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.
Can companies change what they deliver customers without changing process
They sure think they can. Many a company tries to become more customer-centric by: • Retraining current staff in the niceties of customer interaction •…
Ringy, dingy, dingy – no one’s home at the phone company
I do mean "no one's home" in the mental sense – as in not thinking through problems and grasping for first obvious solutions, instead. Here's...
Is Marketing in Transition, in Denial, or In Between?
A Linkedin-er recently started an excellent discussion thread in several groups, asking whether Marketing had become more science than art. The discussions quickly drilled...
Why do only 2% of companies understand that migrating from Inside-Out to Outside-In requires major organizational change?
Okay, I pulled 2% out of the sky. But at least I was generous! Company after company tries to "get closer to customers" by taking...
Where’s the dividing line between process and marketing?
Change can make for strange bedfellows. Ten years ago, process was concerned with manufacturing and marketing was building brands and trying to acquire new...
Whose Customers Complain the Most? The Better Business Bureau dishes on the worst offenders.
The North American BBB has released its 2009 compilation of which industries drew the most complaints and how well they resolved them. Of course,...
All Marketers Claim to be Customer-Centric: But How Many Really Are?
In his great new Book, "Reorganize for Resilience," Harvard B-School Professor Ranjay Gulati describes how and why companies should be moving from inside-out to...
Why is customer-centric strategic planning so atrocious?
Calling corporate customer-centric planning deficient is paying it a big compliment. From Fortune companies to entrepreneurial businesses, and our practice spans both, well under...
A Five-Minute “Must Read” Piece Concerning Customer-Centricity – from Harvard Business School
The Harvard Business Schools "Working Knowledge" newsletter just published an intervieww with faculty member, researcher and pundit Ranja Guloti. The piece is titled, "The...
How High Up the Management Ladder Can Customer-Centric Process Exert Influence?
Of course, management always thinks process is for those "beneath them." It's hard to imagine anyone of "Director" rank or higher (never mind the...
The Emperor Toyota Has No Clothes (no more fig leaf of customer-centricity)
Toyota might have been a customer-centric company for parts of the 80s and 90s, or it may never have been customer-centric, which I now...
Are We Gulping Social Media Kool-Aid?
I believe social media can contribute to business success. We ourselves have attracted clients through Linkedin. Organizations are generating web traffic off Twitter. A...
Which affects customer experience more: marketing; direct sales and service contact; or process quality?
If you're a marketing person, you're probably saying something like, "Look, brand is an emotional bond, not a rational reaction to process mechanics or...
Who’s Watching Over Customer Experience?
"Everyone," you say? Then what you're really saying is "no one." Here's an interesting exercise to prove the point. Build a simple grid with...
Should Senior Customer Strategists be Cross-trained?
Acceptance is growing for the need to fuse customer-centric planning with subsequent process design to assure complete alignment. Plus, acceptance is already widespread for...
Is Best Buy Heading Back to the Rat Hole? (appears lack of competition’s turning BB back to its former...
I have on many occasions in many places and in many ways complimented Best Buy for its ascendancy from a rat hole electronics seller...
Four Reasons the Majority Of Customer Experience Management Initiatives Fail
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. So is the road to elevating customer experience. Each day, a whole lot of CEM...
If your customer relationship model needed repair, would you hire a generalist or a specialist?
As a CEO looking for opportunities to create transformative changes in your business model that will create dramatically more value for customers (with value...
How Can You Negotiate the Politics of Aligning Your Company with Customers?
When we help companies turn themselves Outside-In (customer-centric), corporate politics frequently present the highest barrier. While traditional process redesign focuses on "how" companies work,...
Is Social Media Responsible for Declining Customer Service Satisfaction?
According to Accenture's 2009 survey of customer satisfaction with customer service, only 40% are satisfied with the service they're receiving. Of course, without seeing...