The Customer Revolution [Hardcover]

Patricia B. Seybold (Author), Ronni T. Marshak (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 20, 2001

You are no longer in control of your company's destiny . . .

It happened in the music business and it will happen in yours. It's only a matter of time. Customers actually take control of an industry and reshape it from the outside in. Customers decide that the way they want to use an industry's product doesn't fit the current business model.

Patricia Seybold, author of the influential, bestselling Customers.com would say that that's a revolution. Thanks to the Internet and to mobile wireless devices, both business and consumer customers are demanding that you change your pricing structure, distribution channels, and the way you design and deliver products and services. Your business must be transformed so that it is completely customer-centric, or you will be out of business.

Her advice to companies facing the customer revolution? You can fight it if you want, just as Don Quixote fought imaginary windmills and thought he was winning battles. But naturally he lost the war and so will you. Better, says Seybold, to practice "sweet surrender," just as the music industry has started to come to terms with Napster. In the words of one music executive, "Thirty-eight million people can't be criminals."

Many try to characterize the changes taking place as the New Economy, the Internet economy, or the information, knowledge, or bio-economy. There's a grain of truth to all of these descriptions, but they fail to get to the heart of the changes taking place. Simply put, what we now have is a customer economy and it's going to result in changes that you would not have thought possible even a few short years ago.

Patricia Seybold has been on a worldwide quest to find the companies in North America, Europe, and Asia that are developing the state-of-the-art practices that will help them win in the new era of the customer economy. They're profiled and analyzed in case studies ranging from small businesses to multinational giants and range from manufacturers to retailers, and service firms. They include financial services giant Charles Schwab, the British Vauxhall Division of General Motors, Snap-on Tools, custom backpack manufacturer Timbuk2, Hewlett-Packard, Medscape, and W.W. Grainger.

As she so ably demonstrated in Customers.com, Patricia Seybold is ahead of the curve. For most companies, the issue of customers in control is just coming onto the radar screen. In The Customer Revolution Seybold makes it plain that this can be either your biggest problem or your greatest opportunity. What she provides is not only a brilliant analysis but also a practical program for how you can make the customer revolution a profitable one. The companies that thrive in the customer revolution will be those that measure and monitor what matters to customers, in near real time.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It used to be that developing customer relationships in a mass-market economy didn't matter. All a successful company had to do was make products that people generally liked--build it and they would come. Patricia Seybold thinks those days are long gone. Thanks to the Internet, customers matter more than ever, and companies that don't get it simply won't make it. In The Customer Revolution she writes, "For the first time in the history of modern business, it's now cost-effective for companies to establish relationships with each and every customer who wants us to know him."

Seybold outlines the principles of the "customer economy" and looks at 14 companies, including Charles Schwab, Snap-on, and Hewlett-Packard, who are in the process of refocusing their businesses to meet customer needs and expectations by measuring and running their businesses on metrics such as customer satisfaction, acquisition, retention rates, and wallet share. In the customer economy, building brand means more than creating a clever logo--it requires creating an "experience that your customers love." She offers up a set of practices--what she calls a "Customer Flight Deck"--that allows companies to monitor and tune the success of their customer contacts. Customer relationships are so important, Seybold believes that a new metric of corporate reporting will emerge alongside profit and loss, return on assets, and P/E ratios--one she calls a "Customer Value Index" designed to give investors the means to measure a company's performance by looking at the present and future value of its customer base. As with her previous book Customers.com, The Customer Revolution should be required reading for managers at any company--old or new--who are assessing the real impact of the Internet on their businesses. Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards

