629 Posts Found

The doughnut or the celery stick … go to a party, or study for an exam…. take the apartment close to the office, or the one with the stunning view and accept the nightmare daily commute. It might seem a given that most of us base our consumer choices between more overtly pleasurable, hedonic options and more practical, utilitarian concerns. But most pioneering work in … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Klaus Wertenbroch | Source: INSEAD Knowledge | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

Most electronic forms of interactions do not delight customers, but they have a great potential to destroy brand equity if they fail. For example, after 20 years automated teller machines (ATMs) do not please us very much, but they irritate us when they are down for service. While Web sites may provide some delight today, they will probably be the same as ATMs in the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Mercer Management Journal | Subjects: Brand, Customer Related

Most market research, while useful in traditional marketing contexts, is inappropriate and misleading for strategy development; it is the wrong data collected for a different purpose and therefore answers the wrong questions. Traditional market research targets current customers with questions about marketing and tactical issues, usually with the goal of incremental improvements.

If customers could tell us what a strategy should be, there would be little … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Mercer Management Journal | Subjects: Customer Related, Market Research

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CRM and the forces impeding its success are both growing up: early problems that mostly concerned technology and the misaligned goals of different organizations within the same company are giving way to perennial organizational challenges. Companies are increasingly getting the business-alignment and technology issues right, but many must still tackle the hardest challenge of all: motivating organizations and making them accountable for results.

Content: Article | Authors: Anupam Agarwal, David P. Harding, Jeffrey R. Schumacher | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Customer Related, Organizational Behavior

We think of a medium as a thing that delivers content. But the delivered content is a medium in itself. The many forms of content we collect and experience online are really just forms of ammunition, an excuse to start a discussion with that attractive person in the next cubicle…

That’s why the most successful TV shows, Websites, and music recordings are generally the ones … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Business 2.0 | Subjects: Communication, Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

While markets are competitive, competition works more slowly than we sometimes assume, i.e. customers can be slow to shift allegiance. This, however, is less a result of positive loyalty than of sheer inertia which means that customers put up with unsatisfactory products and services to a remarkable degree.

Content: Quotation | Source: Emerald Now | Subjects: Competition, Customer Related

The Johari Window, a concept from 1950s psychology can elevate contemporary customer relationship programs.

Content: Article | Authors: David Moloney, Robert Bustos-McNeil | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

Customers’ trust in an organization results in their being more receptive to advertising and marketing messages and, as a result, more interested in purchasing products and services. Finally there’s proof.

Content: Article | Author: Larry Ponemon | Source: Darwin Magazine | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

When you do a good job of fixing a customer service problem, you often earn more customer loyalty than if there had been no problem to begin with. Jonathan Byrnes details how to show your worth and earn your customer’s trust.

Content: Article | Author: Jonathan Byrnes | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Customer Related, Management

Customer loyalty is often viewed in terms of the strength of the relationship that a brand enjoys with the customer. This is definitely true in mass markets, now termed B2C. However, in the B2B space there is another component that is equally important and that is the relationship between the people involved in the transaction.

Content: Article | Author: N. Ramasubramani | Source: CEO Refresher | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

Many companies are keenly interested in learning how they can find out what their customers really want. But discovering what customers really want is far from simple. Arthur D. Little has done considerable work in this area, and from that work the authors have distilled several observations about how to classify customer needs, how to probe for them, and how to organize internally in order … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Albert C. Chen, James F. Reider, P. Ranganath Nayak | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

The heart of CRM is not being customer centric but rather using customer profitability as a driver for decision making and action.

Content: Quotation | Source: TechnologyEvaluation.com | Subjects: Customer Related, IT / Technology / E-Business

More and more companies around the world understand the importance of really knowing how their customers and prospects view their organizations. They also realize that viewpoints can change quickly.

So how do you keep informed of your customers’ opinions? How do you know they’re continually satisfied? How do you know that they value your company? Or that they feel appreciated?

Gathering this data objectively, accurately … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Angi Fisher | Source: MarketingProfs | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

Attracting, satisfying and retaining customers in the ever-changing e-commerce arena requires a flexible but lightning-quick customer care center.

Content: Article | Author: Dennis Bloomquist | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Customer Related, IT / Technology / E-Business

The pace of change and proliferation of product and service alternatives have overwhelmed traditional service models. For centuries, the model for outstanding customer service has been the concierge, which translated into a single point of contact. Each individual and entity has a point of entry to the enterprise that’s aligned with the products and services that represent normative interests. Unfortunately, the world has become far … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Jay Williams, Walt DuLaney | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: Customer Related, IT / Technology / E-Business

HBS Professors Benson Shapiro and Kash Rangan bring us up to date on their pioneering research that helped ignite today’s intense focus on the customer. The key? Know your order cycle management.

Content: Article | Author: Sarah Jane Johnston | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Customer Related, Operations

Marketers are happy speaking their own language, replete with jargon like “awareness,” “share of requirements” and “customer satisfaction.” Such terminology works fine in the marketing department and with the advertising professionals who execute marketing plans. But there’s a translation problem between that language and the language of profitability and stock price which is the mother tongue of corporate CEOs. “CEOs want to know what a … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

Research shows that only 4% of dissatisfied customers ever bother to complain. Others just keep quiet. They may be putting up with an inferior product experience or silently shift to some other brand without a warning. What does this mean to the marketing manager?

Content: Article | Author: N. Ramasubramani | Source: CEO Refresher | Subject: Customer Related

Customer relationship management (CRM) represents a powerful and sophisticated set of software applications that are designed to leverage the efforts of customer-facing functions such as sales, marketing, and customer service. The CRM industry continues to flounder due to high costs and perceived high failure rates. Despite thousands of pages of analyst reports and hundreds of books written on the subject, the industry and the end … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Glen S. Petersen | Source: TechnologyEvaluation.com | Subjects: Customer Related, IT / Technology / E-Business