It is no longer enough to concentrate on customer satisfaction; companies must graduate to customer loyalty. This Management Briefing identifies the four stages of a company's evolution toward building lasting customer loyalty, and it summarizes the key management principles that must guide the transition. The book also provides a seven-step roadmap and audit to help readers:
** increase customer retention rates and convert one-time buyers into lifelong customers
** achieve a breakthrough profit improvement by concentrating on customer loyalty
** make employee empowerment real, not just a fad or slogan.
Average customer rating:
- Strategic Customer Care -- basic marketing with old fads
- Holistic guideline for managing customer service
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Strategic Customer Care: An Evolutionary Approach to Increasing Customer Value and Profitability
Stanley A. Brown
Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
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Customer Service
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General
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| Marketing & Sales
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Management
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Entrepreneurship
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ASIN: 0471643424 |
Book Description
How to successfully apply the principles of customer care in any company
Most organizations today recognize the importance of improving customer care—the need to go beyond traditional customer service and truly manage customers as assets—but only about 6% apply its principles effectively. This book fully explains the three stages in the evolution of customer care. Readers will be guided through the process of acquiring customers, retaining them through segmentation and management of the relationship, and targeting their most significant marketing efforts to the most profitable segments.
- Shows companies how to identify where they are in their own evolutionary process
- Outlines successes and failures of companies, including Sears, CIBC, AT&T/Matrixx, Kodak, FedEx, and more
Customer Reviews:
Strategic Customer Care -- basic marketing with old fads.......2001-11-11
The book rehashes various old fads and repeats some very basic marketing principles (such as the value of segmentation) that can be found in any basic marketing textbook. I could not find any new ideas in the book, which seems rather useless.
Holistic guideline for managing customer service.......2000-04-03
Brown introduces the reader step by step into the evolution an enterprise has to undergo in order to obtain customer loyalty. Backed up with comprehensive and clear exhibits, Brown offers with his book an excellence resource for each student as well as manager dealing with the topic of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.
Book Description
Based on extensive current research from the Coopers & Lybrand IDEAS study of over 1,800 North American companies, this superlative guide describes the various ways organizations reach out and touch customers and how they can improve the process behind this contact. Contains a detailed, four-step procedure which provides a formula for success. Features best practices of companies such as IBM, Hewlett Packard and 3M that have been successful in achieving performance improvement. Packed with checklists and action steps to create a top-notch customer focused improvement program.
Customer Reviews:
a must if you love your customers.......2001-09-06
Easy to read, very logical how the book developes to understand and to put the ideas to work, and hi level examples. WOW!!
Book Description
The first practical guide to linking business strategy with the art and science of user experience and online design
It has becoming increasingly clear that the big winners in the E-business arena are those that practice customer-centric design. While there are a multitude of good books on the art and science of user interface and website design, until Built For Use, there were none that focused on user experience from the corporate strategist's and marketing manager's perspectives. Drawing upon her work as a user-experience strategist for numerous Fortune 1,000 firms, Karen Donoghue explores the dynamics of business strategy and user experience in a concise, jargon-free manner for nontechnical managers. With the help of fascinating and instructive before-and-after case studies, she helps managers become fluent in the language of user-experience; identifies user-experience and designstrategy best practices; explains how to determine what customers want; and much more.
Download Description
With fewer and fewer companies vying for the attention of online consumers, it is becoming increasingly clear that the big winners in the E-business arena are those that practice customer-centric design. While there are a multitude of good books on the art and science of user interface and website design, until Built For Use, there were none that focused on user experience from the corporate strategist's and marketing manager's perspectives. Drawing upon her work as a user-experience strategist for numerous Fortune 1,000 firms, Karen Donoghue explores the dynamics of business strategy and user experience in a concise, jargon-free manner for nontechnical managers. With the help of fascinating and instructive before-and-after case studies, she helps managers become fluent in the language of user-experience; identifies user-experience and designstrategy best practices; explains how to determine what customers want; and much more.
