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It used to be that developing customer relationships in a mass-market economy didn't matter. All a successful company had to do was make products that people generally liked--build it and they would come. Patricia Seybold thinks those days are long gone. Thanks to the Internet, customers matter more than ever, and companies that don't get it simply won't make it. In
The Customer Revolution she writes, "For the first time in the history of modern business, it's now cost-effective for companies to establish relationships with each and every customer who wants us to know him."
Seybold outlines the principles of the "customer economy" and looks at 14 companies, including Charles Schwab, Snap-on, and Hewlett-Packard, who are in the process of refocusing their businesses to meet customer needs and expectations by measuring and running their businesses on metrics such as customer satisfaction, acquisition, retention rates, and wallet share. In the customer economy, building brand means more than creating a clever logo--it requires creating an "experience that your customers love." She offers up a set of practices--what she calls a "Customer Flight Deck"--that allows companies to monitor and tune the success of their customer contacts. Customer relationships are so important, Seybold believes that a new metric of corporate reporting will emerge alongside profit and loss, return on assets, and P/E ratios--one she calls a "Customer Value Index" designed to give investors the means to measure a company's performance by looking at the present and future value of its customer base. As with her previous book Customers.com, The Customer Revolution should be required reading for managers at any company--old or new--who are assessing the real impact of the Internet on their businesses. Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards
From Publishers Weekly
The quality of a company's customer relations with today's better informed, more demanding consumers will determine its future success, contends Seybold, a consultant and author of the bestselling Customer.com. "Thanks to the Internet and to mobile wireless devices... customers are challenging and disrupting the standard practices in virtually every industry.... They won't be denied. They have power and they know it," she writes, pointing to the music industry as an emblematic crucible of change. Variations on this argument have been proposed for more than a decade, but Seybold asserts that it holds true for all industries and throughout the world. To help managers capitalize on this inevitable shift, she lays out three "principles" ("Customers are in control"; "Customer relationships count" and "Customer experience matters"). Drawing on 14 case studies of companies from Charles Schwab, Hewlett-Packard and Tesco to Finland's largest bank and the apparel manufacturer Timbuk2 Designs, she also offers eight steps for achieving success in this new environment, such as "Create a compelling brand personality" and "Value customers' time." But like any true believer, Seybold tends to get carried away. She directly attributes the recent turmoil on Wall Street to an ongoing customer revolution though value investors might disagree and blithely predicts that in less than five years "investors will be actively assessing the quality of companies' customer relationships." Still, her worthwhile central points come through loud and clear, and her arguments could help frame future market debates. (Apr. 3)Forecast: Seybold's solid track record, a national print ad campaign in the Wall Street Journal and the Industry Standard and an NPR sponsorship should help this book garner strong sales.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
