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If companies served up e-mail right, consumers would beg for it, says Hans Peter Brøndmo, founder of Post Communications.

Short article highlighting growing strategic importance of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and the results of a Cap Gemini/IDC study on the matter

Interview with Mercer Management Consulting's David Bovet and Joseph Martha (authors of book titled 'Value Nets: Breaking the Supply Chain to Unlock Hidden Profits') elicited five value propositions that are reshaping the relationships between companies and their customers.

article discusses companies that don't answer email

Article discusses results of a study on e-tailer loyalty with some interesting findings; of course, since it is from The Standard, there are some great metrics to take away (you can also find them summarized in the MBA depot Market Research section)

These days, it seems that both traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers and online "e-tailers" are drowning in a sea of customer information, including data from online transactions, point-of-service scanners, membership programs and even sensor chips on shopping carts. The question is, with all this sophisticated technology on hand, why have department store markdowns over the last 20 years grown from 8% to 33% of sales? And why are customers still going away dissatisfied because what they want isn't in stock? In an article entitled "Rocket Science Retailing Is Almost Here - Are You Ready?" in the July-August 2000 issue of the Harvard Business Review, Wharton operations professor Marshall Fisher and two co-authors take a hard look at why many retailers are "awash in data but starved for information."

Note: Business 2.0 is now part of CNNmoney and some older articles are no longer available

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This article describes how the hype surrounding one-to-one marketing has been anything but deserved. It also examines the technologies that were supposed to deliver on the promise of one-to-one, but haven't yet replaced the human touch (incl. profiling, email, dynamic content, data mining, and collaborative filtering). Online and offline privacy issues are also discussed.

Despite a tough year for online retailers, many observers still believe that online sites are an economically efficient medium because of their ability to draw millions of customers to browse through thousands of products. But just how and when do online visitors become online purchasers? A new Wharton research paper entitled, "Which Visits Lead to Purchases?: Dynamic Conversion Behavior at E-Commerce Sites," analyzes conversion rates based on visit and purchase data at Amazon.com and offers a conversion model to better understand the buying process.

InformationWeek research shows the move toward personalizing customer communications. See their charts for more specific details

Online stores look for new ways to get and stay closer to their customers.

Wharton marketing professor Barbara Kahn writes about the importance of turning customers into advocates who will not only develop loyalty to your company's product or service but will also spread the word to other potential buyers. The article discusses the concepts of customer portfolio management and relationship marketing.

In an article on Nov. 13, in the Financial Times' Mastering Management series, Wharton operations and information management professor Eric Clemons and Wharton Ph.D. student Michael Row note the critical importance of consumer behavior in establishing a web retailing strategy. The two researchers look at the type of relationship between buyer and seller, the scope of goods and services linking buyer and seller, and the four competitive landscapes that result from the interplay of these forces.

Note: Darwin Magazine is now dead. Some articles are moving to CIO. I will try to update the links when I have time...

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Are there nattering nabobs of negativism you aren't aware of in the chat rooms and on the message boards? Are rating and review services like BizRate, Gomez Advisors and Open Ratings chiseling away at your once-solid, once-gleaming reputation? This article discusses why you ought to regularly convene a team to conduct Internet reputation management.

Marketing too often concentrates on promotion ignoring the all important "P" - people. To see how customer focused your organization is check out this short article.

And customers couldn't be happier. Why flat rates and fixed prices rule.

Article looks at the customer management software market, its players, and its implications.

This article examines a new artificial intelligence based virtual customer service solution known as a chatterbot.

Help desks deal with all types of users, and one tech has finally created a classification system that Darwin himself would be proud of. Here's a lighthearted look at the users you love to serve but who often drive you mad.

Studies by groups ranging from the Council of Better Business Bureaus Inc. to the University of Michigan vividly detail what consumers already know: Good service is increasingly rare (charts). From passengers languishing in airport queues to bank clients caught in voice-mail hell, most consumers feel they're getting squeezed by Corporate America's push for profits and productivity. The result is more efficiencies for companies - and more frustration for their less valuable customers.

Welcome to the new consumer apartheid. Those long lines and frustrating telephone trees aren't always the result of companies simply not caring about pleasing the customer anymore. Increasingly, companies have made a deliberate decision to give some people skimpy service because that's all their business is worth.

One of the most significant developments in the practice of marketing is the shift in emphasis to customer relationship management from a transaction orientation. There are ten forms of relationship marketing that can be grouped into the relational exchanges involving suppliers, lateral organizations, customers or one's own employees or business units. The need for relationship marketing stems from the changing dynamics of the global marketplace and the expanding requirements for competitive success. Obviously, the marketer's objective is to eventually maximize the dollar value of transactions. Rather than attacking that objective through the classical avenues of product, price, place, and promotion, marketers through relationships view the customer as a primary asset. That asset should be cultivated and grown in order to reduce the effects of ever-increasing competition and potential pressure on pricing

...Not all opinions and research rush to support the merits of relationship marketing. Research reveals a tide of discontent from those outside marketing, finding marketers to be less than productive for the compensation they receive. Opinions from those viewing marketing from a distance indicate that marketers should eliminate their obsession with loving customers since it has become a distraction from the basics of selling and tracking the origins of sales success.

This is the second part of a two-part series on supply chain customer loyalty. Interesting issues addressed include the difference between satisfaction and loyalty and the correlation between employee loyalty and customer loyalty.

Sector? Application? Philosophy? All of the above and yet none of the above, "customer relationship management," or CRM, is one of the past couple years' most talked about -- and most hazily defined -- concepts.

For a more detailed investigation of this topic, see:
http://www.mbadepot.com/links/links.php?ID=872

A well-constructed customer survey can provide a wealth of vital consumer information. John Coldwell offers advice on the fine art of satisfaction polling.

Companies hope that by linking Web sites and call centers, they'll improve customer loyalty, attract new business, and cut costs. Those are all compelling reasons. But another driver behind the Web call center is more persuasive: Customers want it.
A Web call center can improve customer service and retention by providing a variety of self-care applications online, then backing up that convenience with the ability to communicate with a person in the call center. Furthermore, handling contact with less-strategic customers via the Web and the Internet can free agents to provide costly hands-on care to a company's most profitable customers.

Article discusses the trends and issues involving distributing and/or outsourcing customer call centers.

Bad customer service is one of the universal -- and unifying -- experiences of being an American in the 21st century. But is customer service really worse than it used to be?

Who has more product knowledge: 10,000 workers or 1 million customers?

Michael Hammer says forget the Internet - the real new economy is all about the customer. He offers four specific steps to take to turn customer focus from a slogan into reality:
1. Define the company's business proposition in customer terms.
2. Design all business processes and their supporting systems from the customer's point of view.
3. Present a single face to the customer.
4. Implement and use measurements that reflect what is important to the customer.

"Innovation 100: The Customer is a listing of the most innovative companies in building profitable and successful customer relationships. We offer stories analyzing the business and IT practices of some of the businesses in this year's listing. You can also view the entire list of all 100 companies ranked from one to 100. And to see how your organization's customer strategies compare against the entire class of Innovation 100 organizations, and its vertical industry peers, check out the InformationWeek and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Innovation 100: The Customer Benchmarking Tool."

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