Customer Reviews:
Impractical at Best.......2007-04-25
I bought this book because my job requires that I understand web usability and the business of usability, which are topics that I am generally interested in and passionate about. However, the moment I began reading it I realized this was not the book for me. I did not like it. It was impractical at best and totally useless at worst. I can't believe the author has any real-world experience. The book is filled with so much common sense that's trying to being passed as arcane and is splashed with boring corporate mumbo jumbo. I'm sure you would not be hard-pressed to find words like "Synergy" and "Paradigm Shift" in half the book.
With that aside, I'm very appreciative of the fact that it was written in 2002 (as of this writing, that's 5 years ago) and it's my fault for not noticing that before I bought it. Further, perhaps I was not its intended audience, and instead it was geared more toward MBA and marketing types who have absolutely zero online experience. If that is the case, then grouping this book with Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (2nd Edition) was totally inappropriate - a book which is very practical and accessible. Perhaps.
Four Plus or 5 Minus.......2003-05-27
Fabulous message and important concepts. My main complaint is that the message was 'restricted' in how it is applied. The issues raised and the corresponding solutions are applicable to all aspects of designing human interactions with business...and not just considering customers (who are often engaged in roles for which the term 'user' is inappropriate... a term I abhor because of its lack of 'universality').
To follow the model given in the introduction, by considering the strategic implications of the customer and the business anyone could easily come up with solutions that fly in the face of the abilities and values of the employees as human beings. All stakeholder factors have to be put in balance with those of the business.
In addition, the concepts apply outside the typical business model and/or products. A good example is home design (not decor) which typically doesn't consider many 'functions' that occur within its walls other than sleeping, washing, bathing, and eating. Many of the concepts presented here can/should be applied in other problem/solution settings. I contend that every business project that involves some human interaction is subject to these principles.
The models/recommendations within this book, with a few tweaks, can and should be applied to designing human interaction in many yet-untapped areas/markets (leaving tremendous business potential lying all around). The recommendations given specifically as to better 'online' design can and should be applied to all points of interaction a business has with all stakeholders.
I highly recommend this book with the caveat that you take its potential application beyond the dimensions within which it is presented. The word 'customer' can often be replaced with 'stakeholder'. When encountering the term 'user experience' drop the term 'user' and focus on the 'experience' (since most individuals measure the value of their experience with a business based on all points of interaction, not just online).
Voice of a Consultant.......2003-01-29
Built for Use, by user experience strategist Karen Donoghue, is a compendium of knowledge that anyone hoping to build a truly usable user interface should possess. Donoghue draws on her many years of experience as an industry consultant to present analyses of how websites and other human-machine interfaces succeed and fail. She also channels her extensive contacts in industry and academia to present sage advice and best practices for achieving usability. With a post-bubble eye sharply focused on the bottom line, Donoghue emphasizes that experiences users love don't necessarily coincide with the experiences they will pay for, and that revenue must be the ultimate driver of design choices.
Reading Built for Use, it's hard not to picture oneself as one of Donoghue's clients, and the book as the voice of Donoghue. The book has the pragmatic tone of a consultant who is aware of the fact that your time (and hers) is valuable. She emphasizes the points that need emphasizing, and doesn't spend a lot of time considering ultimately rejected alternatives. You hire Ms. Donoghue, or read her book, because you need to know how to create the best -- and most profitable -- user interfaces right now, and you can't afford to make costly mistakes. From her war stories and references, it's pretty clear that she knows how, and she won't beat around the bush very much before telling you.
