629 Posts Found

When companies merge, they embark on seemingly minor changes that can make a big difference to customers, causing even the most loyal to reevaluate their relationship with the company. Numerous studies have found that more than half of all mergers fail to deliver the intended improvement in shareholder value. Customer defections contribute to that high failure rate. Integration decisions come with an inherent tradeoff: If … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Laura Miles, Ted Rouse | Source: Bain & Company | Subjects: Customer Related, Mergers & Acquisitions

If all you do is “empower the front line”—grant your employees more freedom to wow customers—they will almost certainly strike the wrong balance between customer delight and shareholder returns. The key to success in empowering frontline employees lies in giving them a framework within which to operate—and feedback about how they are performing within that framework.

Content: Article | Author: Rob Markey | Source: Bain & Company | Subjects: Customer Related, Management

What can companies do to help ensure long-term relationships with customers? How about reacting swiftly to unforeseen events? Or finding new ways to increase trust and transparency? Companies that keep customers may also market through customers’ own networks and excel at aligning messages and offerings with buyers’ values.

Content: Article | Source: Accenture | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

Many top companies are using or have adopted a Net Promoter® system to learn more about the quality of their relationships. A closed-loop feedback process can help businesses identify key clients, product features customers like or dislike, service opportunities and problems that need immediate attention. But these efforts can only go so far if the survey data is flawed by biased answers. Like a virus … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Frederick F. Reichheld, Rob Markey | Source: Bain & Company | Subject: Customer Related

Today’s marketing messages can be overpowered by input from uncontrolled sources like online customer reviews, social network friends and searchable expert opinions. To regain customer influence, consider developing a case-by-case understanding about whether to “confront and attack,” “retreat and redeploy,” “observe and learn” or “monitor from a distance.”

Content: Article | Authors: Joshua B. Bellin, Paul F. Nunes | Source: European Business Review | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

As part of a broader customer engagement strategy, social media can be an effective and cost-efficient marketing, sales, service, insight and retention tool. Our recent survey of more than 3,000 consumers helped to identify what makes social media effective.

Editor’s Note: this paper will likely become dated somewhat quickly, but some of the content seems to me of lasting value.

Content: Article | Authors: Chris Barry, Chris Brahm, Eric Almquist, Rob Markey | Source: Bain & Company | Subjects: Customer Related, Management, Marketing / Sales

Social psychologists have determined that primitive humans, in their struggle for existence, developed the ability to judge other people almost instantly along two categories of perception, which are known as warmth and competence. In fact, all humans have a primal, unconscious ability to make these two crucial judgments with a high degree of speed and accuracy: What are the intentions of this person toward me? … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Chris Malone | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

Great customer experiences produce great business results. Why don’t more companies try to win with customer experience? It’s a long, hard road, especially for companies that have neglected their customers. Turning that around requires energy and resources, and it takes time. But the journey is not mysterious, and the rewards are substantial. Our research and experience over the past several years have led us to … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Domenico Azzarello, Jeff Melton, Tom Springer | Source: Bain & Company | Subjects: Customer Related, Management

New evidence shows how a strong customer culture drives future business performance and supports market strategies. Our research, based on a quantitative study across more than 150 businesses, spanning various industries and functions, identifies seven cultural factors that drive customer satisfaction, revenue and profit growth, innovation, and new product success. They can be measured and benchmarked for any organization.

Content: Article | Author: Linden R. Brown | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Best Practices, Customer Related, Organizational Behavior

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What is it about a piece of content—an article, a picture, a video—that takes it from simply interesting to interesting and shareable? What pushes someone not only to read a story but to pass it on? Jonah Berger has been studying these questions.

Content: Article | Author: Maria Konnikova | Source: The New Yorker | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

If a hard asset like a machine is somehow impaired, a CFO must reflect the asset’s lower value on the books. The same applies to a contract or piece of software. If customers, on the other hand, suddenly decide they hate doing business with your company, this asset is clearly impaired—but the CFO may not even know about it until too late. And even if … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Frederick F. Reichheld, Rob Markey | Source: Bain & Company | Subjects: Accounting, Customer Related, Finance

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Historically, the vast majority of customer feedback was anonymous. It was collected in a “market research mode,” which meant no one could follow up with individual customers to address their issues directly. The flawed logic behind this was built on a belief that customers would not share honest feedback unless their identity was kept secret. That might be true in some circumstances, but in my … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Rob Markey | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Customer Related

Some people believe that a leader should delight every customer. Others argue for eliminating defects in products and interactions, or reducing the effort customers spend in dealing with a company. We think these arguments miss the point. Delight, quality and reduced effort may all be part of the package, but the goal of change has to be the creation of promoters. They are the customers … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Domenico Azzarello, Jeff Melton, Tom Springer | Source: Bain & Company | Subject: Customer Related

A customer’s path to purchase used to be linear. Now the journey is dynamic, accessible and continuous. Marketing executives need a new model that can help them become and remain relevant to their customers in this uncharted environment.

Content: Article | Authors: Olivier Schunck, Paul F. Nunes, Robert E. Wollan | Source: Outlook Journal (Accenture) | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

Some companies seem to want to hear from their customers-that’s why they spend so much money on elaborate feedback systems. But the approach many of these companies take seems to ensure nobody in the organization will learn anything from what they hear. And if employees don’t learn anything, how can they take action to make things better? Here are some of the tactics companies use … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Rob Markey | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Customer Related

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The Accenture 2011 Global Consumer Research Study identifies key trends in consumer attitudes and behaviors underlying an increasingly challenging marketplace. The research also suggests five potential blind spots that, when not recognized and addressed, may be hindering companies’ abilities to successfully engage with customers in today’s uncertain economy. Accenture provides actions that companies can take to help address these blind spots, attract and retain customers … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Accenture | Subject: Customer Related

Companies can’t afford to lose hard-won customers, but in truth some are more important to keep than others. Recent research by Sunil Gupta and Aurélie Lemmens explains how to find them.

Content: Article | Author: Sunil Gupta | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales