We need your help! Ronni Marshak and I are revising our book, Customers.com, which was published in 1998. We’d like to “crowdsource” this next generation edition. Every few weeks, we’ll offer you a new chapter or section. We’d like your help in making this a truly useful “Bible” for everyone engaged in designing their businesses from the customers’ point of view. Here’s how:
1. Read the chapters that interest you as they appear and add your thoughts, comments, and criticisms here.
2. Contribute your own suggestions about companies or organizations that would provide great examples for each chapter—we’ll do the research.
3. Contribute your own ideas—either customer-centric principles you adhere to and/or lessons you’ve learned that you’d like to share.
In the original Customers.com, the fourth of our eight critical success factors for “Making it easy for customers to do business with you” was “Provide a 360-Degree View of the Customer Relationship.” That mantra has become a holy grail for virtually every organization’s CRM charter. But we think it’s wrong!
In today’s customer-driven economy, customers demand more. They want to drive. They don’t want you to gather information about them in order to sell them more stuff. They do want your help in getting things done.
So Ronni Marshak and I have changed that critical success factor to: Provide a 360-Degree View of Each Customer’s Context. In this chapter, Ronni describes what we mean. We welcome your reactions, feedback and ideas! We are also seeking good examples of at least two case studies to go with this chapter. We welcome your ideas!