One also gets the impression that Donoghue's clients span a broad range of knowledge and experience. In Part I, I counted, I believe, five different occurrences of a variant of "Don't put a tripwire at the checkout counter!" -- in other words, don't put an obstacle in front of a customer who's already been convinced to buy something, has taken out their credit card, and is trying to complete a transaction. "Don't make your first page impossible to get through!" is another oft-repeated dictum. Evidently more than a few of Donoghue's clients insisted on making those mistakes. On the other hand, her detailed accounts of best-practice project planning for usability will be of interest to seasoned veterans of successful projects. Along with her pragmatic tone, Donoghue endeavors to formulate general principles and practices that underlie the best, most-usable interfaces. It was revealing to me to read about the meticulous and principled planning behind one of my personal favorites, the Fidelity Brokerage website, that distinguishes it from similar, but less usable competitors.
Donoghue takes a more speculative point of view in Part III, which discusses future developments. There, she expresses confidence that we will soon be designing for systems that cross the "wet-dry interface" - in other words, parts of the system will be composed of traditional electronic circuits, and other parts will consist of biological components such as neurons in a human body.
Donoghue's clients, and the readers of this book, are a demanding audience. They need to know in practical terms what to do right now to compete in a confusing, rapidly developing arena. They also need an awareness of a future where user experiences that today sound like science fiction will be commonplace. Fortunately Donoghue, with her combination of down-to-earth advice and insight into the fundamental principles that will influence future trends, meets both requirements.
Nothing new for companies with a decent web presence........2002-10-29
Unless your website is still being made by your cousin "who knows a little about this internet thing" there is nothing new for you in this book.
Most of what is presented is common sense, heavy on the why but not the how, and very repetitive. Real life examples are limited and center around the finance industry. My search for a resource to inspire designers take usability to the next level continues and this book is being returned.
Buy this book and give it to management.......2002-08-04
This is the book to read and pass along to Marketing, R&D, Sales, etc. It will help you know the words to say to justify spending time and money on user experience research and design. I read it before starting a new job in Human Factors and passed it up the management chain to widen the perception of what it's all about. It gives you and "them" a common language.
Book Description
sA hands-on guidebook from Accenture for building a globally responsive, customer-driven enterprise
As the dust settles from the most recent round of CRM projects, companies are increasingly finding that their efforts havenot delivered anticipated benefits. In The Ultimate CRM Handbook, influential thought leaders from Accenture discuss why CRM has failed to live up to expectations and what companies can do to improve the bottom-line return on CRM investments.
More than 30 chapters and in-depth case studies on many leading companies give managers and senior executives alike the high-level perspective needed to build lasting, profitable bonds with their customers. They also provide techniques companies can use to:
- Establish more effective interactions with their customers
- Build lasting brand loyalty
- Dramatically improve the efficiency of their sales, marketing, and customer service operations
Customer Reviews:
For strategic thinker.......2006-08-18
This book covers every aspect of CRM, on sales and marketing and information technology. Don't expect this book will teach you how to implement it. Please notice that this is not mean to be a technical book, which teaches you how to caculate customer life-time, segmentation or select customers. It outline the technologies and marketing ideas surrouding the buzz word-CRM. Come on. CRM is not the name of a software package, it's about satisfying your customers profitabily.
If you have the interest to drill further, esp the maths/IT, read other books on datamining or database marketing.
Text book - descriptive but not informative.......2005-08-02
I had to purchase this book for a class I'm taking towards my MBA. I have to say that I have yet to read anything in it that isn't just a summary of information I've heard or read before - or even something that's just intuitive for anyone that's been in the business world for just a few years.
Had I known this book would provide such little insight into the underlying strategies and applications of CRM, and would therefore not even be necessary to read in order to write papers or join in discussions for my class, I would not have purchased it.
At last ... a reference source for CRM I can really use.......2003-01-24
This is the third book on CRM I've read over the last year and it's certainly been the most useful.
The structure is a little different from other books I've seen on the subject. I guess you could read it end-to-end, but I've found it most useful just reading the section introductions and then dipping into the individual chapters as required. Being honest, I haven't even read all of the content. It's very comprehensive and some of the material just isn't relevant to my work. But the fact I can get to the parts that are relevant, quickly and easily, is what makes this stand out.
Coming from a business background, I also like level it's pitched at. Despite being pretty detailed at times the text is peppered with client examples to show the ideas are still grounded in reality.
