Customers.com: How to Create a Profitable Business Strategy for the Internet and Beyond - Hardcover

Patricia B. Seybold; Ronni T. Marshak

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812930371 ISBN 13: 9780812930375

Publisher: Crown Business, 1998

Synopsis

Patricia Seybold is one of the few people with the credentials and experience to write the one book on electronic commerce everyone in business must read. Seybold has advised major companies not only on the technical requirements for a successful electronic commerce strategy, but also on the management, marketing, sales, and customer support systems necessary to create an infra-structure that seamlessly blends a company's e-commerce initiative with its overall business.

It all starts with customers. For the past several years, Seybold has been working with electronic commerce pioneers who have made life easier for their customers by figuring out what they want and designing their Internet strategy accordingly. Seybold's guide is packed with insights on how both Fortune 500 giants and smaller companies have created e-commerce initiatives that place them well ahead of their competitors. Some examples:


National Semiconductor made huge improvements to its bottom line by targeting the right customers (not always the ones who make the final buying decision) on its Web site.

Hertz coordinated its e-commerce strategy with its entire business so that it is now head and shoulders above its competitors in owning the customer's total experience.

The National Science Foundation streamlined its customers' business processes by involving all stakeholders in the development of its Web strategy.

Wells Fargo provides its customer sales and service representatives with a 360-degree view of its customers, providing one-stop shopping via the Web and making its on-line banking services the fastest-
growing part of the company.

iPrint transformed a commodity business by using the Web to let customers help themselves in designing the end product exactly as they want it.

Boeing designed its Web site to help customers do their jobs more effectively.

Dow Jones delivered personalized service with its electronic version of The Wall Street Journal, showing that customers will pay for information of value on the Internet.

Tripod grew from a start-up to a company with over a million members by fostering a vibrant on-line community.

With additional in-depth examples from American Airlines, Amazon.com, Babson College, Bell Atlantic, Dell Computer, PhotoDisc, General Motors, and Cisco Systems, Customers.com is an exceptionally rich source of ideas and information: the one book you need to stay in business in the rapidly changing era of electronic commerce.

About this title

About the Author

Patricia B. Seybold is the founder and CEO of the Boston-based Patricia Seybold Group, a worldwide business and technology consulting firm. Its clients include Amazon, Ameritech, Arthur Andersen, Citibank, Clorox, GE, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, and Warburg Pincus.

From the Back Cover

"In the Net economy, business issues and technology issues go hand in hand. Patricia Seybold's insightful book shows how companies can use technology to streamline business processes and keep customers coming back for more." --James L. Barksdale, president and CEO, Netscape

"Terrifically useful. If you have any interest in implementing a Web site for e-commerce, you really must read this book." --Geoffrey Moore, author, Inside the Tornado and The Gorilla Game

"Even if you're very, very good at being a dinosaur, you're still extinct. Patty's excellent prescriptions bring you right into the Interactive Age. A must-read if you expect to make a profit a year from now." --Martha Rogers, co-author, The One to One Future and Enterprise One to One

"Customers.com hits the core issue of e-business head on. A very informative, fun, and easy read." --Gideon Sasson, executive vice president, online brokerage, Charles Schwab

"This is the book for creating a serious Web strategy! I'm going to give copies to all my friends who are extending their businesses to the Internet." --Bill Joy, co-founder and vice president of research, Sun Microsystems

"The case studies in Customers.com are a treasure trove of insights into the real-world challenges facing anyone seeking to do business on the Internet. . . . Excellent reading for executives, producers, and technical managers alike." --Joel Ball, director, business intelligence, Disney Online

"Seybold reveals the secrets for profit in the digital economy with laser-like principles and practical tips." --Nicholas Rudd, chief knowledge officer, Wunderman Cato Johnson

"Patty Seybold has nailed it right on the head. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to prosper in the next generation of business." --Irving Wladawsky-Berger, general manager, Internet Division, IBM

From the Inside Flap

bold is one of the few people with the credentials and experience to write the one book on electronic commerce everyone in business must read. Seybold has advised major companies not only on the technical requirements for a successful electronic commerce strategy, but also on the management, marketing, sales, and customer support systems necessary to create an infra-structure that seamlessly blends a company's e-commerce initiative with its overall business. <br><br>It all starts with customers. For the past several years, Seybold has been working with electronic commerce pioneers who have made life easier for their customers by figuring out what they want and designing their Internet strategy accordingly. Seybold's guide is packed with insights on how both Fortune 500 giants and smaller companies have created e-commerce initiatives that place them well ahead of their competitors. Some examples:<br><br><br>National Semiconductor made huge improvements to its bottom line by <b>targeti

