Customer Intimacy: Pick Your Partners, Shape Your Culture, Win Together [Hardcover]

Wiersema (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 25, 1998

Reveals why the most successful businesses are those that build close win-win relationships with their customers.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Intimacy with customers involves understanding their needs and a commitment to meeting those needs. That, says Wiersema, who has served as an international business consultant, may take various forms: customization of products or services, integration of business operations in mutually advantageous ways, or long-term planning together. Wiersema indicates that achieving customer intimacy takes agility, picking one's partners correctly, and shaping company culture. Savvy listeners may notice some disadvantages to Wiersema's approach, which may narrow a company's customer base to fewer, though larger, accounts. Additionally, getting to know customers well and orienting a company's operations to their requests is an expensive proposition. Ultimately, however, this useful, insightful program, which Wiersema himself narrates, should do well in most business collections.?Mark Guyer, Stark Cty. Dist. Lib., Canton, Ohio
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Customer Intimacy: Pick Your Partners, Shape Your Culture, Win Together provides detailed plans for both large and small companies to create the mutually beneficial detailed plans for both large and small companies to create a successful vendor-customer relationship in today's business world. Customer Intimacy reveals the secrets of establishing and maintaining close customer relationships with extensive examples of companies like CIGNA, Black & Decker, and Airborne Express. Exceptional readable, straightforwardly written, Customer Intimacy is immediately accessible to anyone with managerial or administrative corporate responsibilities for developing and maintaining a customer base. -- Midwest Book Review

Product Details

• Hardcover: 221 pages
• Publisher: Knowledge Exchange (January 25, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1888232005
• ISBN-13: 978-1888232004
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #655,098 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Where's the beef?, April 18, 2000

By 

Tuan Pham (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Customer Intimacy: Pick Your Partners, Shape Your Culture, Win Together (Hardcover)

A mediocre book on a great topic. Rather than providing any specific insights (original concepts, tools, and techniques) on how to achieve customer intimacy, the book is hardly more than a 200-page repository of truisms. Nothing is elaborated upon; everything is surface and words. One is left with the impression that the author is more interested in promoting his consultancy practice than in conveying anything deep or useful. For a more thorough treatment of the same subject, readers may want to turn to "Customer Connections" by Wayland and Cole.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Book to become or hone a customer-centric model, April 5, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Customer Intimacy: Pick Your Partners, Shape Your Culture, Win Together (Audio Cassette)

This book is an excellent way to both begin building as well as to hone a customer-centric business model. Admittedly, it is not an academic tome, but few practioners are looking for such. This both explains and inspires in a way that virtually all levels of employees will be able to relate. Yes, it's an important listen for the boss, the foreman and the hourly craft employee. Most everyone commutes to and from work - let your managers and employees alike get the "facts of life" from other who have tried and won (and a few that have not). It's a great read/listen!

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Anyone who understands business knows where it all starts!, January 27, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (U.S.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Customer Intimacy : Pick Your Partners, Shape Your Culture, Win Together (Paperback)

This book places an explanation point on the need for businesses to clearly focus objectives and critical needs around the customer. It goes without saying that no customers = no business. This is a quick, one week read by nature of the flow of information as well as poignant examples. Senior staffers to factory staffers should read and take note. Our businesses fail when we are not intimately acquainted with our customers.