So if you are looking for a broad reference source for CRM that puts the emphasis on business as much as CRM then this is certainly worth considering.
An Information Packed Resource on Advanced CRM.......2003-01-16
If you are looking for an information packed resource on advanced CRM ideas and strategies, then I would strongly recommend this book. I own a dozen texts on this subject and this book is one of the best at presenting the key concepts that define state-of-the-art CRM.
I found the chapters on transforming marketing paticularrly interesting. Together, they provided a comprehensive picture of the current challenges in marketing and then discussed the new capabilities marketers should embrace to transform their organizations.
In addition to the wealth of ideas, the book was also filled with industry examples that really helped to bring the topics to life for me. I definitely give this book an enthusiastic two thumbs up.
Not bad, but buyer beware!.......2003-01-03
This is not a bad book and contains some helpful insights in CRM. The chapters on Partner Relationship Management and CRM in Government are particularly good.
However, the title (a shameless ripoff of The CRM Handbook--couldn't the guys at McGraw Hill be a BIT more creative?)doesn't make it obvious that the writers are all Accenture consultants. This book definitely has an Accenture spin (results of Accenture surveys, examples using Accenture partner companies), rendering it a bit more narrowly-focused that it might have been by a more "objective" authorship. And, as is usually the case with a book where each chapter has a different author, the tone of the text varies widely. This is a good book for your CRM library, but be sure and co-mingle it with other CRM perspective so your view isn't tainted.
Book Description
"ProfitBrand does a superb job in showing how companies can gain by tracking individual customers' profitability, and not simply basing their strategies on aggregate measures such as sales and market share." -- Philip Kotler, Kellogg School of Management
Customer Reviews:
A 'must-read' 'profit analysis' book by every organisations.......2007-06-10
I chanced upon Nick Wreden's "ProfitBrand" due to these interesting terms on this brand book cover - `profitability, accountability and sustainability'. This book, which uses metrics-based approach to branding, is a must read book for every organization that's looking at how branding investment can be measured. Nick's belief in "experiential experience" is so spot on in today's competitive world. "ProfitBrand's" examples on how to measure the "profitability of each customer" should in fact be one of the key analyses for any business. Well written with impressive international examples, "ProfitBrand" deals with issues many branding books don't touch, like pricing. It even gives a devastating critique of positioning theory. Nick's "ProfitBrand" should be read by CEOs and even entrepreneurs and not just those with marketing or branding responsibilities.
Valuable lessons for Asian firms looking to compete globally.......2007-02-28
Why do up to 80% of products fail to become brands despite the US$1.5 billion spent on marketing annually? A primary reason is that companies are still following the `immutable laws' of the post-war mass economy when competition was limited, media conduits to consumers were few, and leisure pursuits were confined to visiting the cinema, a bowling alley or a night market.
During the time from 1945-1995, few leisure distractions meant traditional marketing strategies -- such as TV, print and outdoor advertising -- were enough to build a brand. As recently as the 1970's, many Asian capitals only had one or two TV channels, few billboards and a handful of domestic magazines, it was easy to reach consumers.
But today's buyers are overwhelmed with data, information and choices. For instance, Malaysian households receive up to 100 TV channels, 24 hours a day. Supermarkets carry 5,000 to 10,000 SKUs; the number of titles distributed by the average magazine wholesaler has more than quadrupled in 10 years; there are more than 20 commercial radio stations broadcasting up to 20 minutes of commercials every hour; and billboards jostle for attention at every junction. Such a barrage of messages does not include more than 40 billion web pages and 20 million blogs on the Internet. How can a consumer's mind process so much data? Obviously it can't. In fact it shuts much of it out which accounts for the high failure rate.
Many new products also fail to become brands because companies focus on customer acquisition, not retention. Most companies invest the largest chunk of their marketing budgets on acquisition strategies. Wouldn't it make more sense to focus more on retention, where a company has a 50% chance of selling to an existing customer, rather than acquisition, where a company has only a 5-15% chance of making a sale?
