Dick Lee
Dick Lee
Author & speaker Dick Lee has been encouraging customer-centric business practices for over 30 years. In his latest book "We Are Buyers. You Are Sellers. You're Busted." he changes focus to encouraging customers to fight back against abusive sellers.
“Averaging” Customers – Necessary? Misleading? Or Both?
What's your knee-jerk reaction to hearing someone say, "our average customer?" Mine is to wince. Describing customers according to statistical averages – age, income,...
Are We Witnessing the “Half-Life” of Customer-Centricity?
The optimist in me says, "Probably not." The realist in me suspects we are, for several reasons. -Customers were initially grateful that many companies appeared...
Will Customer Change Force Process Change?
My quick answer to my own question is, "It better…and soon." Buyer-seller relations are rapidly evolving, putting buyers in the driver's seat held by sellers...
Is Customer-Centricity Already Irrelevant?
I'm right now in the process of writing a full article on this topic, which is how I get to the bottom of perplexing...
Selective Customer-Centricity – Is Ikea Shooting Itself in the Foot?
Many in the group have commented about "what's customer-centric for one segment might not be for another." Perhaps the most commonly cited example is...
Customer-Centricity: Let’s Not Let the New Block Out the Old
In our rush to see business through customer-centric lenses, we have a tendency let go of some valuable product-centric insight. A past client that...
A Compliment Where a Compliment is Due
I'm not shy about beating up on the likes of Best Buy, Wells Fargo & Intuit for horrible customer service. Enough so I really...
Do Buyers Owe Sellers Anything?
How many times in your career have you heard, "Hey, we're doing blah blah blah for customers. Can't they cut us some slack? They...
The Hazards of Heading a Customer-Centric Company
Last week I wrote about the difficulties Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn was having meeting customer expectations, which had been raised by previous CEO...
Best Buy – Too Much Space or Too Few Customers?
Best Buy just announced a plan to take out 50 stores, 400 HQ jobs and many thousands of store employees. They blame the need...
The Death of a Category – Coming Soon to Your Industry?
Have you ever watched an entire business category slide below the horizon? I first did while too young to understand what I was watching...
Squishing a Round Process Foot into a Square Technology Boot
While I don't want to sound like a process guy forever ragging on software companies, here we go again. After completing an enterprise process...
Can Stressed Workers Put Customers First?
We all know from personal experience how this plays out on the customer front lines. You call Microsoft, Intuit, HP or whatever's customer support...
Let’s be Charitable Toward Companies Trying to Be Customer-Centric
Over the holidays, several times I caught myself experiencing a knee-jerk negative reaction to less than customer-centric behavior by companies supposedly being among the...
Exposing a Common Customer-centricity Misperception
I've read and heard many starry eyed, wistful, expressions binding employee-centricity to customer-centricity, and the corollary. It's a warm and fuzzy, feel-good thought....
More Companies Are Deigning Customer-Centric Business Strategies, But Then What
Although far from a majority, the percentage of companies with customer-centric strategies continues rising. But then what? Well, in so many cases what comes...
Have consumers finally reached a breaking point?
Many (including myself) have prematurely predicted that consumers would express their anger at big banks with their feet – by fleeing to smaller banks...
Is There Any Customer Worse Off than the Software Customer?
What could be worse than buying very expensive product that hugely affects your business success – from an industry misaligned with its customers? The realization...
Are Service & Production Quality Two Sides of the Same Coin? (be careful how you answer)
I suspect most readers will instinctively answer, "No." Production quality refers to meeting a normative standard with as little deviation as possible. Service quality...
Do Software Company Sales Methods Predict Post-Sale Service Levels?
As part of enabling new process for clients where we're replacing software E2E, I reviewed for clients on the net and through follow-up over...