Reviews

Aiming her debut at both executives and the technologists who carry out their dictums, consultant Seybold consolidates a wealth of information on how to link businesses to the Internet and other electronic tools. Her "five steps to success" in electronic commerce?"Make it easy for customers to do business with you" and "Redesign your customer-facing business processes from the end customer's point of view," to name two?are confirmed by a compilation of 16 case studies illustrating "eight critical success factors," including knowing the target market, giving customers room to browse and making service more personalized. Tales from the Webbing of American Airlines, National Semiconductor, Hertz, Amazon.com and Bell Atlantic, among others, make the book's basic messages seem inescapable, though at a cost of much built-in redundancy, as they crop up in a myriad of contexts. Going beyond screen-based issues, Seybold shows how billing for electronic commerce or the integration of third-party business can tip the scales toward on-line profitability. The final "handbook" outlines general prescriptions for planning and implementation. While much of the detail about particular Web sites will be outdated before long, of more lasting value are the lessons regarding insightful marketing, innovations and just good business sense?regardless of medium. Illustrations not seen by PW. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Marketing on the Internet has become a hot topic and is becoming a big business, but Seybold goes beyond the idea of using the Internet as a marketing tool. She is founder and CEO of a "strategic-technology" consulting group that conducted more than 300 seminars and workshops last year. She is also the editor and coauthor of McGraw-Hill's Seybold Series on Professional Computing, which now includes five titles. Seybold argues that Internet commerce must be part of a broader strategy that "embraces all the ways you let customers do business with you electronically" and that business processes throughout the organization must be redesigned. She identifies five steps to success in electronic commerce, and using 16 case studies and summarizing current best practices, she examines eight critical success factors. Seybold also provides a handbook for implementing her strategy, which includes an executive's guide and "organizational road map" for making necessary changes, a "technology road map," and a workshop outline for introducing the concept to employees. David Rouse

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Provide a 360-Degree View of the Customer Relationship

In order to be successful in electronic commerce, everyone who touches the customer needs to be able to see the total picture-a 360-degree view-of that customer's relationship with your firm. Many organizations are currently embarked on relationship management initiatives. Yet when you examine these efforts closely, you usually find that they are addressing only one or two aspects of the customer's relationship with the organization. For example, companies typically streamline and automate the sales process. Or they focus on help desk processes. Occasionally, an insightful organization might combine the two processes and their underlying systems and data. In that case, a salesperson can be made aware of an outstanding service issue with the customer he's wooing, or a service rep would know just how valuable this particular customer is to the firm.

But even this doesn't go far enough. There are still any number of customer interactions not addressed by salespeople or help desks. For example, exactly who does a customer call with questions about a bill, when a delivery hasn't taken place, or when he has an idea for a new product or feature he could use?

Here's an example: I mentioned the evolution of Microsoft's customer database strategy earlier. Now let's look at how Microsoft is instilling this 360-degree approach for everyone who works with its enterprise accounts. Today, Microsoft provides each of its very large "enterprise" customers with its own set of Web pages. This is where Microsoft consolidates everything it knows about the account, not only in terms of software and systems installed and on order, but also regarding competitive situations (where the customer might be considering solutions from another vendor), possible strategic or tactical initiatives that the customer is considering implementing, and the customer's up-to-the-minute service records.

While the customer's account manager "owns" this customer Web site, key executives, such as Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, will consult this database before they interact with any accounts. Key consulting partners may be offered access to this information in exchange for entering their client engagement notes on the site (providing rewards on both sides for sharing the information). The benefit to customers is that they feel they are being served by "one Microsoft," even though there may be hundreds of different interactions with the company each month.

The enterprise customer and her team of professionals also have access to their own view of this customized Web site. They can view and modify their own contact profiles as well as update the records on their information systems infrastructure, and they can ask for assistance. This account-centric Web site is where key members of the customer's team can go to check on the delivery status of products ordered, request technical support, check on the status of a service call, or ask for background information on new products. It's the customers' window into their relationship with Microsoft.

What should you be thinking about in planning your own "customer-surround" strategy? To truly provide a complete 360-degree view of your relationship with your customers, you'll want to:



Provide one-stop shopping for the customer.
"Remember" everything your company knows about the customer.
Ensure that everyone in the company has access to the complete customer picture.
Put an underlying technical infrastructure into place to provide a 360-degree view.

Edition details

• Publisher: Crown Business
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0812930371
• ISBN 13: 9780812930375
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384