Nick Wreden, tackles these challenging developments in the world of branding in his thought-provoking and award-winning book, `ProfitBrand: How to Increase the Profitability, Accountability and Sustainability of Brands'. The book also spends a great deal of time on the million-dollar marketing question: accountability. Personally, I can't remember ever having seen the inclusion of the word `accountability' in the same sentence as `marketing'!
So what do companies need to do to avoid wasting resources on strategies that apply to the post world war two mass economy that no longer exists?
`A brand is not built by acquiring customers; it is built by keeping them,' says Wreden. `Most competitive product advantages can be duplicated. The one advantage that cannot be duplicated is a customer relationship.'
He adds that the primary branding goal is not market share or even sales growth, but profitability growth. In almost all cases, such profitability growth is created by forming, nurturing and leveraging relationships with customers. It is also the key to brand sustainability.
According to Wreden, successful brands today - or `ProfitBrands' - share six characteristics: attention; transactional excellence; trust; loyalty; advocacy and, most importantly, profitability.
Successful brands also deliver emotional, experiential and/or emotional value. Emotional value results from relationship depth, value and length. Experiential value is based on customer-centric processes, personalization, immediacy, quality and satisfaction. Economic value results from providing greater return to customers than they paid at purchase.
Companies should not underestimate the importance of customer profitability. It is well known that 20% of customers generate 80% of profits. According to Wreden, less known, but equally true, is that about 15% of a firm's customers are unprofitable. Differentiating high-profit, low-profit and unprofitable customers requires knowing customer equity. Customer equity, or the lifetime value of a customer, is the most important brand measurement. This value results from past, current and future profitability as well as from intangible benefits. Customer equity incorporates the loyalty to buy again and again, the faith to recommend and the willingness to forgive inevitable mistakes.
Customer equity advantages include improved profitability, increased accountability, segmentation insights, more efficient operations, increased advocacy and other benefits.
Wreden believes that the company that focuses strongly on profitable customers will succeed. All customers are not created equal, states Wreden. To focus acquisition and retention branding efforts on the most desirable customers, customer-equity based segmentation is required. This process involves identifying and ranking profitable segments, segmenting services based on relative profitability, and reshaping acquisition and retention branding around attractive customer segments.
Higher prices, supported by differentiated value, is the best way to increase customer profitability. Pricing, services, offerings and sales tactics must differ for loyal, convenience-driven, price-sensitive and value-sensitive segments.
Knowledge about customer equity must be leveraged with customer planning (also called sales planning). Customer planning applies finite sales and marketing resources toward where it can generate the greatest return in customer profitability, thus helping to ensure sales as well as marketing accountability.
One key tactic in customer planning is seeking to increase brand penetration. Brand penetration consists of customer penetration (`share-of-wallet'), product penetration (increased or extended usage) and account penetration (more buyers). These strategies must be coupled with customer recovery and winback efforts.
As Asian economies open up and top executives feel the impact of increased domestic and foreign competition, companies that thrive will need to move to a metrics-based approach to branding. Profitable companies such as Tesco, Hong Leong Bank and Swire are already linking branding initiatives to customer profitability via multiple measurements. Why would anyone want to spend money to acquire a customer without being sure what that customer generates in revenue and profits?
As competition intensifies, becomes more ruthless and consumers are more knowledgeable and have more options, any Chairman, CEO or senior executive who wishes to develop a brand capable of withstanding the onslaught of domestic and foreign competition or make the transition from local company to global organization, or simply wants to develop a brand of choice for domestic consumers, must change the corporate strategy to focus on profitability growth, not just sales or market share growth.
Wreden outlines clearly, the need to ensure greater accountability, especially for marketing, by knowing what every marketing investment - and marketing manager - delivers in terms of profitability. He states, what we all know but chose to ignore - that resources are too scarce to spend chasing ephemeral goals like "awareness".
