629 Posts Found

Consumers want to communicate, but it seems most marketers haven’t figured out how to listen.

Content: Quotation | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

The challenge of managing a customer’s experience comes from the fact that it happens out on the front lines of the company. In many cases, few employees know firsthand what is happening to customers. More frequently, managers who are making major decisions on new investments or process redesign have little idea of the end-to-end impact those decisions will have on the customer experience.

Content: Quotation | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

The need to forgo customer input, so to speak, may be the most disheartening premise of a successful radical innovation journey. Granted, listening to the customer is the fundamental driver of short-term business performance. But doing so also narrows eyesight and leads to fatal inertia when markets or technologies shift. Today’s customer preferences have no inherent predictive value for tomorrow’s markets. Radical innovation asks for … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Customer Related, Innovation

When consumers have a bad shopping experience, they are likely to spread the word, not to the store manager or salesperson, but to friends, family and colleagues. Overall, if 100 people have a bad experience, a retailer stands to lose between 32 and 36 current or potential customers. These are some of the conclusions of The Retail Customer Dissatisfaction Study 2006, conducted by The Jay … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Customer Related, Industry Specific | Industry: Retail

Some marketers may shy away from measuring the Net Promoter Score because it sounds too complex. But others are not daunted. To show how it is done, a Bain & Company team used the approach to quantify the value of promoters and detractors in the personal-computer business. The team used only publicly available data so that what it did could serve as a model for … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Frederick F. Reichheld | Source: Bain & Company | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

The experience of using a product changes the equation underlying consumers’ preferences. People initially choose products that do not maximize their long-term satisfaction because different considerations are salient in expected and experienced utility. Put simply, what looks attractive in prospect does not necessarily look good in practice.

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

You may think you know why your customers buy from you, but there’s a good chance they buy for reasons other than the reasons you think. Or they don’t buy for reasons that may escape you.

Content: Article | Author: Jay Conrad Levinson | Source: Guerrilla Marketing | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

In the era of CRM and customer-centric business models, Porter’s approaches do not serve the company adequately, because they do not talk to the issue of competitive advantage that comes from one-to-one relationships.

Content: Quotation | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Customer Related, Strategy

An expert on customers explains why appealing to simple human emotion beats neuromarketing in the race to revenue. And he has the pictures to prove it.

Content: Article | Author: John Fleming | Source: Gallup Management Journal | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

Everyone says it’s very important. Everyone wants to do it well, because their reputation depends on it. And most executives think they’re a lot better at it than they are. The subject isn’t sex, or even golf. It’s customer service. Every company that sells something – by definition, every company – says that service matters, but these days the maxim that retailers live by is … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: James Krohe Jr. | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subject: Customer Related

Your customers do not buy because they’re being marketed to or sold to. Instead, they buy because you help them realize the merits of owning what you offer.

Content: Quotation | Source: Guerrilla Marketing | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

There are usually two implicit assumptions in the most enthusiastic proposals for embracing CRM: that the customer wants a relationship with the company, and that this system will make the customer better off. Neither assumption is accurate.

Content: Quotation | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

Increasingly, firms are aspiring to become customer centric. Relatively few have made significant progress; many simply pay lip service to “the slogan.” Are you prepared to “walk the talk?” If so, you will benefit from the following overview of a highly pragmatic approach to embarking on the journey to becoming customer centric.

Content: Article | Author: Craig Bailey | Source: LeaderValues | Subject: Customer Related

As many executives embrace the idea of a true “single version of the truth” about their customers, they face the fact that their data warehouse and CRM systems, however successful, haven’t reached this goal.

Content: Article | Author: Jill Dych&eacute | Sources: Baseline Consulting, BetterManagement.com | Subjects: Customer Related, IT / Technology / E-Business

No two clıents are the same. Your servıces shouldn’t be, either.

Content: Article | Author: David H. Freedman | Source: Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

We know very well today how to measure customer satisfaction. What most companies do not have is a way to make the link between customer satisfaction and the bottom line.

Content: Quotation | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subject: Customer Related

Many companies fundamentally misconceive how their customers perceive product quality. For instance, a typical company breaks down the different processes that lead to the sale – product design, manufacturing, and the rest – into discrete operations for purposes of budget and management. But the consumer doesn’t, and he sees anything that detracts from his experience of using a product as a defect. Service is an … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subject: Customer Related

Ran Kivetz and Itamar Simonson have embarked on a broad research effort to understand why customers join loyalty programs and how they use them. They recently completed a paper that examined how the amount of effort consumers must expend to get a reward-how many miles, points, or purchases they must accumulate-affects the types of rewards they prefer. Kivetz and Simonson found that the more … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Itamar Simonson, Ran Kivetz | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

Just like hitting a baseball, timing is everything when talking to your customer. If you don’t provide the right message using the right delivery vehicle at the right time, chances are your customer is going to ignore your hard-crafted pitch. In an article in the November issue of Harvard Business Review, authors Kirthi Kalyanam and Monte Zweben envision a computer-based model called “dialogue marketing” that … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Kirthi Kalyanam, Monte Zweben | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

Most companies assume they’re consistently giving customers what they want. Usually, they’re kidding themselves. When we recently surveyed 362 firms, we found that 80% believed they delivered a “superior experience” to their customers. But when we then asked customers about their own perceptions, we heard a very different story.

Content: Article | Authors: Barney Hamilton, Frederick F. Reichheld, James Allen, Rob Markey | Source: Bain & Company | Subjects: Best Practices, Customer Related