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Title: The Brave New Service Strategy: Aligning Customer Relationships, Market Strategies, and Business Structures by Barbara A. Gutek, Theresa Welsh ISBN: 0-8144-0527-4 Publisher: AMACOM Pub. Date: March, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $28.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A Good Read!
Comment: Barbara A. Gutek and Theresa Welsh believe that companies can improve their relationships with customers if they find the approach that best fits their business. The authors emphasize the difference between real relationships - ongoing, personal contacts between a customer and an individual service provider - and mere encounters - where the customer's relationship is with the company and a random variety of service employees. Many companies confuse the two, trying to turn encounters into relationships, and ending up with pseudo-relationships that alienate customers. Instead, realistically determine what you offer customers and what customers want, and then adjust your systems or policies accordingly. This excellent book provides executives and business owners with an insightful analytical framework for understanding customer relationships. While clear and well organized, it is sometimes repetitious - perhaps to be sure we all get the idea - but we [...] recommend it highly for the soundness of its concepts, if not the economy of its prose.
Rating: 4
Summary: Nice Distinctions between Relationships and Encounters
Comment: This is an extremely well-written book. The authors are obviously excellent communicators and give wonderful examples in order to make their points. They segment different approaches to customer service brilliantly. The fundamental message is that if you can't really provide a mutual bond of trust with your customer (i.e., a relationship), then don't bother trying to fool anyone by saying all of the right things (i.e., a pseudo-relationship). In today's commodity marketplace we find an even greater emphasis on what was originally Fred Taylor's model of efficiency, via chain stores and vast corporate bureaucrasies. This outcome, say the authors, lends itself more to encounters than relationships. By enhancing encounters, therefore, companies can still satisfy the customer without the high cost of developing a relationship.
The only down side of the book for me was the discussion of technology (as well as several rather malicious pokes at Peppers & Rogers). The authors clearly chose only to view computer technology as an insidious and poorly implemented medium that threatened to reduce front line "encounter" people to automatons (albeit mildly useful in relationship environments). Although no one will argue that IT practitioners often do not understand business, the fact is that technology today is evolving into a very powerful tool for augmenting customer relationships. Granted, we hear a lot of unfounded hype about e-business, CRM and ERP systems. However, used appropriately, emerging technologies will help encounter businesses understand the needs of individual customers to a far greater extend than has been possible up to now.
Overall, a very worthwhile read.
Rating: 5
Summary: Aldous Huxley Redux
Comment: The subtitle is correct. The authors do indeed provide strategies for effectively "aligning customer relationships, market strategies, and business structures." They make a key distinction between encounters with customers and relationships with customers. As Jeffrey Gitomer and others have already observed, "customer satisfaction" is measured in terms of each transaction whereas "customer loyalty" depends upon a relationship of repeated transactions. Gutek and Welsh obviousy agree. In the Preface, they assert that "This vital -- and misunderstood -- distinction between the two fundamental ways to deliver service is the catalyst to structuring the business for maximum success." Their excellent book is then divided into ten chapters which guide the reader through a step-by-step process.
For example, Chapter One "looks at customer perceptions of some common practices that result from mistaken ideas about what constitutes a relationship." Chapter Five identifies several different types of encounter and then examines one specific kind: "when the individual service provider is replaced by a machine." In Chapter Ten, the final chapter, the authors bring the reader back to the central question (ie What are the basic causes of customer dissatisfaction and how can they be avoided or eliminated?), then discuss "the trends that will be important for success in the years beyond 2000."
As technological connectivity rapidly and extensively replaces so much of direct human interaction, it is imperative to understand the differences (as well as the implications of those differences) between an encounter with a customer and a relationship with a customer. Gutek and Welsh have made an invaluable contribution to our understanding of those differences...and to our understanding of how to achieve and then sustain enhanced relationships with those whom we are privileged to serve.
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Title: Beyond the Core: Expand Your Market Without Abandoning Your Roots by Chris Zook ISBN: 1578519519 Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: 02 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes by Robert S. Kaplan, David P. Norton ISBN: 1591391342 Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: 02 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Customer Experience Management: A Revolutionary Approach to Connecting with Your Customers by Bernd H. Schmitt, Bernd Schmitt ISBN: 0471237744 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 31 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Priceless: Turning Ordinary Products into Extraordinary Experiences by Diana Lasalle, Terry A. Britton ISBN: 157851746X Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: 04 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: How to Grow When Markets Don't by Adrian J. Slywotzky, Richard Wise, Karl Weber ISBN: 0446531774 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 03 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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