Asian brand owners should know that all the awareness in the world doesn't mean a thing unless it translates into a profitable sale.
After reading Nick's book, and as a brand consultant advising Asian companies on how to build brands, my take away from this book is that with such high failure rates, Asian brands cannot afford to waste valuable resources on strategies that focus on "image" and "awareness," to build their brands. What they need to focus on is developing profitable relationships with customers. It won't be as exciting as `cool' commercials or huge billboards, but it'll be more profitable.
Very Good Book, Particularly Strong on Success Measurement.......2006-11-11
I read ProfitBrand as part of an efort of familiarizing myself with branding methods and procedures before hiring a marketing company to outsource all marketing activities to. ProfitBrand was particularly helpful for many reasons. First of all the book starts clearly by giving a little bit of background on branding methods in different 'ages' where branding was known. This served to show how until today many companies still use outdated techniques to promote their brand whereas there are much more effective methods today.
The second strength of this book is that it clearly outlines multiple methods for measuring the effectiveness of the branding process. This is the distinguishing factor of this book: it promotes accountability through empirical measurement in order to help management accurately measure the performance of the branding effort
The third point is that the book focuses on how to leverage the power of the brand to turn brand power into the ultimate measure of performance: profit; hence the title 'ProfitBrand'.
Overall the book is well-written, ideas are clearly laid out and the concept is quite enticing for anybody seeking to understand how to make the most out of their brand. I gave it 4 out of 5 not because of any particular fault with the book but because I reserve the 5/5 rating for only exceptional books such as Jack Welch's Winning and Jim Collins' Good to Great. I recommend this book as a second helping after reading a good introduction to the concept of branding such as 'Brand Simple'.
An Accessible and Valuable Book on Branding.......2005-11-18
Nick Wreden offers an exhaustively researched but very engaging book on branding that goes a step beyond the traditional books of this kind. Rather than just rehashing what most business professionals already know about the importance of building a strong brand, Wreden explores how businesses can place more measurement and accountability to their branding efforts. He brings in groups you may not have thought about before, such as supply chain and manufacturing organizations, and how they also play a key role in strengthening a brand...with an excellent example of how K-Mart failed to leverage its supply chain capabilities. This is a must-read for not only marketing, PR, sales and financial managers, but also others in the organization who have a stake in the brand. Wreden shows just how many stakeholders can help build the brand.
Average customer rating:
- Simply a milestone
- Learning From Others
- Important insights into the learning organization.
- Wakes you up to the importance of Knowledge Management.
- The keys to corporate success are in the corporation!
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Invented Here: Maximizing Your Organization's Internal Growth and Profitability
Bart Victor , and
Andrew C. Boynton
Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Strategy & Competition
| Management & Leadership
| Business & Investing
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Management
| Management & Leadership
| Business & Investing
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General
| Organizational Behavior
| Business & Investing
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Organizational Change
| Organizational Behavior
| Business & Investing
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General
| Business & Investing
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Management
| Harvard Business School Press
| By Publisher
| Business & Investing
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General
| Small Business & Entrepreneurship
| Business & Investing
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Manufacturing
| Industrial, Manufacturing & Operational Systems
| Engineering
| Professional & Technical
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ASIN: 0875847986 |
Book Description
Record breaking economic growth. Rapid global expansion. Dizzying technological innovation. As we head toward the new millennium, it seems as if there are more opportunities than ever for your company to create new value, satisfy customers, and make money. But, given today's bewildering array of management methods, how do you determine which path to follow--and how do you adapt your company for the journey? With Invented Here, authors Victor and Boynton argue that to succeed in a market where consumers increasingly demand customized goods and services, you cannot rely on any one formula. Instead, you must look within your own organization to invent, develop, and deliver the distinctive competencies that ensure growth and profitability. The authors conclude that there are distinct patterns in the way that successful companies manage their internal growth--patterns found in the evaluation and application of organizational knowledge. More important, they provide a workable strategy for emulating these patterns; arguing that any company, in order to more closely satisfy the needs of its customers, can develop the capabilities necessary to evolve from craft work to mass customization, and beyond. With examples from companies such as Beretta, Taco Bell, Dell Computer, Xerox, and Merrill Lynch providing a real-world context, Invented Here reveals how managers can determine the best path of change for their company by assessing its existing knowledge base. The book is a pioneering guide to using the knowledge that resides within your company in the actual transformation of work: the nature of what you do, the value that you can create with your customers, and the organizational knowledge to be mined along the way.
