Secrets of Customer
Relationship Management
IN TODAYS WORLD of
multinationals and superstores, small businesses continue to survive and thrive by
establishing and maintaining genuine, personal relationships with their customers based on
each customer's unique personality, needs, wants, and expectations. Many of today's large
organizations feel this type of interpersonal relationship is beyond their grasp, and
therefore don't even try to understand the deeply held thoughts and feelings of their
customers. The resulting customer base is alienated, rootless and lost to every
competitor's rebate or coupon that comes along.
Secrets of Customer
Relationship Management explores the emotional side of a customer's attachment to a
specific companyyour company, for example and discusses how organizations of all sizes can
develop and strengthen that attachment using techniques similar to the time-honored
strategies of the corner grocer. It provides an in-depth understanding of what customers
actually mean to a business; and, conversely, what a business must mean to an individual
customer to maximize its marketplace position and long-term success.
Examining case studies of
smaller businesses that have succeeded in developing long-term relationships, and
explaining how these personalized approaches can be adopted by corporations of any size,
Secrets of Customer Relationship Management explores:
Guidelines for measuring the
concepts of value, customer satisfaction, and customer relationships
Red flags to identify and
stop risks or threats to successful relationships
An innovative model of the
factors that drive customer satisfaction, from price and product quality to customers'
perceptions of how they've been treated, to the negative and positive emotions that are
created through their interaction with the firm
Strategies for developing
brand relationships where customer contact is infrequent or nonexistent
How to create and add value
for the customer from the perspective of the customer
Customers are the financial
lifeblood of every business. But to see a customer as simply a number or line on a sales
graph is to miss the fundamental importance of that customer to a business and,
conversely, the importance of the business to the customer. Before you implement a costly
customer relationship management program, let Secrets of Customer Relationship Management
help you determine what you want that relationship to be and, just as important, how that
relationship should feel from the customer's point of view.
companies, and is executive
vice president and former chairman of The Bristol Group, an integrated marketing
communications and information consultancy with clients throughout North America and
Europe. Dr. Barnes is the author of six books, including the bestselling textbook
Fundamentals of Marketing (now in its ninth edition), and regularly delivers management
courses and seminars in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. In 1997 he was named
an inaugural winner of the Financial Post Leaders in Management Education Award, and in
1999 he was elected a Fellow of the Professional Marketing Research Society of Canada. His
client list includes Molson, CIBC, Kraft Foods Canada, eircom, An Post, North Limited, and
Tesco.
316 pages