The Customer Revolution - Hardcover

Seybold, Patricia B.; Marshak, Ronni T.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0609607723 ISBN 13: 9780609607725

Publisher: Crown Business, 2001

Synopsis

You are no longer in control of your company's destiny . . .

It happened in the music business and it will happen in yours. It's only a matter of time. Customers actually take control of an industry and reshape it from the outside in. Customers decide that the way they want to use an industry's product doesn't fit the current business model.

Patricia Seybold, author of the influential, bestselling Customers.com would say that that's a revolution. Thanks to the Internet and to mobile wireless devices, both business and consumer customers are demanding that you change your pricing structure, distribution channels, and the way you design and deliver products and services. Your business must be transformed so that it is completely customer-centric, or you will be out of business.

Her advice to companies facing the customer revolution? You can fight it if you want, just as Don Quixote fought imaginary windmills and thought he was winning battles. But naturally he lost the war and so will you. Better, says Seybold, to practice "sweet surrender," just as the music industry has started to come to terms with Napster. In the words of one music executive, "Thirty-eight million people can't be criminals."

Many try to characterize the changes taking place as the New Economy, the Internet economy, or the information, knowledge, or bio-economy. There's a grain of truth to all of these descriptions, but they fail to get to the heart of the changes taking place. Simply put, what we now have is a customer economy and it's going to result in changes that you would not have thought possible even a few short years ago.

Patricia Seybold has been on a worldwide quest to find the companies in North America, Europe, and Asia that are developing the state-of-the-art practices that will help them win in the new era of the customer economy. They're profiled and analyzed in case studies ranging from small businesses to multinational giants and range from manufacturers to retailers, and service firms. They include financial services giant Charles Schwab, the British Vauxhall Division of General Motors, Snap-on Tools, custom backpack manufacturer Timbuk2, Hewlett-Packard, Medscape, and W.W. Grainger.

As she so ably demonstrated in Customers.com, Patricia Seybold is ahead of the curve. For most companies, the issue of customers in control is just coming onto the radar screen. In The Customer Revolution Seybold makes it plain that this can be either your biggest problem or your greatest opportunity. What she provides is not only a brilliant analysis but also a practical program for how you can make the customer revolution a profitable one. The companies that thrive in the customer revolution will be those that measure and monitor what matters to customers, in near real time.

About this title

Review:

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 the Back Cover:

"Think you're in charge of your company's future? Not so fast. Patricia Seybold proves that the wealth embedded in customer relationships is now far more important than all the capital contained in your firm's land, buildings, and bank accounts. Then she crafts a smart and solid plan for untangling the tricky puzzle of finding, attracting, and keeping the savviest buyers the world has ever seen."
-- James Daly, editor in chief, Business 2.0

"As offline and online businesses blend, the ability to build deep customer relationships equates to long-term survival. Patricia Seybold explains why and how to 'play to profit.' "
-- Chris McCann, president, 1-800-FLOWERS.com

"Wherever repeated transactions represent the core rhythm of a business, management must focus on the lifetime value of its customers and the company's programs for creating and sustaining customer loyalty. The Web simply makes this imperative even more urgent. The Customer Revolution makes great use of war stories and case examples to guide us all in seeing just how to address this critical issue."
-- Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm and Living on the Fault Line

"Patricia Seybold provides practical guidance on how to make customer loyalty the centerpiece of your company's strategy. She not only shares the logic, but also gives real-world examples of how to make it a reality."
-- John R. Samuel, Vice President e-Business, American Airlines

"Understanding and managing customer relationships lie at the core of how companies are defining strategy, measuring profitability, and creating competitive advantage. Patricia Seybold details how to begin doing this in your company immediately."
-- Jeet Singh, CEO, Art Technology Group

"Patricia Seybold details the steps you and I must follow to transform customer capital into shareowner value in her compelling, convincing new book."
-- C. Patrick Garner, CEO, The Motley Fool, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown Business
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0609607723
• ISBN 13: 9780609607725
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416