Customer Reviews:
Simply a milestone.......2001-05-21
The key concept of this book is that every organization could evolve trough several status. There is no a suggested preeferred status. Winning organisations are those which could find the right 'alignment' between market needs and behaviours and the internal organization. The evolution of the organization is only driven by the market change. The book focus on transitions between these different stages, analysing the impact of these changes through the entire Value Chain. Invented Here is a milestone for those people which needs to manage transition also in a turbulent environment. It helps managers to think about the actual company positioning and to build a framework helping to identify market changes and relevant organizational needed impact. Simply great!
Learning From Others.......2000-11-25
The importance of organization design on the success of a business, be it that of a service company or a product supplier, is often underestimated. Strategy alone is not enough.
The great value of this book lies in 3 areas :
i) Use of illustrating failure as well as success - better to learn from someone else's mistakes so that you can, hopefully, avoid them.
ii) Identifying in meaningful terms where to position your organisation for your product/service e.g. if you need a great mass production machine, that is how you should organize; when your customers need more, don't hide from it - just do it well.
iii) The style is refreshingly alive. You feel you can relate to real people solving real problems. Too often, books like this feel like they belong only in libraries - this one offers genuinely practical insight. It's up to you to apply it.
If I have one (minor) criticism, it is the title. Don't let it mislead you. This book is a very helpful guide to many aspects of organizational design and a better title, in my opinion, would be something like:- "Optimizing Your Organization For Your Customers"
Important insights into the learning organization........1999-03-22
This book reveals how to use knowledge residing in the company to transform organization and manage growth. It presents a model of organizational learning and development with four steps: craft, mass production, process enhancement, and mass customization. It explores the leveraging of four associated types of knowledge and presents a learning system for developing organizational knowledge. Provides important insights the learning organization.
Wakes you up to the importance of Knowledge Management........1998-10-12
A well written book to help you understand how to develop your company's business along the "right path"to deliver higher customer value. The format and language of the book make it a joy to read. The concrete examples from both service and product industries are very useful.
The keys to corporate success are in the corporation!.......1998-06-30
Too many managers look to external consultants to provide the keys to their organization's success. Was it quality circles, TQM, or re-engineering you last tried as a way to rejuventate your struggling organzation? Victor and Boynton suggest you save your money and focus within. Their logical process of analysis and implementation will help your firm on the "right path" to organizational success.
The process demands that firms think clearly and carefully about who they are and what business they are in compared to what their customers really want. This analysis helps a firm determine if it should compete on the basis of novelty, commodity, quality, or precision. The choice made suggests that craft work, mass production, process enhancement, or mass customization provides the best strategy to meet those customer demands. Achieving these strategies can only occur as a firm moves from craft work, through mass production and process enhancement to mass customization via the "right path."
In an engaging combination of personal insight and case examples, the authors lead the reader along the "path." They offer numerous stories of organizations around the world that have followed this "path" to organizational success.
Don't let the reletive brevity of their effort mislead you. The ideas they propose should force the thoughful manager into careful and thoughful consideration of the firm's current structure, products, and processes. If the analysis suggests that changes are warranted, then Victor and Boynton's guidebook along the "right path" will prove well worth the initial investment.
A thoughtful, creative tour de force in a field littered with lightweight, feel-good competitors. Enjoy!
Average customer rating:
- Refreshing And About Time
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Customer Service for Profitability
Larry Swaton
Manufacturer: Not Avail
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Customer Service
| Industries & Professions
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
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Total Quality Management
| Management & Leadership
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
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All Amazon Upgrade
| Amazon Upgrade
| Stores
| Books
Business & Investing
| Amazon Upgrade
| Stores
| Books
ASIN: 1412000874 |
Book Description
The book covers customer service from a strategy viewpoint. It starts as the product is being developed and continues through the product life cycle. It covers planning, marketing, maintenance, training, documentation, staffing, technical support, warranty, contracts, accounting, logistics, inventory, leadership, field service and collecting action. It is a chess game to put them together as a system.
Customer Reviews:
Refreshing And About Time.......2003-11-12
I had the pleasure of working for Larry Swaton in both a manufacturing and field service capacity for a number of years. It is refreshing to see a return to the basics of good service. It CAN be done profitably in the short and long term. I'm so glad that Larry is still out there selling the gospel of the one true service religion.
Average customer rating:
- An excellent coverage of a new business marketing method
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Integrated Account Management: How Business-To-Business Marketers Maximize Customer Loyalty and Profitability
Mark A. Peck
Manufacturer: AMACOM
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
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Key Account Management and Planning: The Comprehensive Handbook for Managing Your Company's Most Important Strategic Asset
ASIN: 0814403336 |
Book Description
Business-to-business marketing has become fiercely competitive and chaotic. Smart marketers and sales professionals are learning an exciting and profitable new way to find and keep customers in this difficult environment.
Integrated Account Management features a proactive and personal approach that creates mutually beneficial customer relationships (and makes every customer profitable).
With more than 90 charts, resources, and case studies, the book shows how to:
** pinpoint appropriate customers for the IAM system
** hire and train an account management team
** conduct workshops (to discover what customers value in a contact)
** build customer-contact plans at all levels
** measure customer loyalty
Customer Reviews:
An excellent coverage of a new business marketing method.......1998-10-18
In Integrated Account Management, Mark Peck provides a complete guide to installation of a highly profitable system for building customer relationships in a business to business environment. IAM has been used by: - An automotive aftermarket business to turn an $8 million loss into a $400,000 profit in one year - A technology company to create a new sales channel with a 4-1 return on operating expenses - A high-tech company to generate a doubling of sales in one year with no increase in the size of the sales force. Mark Peck is Executive Vice President of Hunter Business Direct. Drawing on experience from such clients as Monsanto, BellSouth, Hewlett Packard, AMOCO and Shell Oil, Peck defines and explains what IAM is and how it can be installed and measured.
Integrated account measurement allows each account manager to manage relationships with customers in ways that are cost effective and profitable. IAM is proactive: it is not a system that waits for the customer to call you. IAM involves high levels of productivity through careful planning of customer contacts. IAM treats account managers as if they were small business owners. They: - Own the relationships with their customers - Plan their customer contacts - Segment their customers by profitability and risk of defection - Work to understand their customer's needs - Use a customer database as a primary customer knowledge tool - Invest in customers based on their worth - Sell by not selling - Let the customer decide the contact medium that they prefer
This book is an essential tool for companies that want to set up an organized system to maximize sales and profits in the most cost effective way, that will guarantee long term customer retention. Review by Arthur Hughes, Executive VIce President of ACS, Inc. He is the author of The Complete Database Marketer (McGraw Hill 1996) and Strategic Database Marketing (McGraw Hill 1994). You may reach Arthur at DBMarkets@aol.com.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Fleet Equipment, published by Maple Communications on August 1, 2004. The length of the article is 880 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: ABC managing customer profitability: activity-based costing strategies provide truckload and less-than-truckload carriers with the tools to become profitable.(activity-based costing )
Author: Kenneth Manning
Publication:
Fleet Equipment (Magazine/Journal)
Date: August 1, 2004
Publisher: Maple Communications
Volume: 30
Issue: 8
Page: S8(2)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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