From Publishers Weekly

The quality of a company's customer relations with today's better informed, more demanding consumers will determine its future success, contends Seybold, a consultant and author of the bestselling Customer.com. "Thanks to the Internet and to mobile wireless devices... customers are challenging and disrupting the standard practices in virtually every industry.... They won't be denied. They have power and they know it," she writes, pointing to the music industry as an emblematic crucible of change. Variations on this argument have been proposed for more than a decade, but Seybold asserts that it holds true for all industries and throughout the world. To help managers capitalize on this inevitable shift, she lays out three "principles" ("Customers are in control"; "Customer relationships count" and "Customer experience matters"). Drawing on 14 case studies of companies from Charles Schwab, Hewlett-Packard and Tesco to Finland's largest bank and the apparel manufacturer Timbuk2 Designs, she also offers eight steps for achieving success in this new environment, such as "Create a compelling brand personality" and "Value customers' time." But like any true believer, Seybold tends to get carried away. She directly attributes the recent turmoil on Wall Street to an ongoing customer revolution though value investors might disagree and blithely predicts that in less than five years "investors will be actively assessing the quality of companies' customer relationships." Still, her worthwhile central points come through loud and clear, and her arguments could help frame future market debates. (Apr. 3)Forecast: Seybold's solid track record, a national print ad campaign in the Wall Street Journal and the Industry Standard and an NPR sponsorship should help this book garner strong sales.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Crown Business; 1st edition (March 20, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609607723
• ISBN-13: 978-0609607725
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #791,613 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Creating Valuable Customer Relationships in the Internet Age, March 20, 2001

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Customer Revolution (Hardcover)

Patricia Seybold and her co-authors, Ronni T. Marshak and Jeffrey M. Lewis, have taken the familiar concept of establishing customer relationships as the basis of a company's success and updated the notion into the current day and its new technology, the Internet. The book is soundly based on lasting principles about successful customer focus, and details what that means now in many interesting and detailed examples. The book is strengthened by critiques of the weaknesses of some of the most successful companies, such as Charles Schwab and Grainger.

Here are the principles:

(1) Customers are in control. This point is made with the example of Napster, and the way this enabled people to change the way they acquired and used recorded music. Customers are going to reshape businesses by their behavior, and you had better be ready to respond. The recording companies were not, and great economic harm ensued as well as a slow down in the development of new acts.

(2) Customer relationships count. The book points out that your economic value as a firm is related to how many customers you can attract and keep, and profitably supply. The authors argue that this will become a formal part of security analyst reports in the future. That would be progress over the way they value companies now!

(3) Customer experience matters. This section focuses on how people feel emotionally about how they are being treated, and contains an interesting example of the on-line financial institution, Egg.

The book then shifts into eight areas to focus on that supplement the list from their last book, which I have paraphrased:

(1) Memorable, compelling, and desirable brand personalities

(2) Smooth, continuous customer experience across channels and points of contact

(3) Genuine caring about customers and the outcomes they experience

(4) Measure how you are doing in what matters to customers

(5) Improve your operational excellence

(6) Make careful use of customers' time

(7) Integrate customer preferences and information into the company and its interactions

(8) Create products, services, and processes that can be quickly transformed as customers shift their focus.

The book addresses how all of this can be better managed, and proposes a "flight plan" approach managed by a "Customer Flight Deck" that keeps the enterprise focused on what is most important. Essentially, the Customer Flight Deck is the customer focus part of a Balanced Scorecard. In fact, you would do well to read this book in conjunction with The Strategy-Focused Organization for the most benefit. The book has several Customer Flight Decks written out about the key examples employed by the authors. I thought these were well done and helpful for applying the authors' concepts and advice.

The book is rich in quotes that help focus your attention. Here are a few of my favorites:

" . . . [R]unning a business in today's Internet-enabled era is like trying to fly a plane [while] . . . replacing the engine."

"Customers have taken control of our companies' destinies."

" . . . [C]ustomers now have access to information that lets them make informed decisions [for the first time]."

I found it easy to relate to this book because so many of the examples are familiar to me both as a customer and as a student of business. The advice to be sparing of customer time and provide coordinated contacts is going to be hard for most companies to follow, but they need to start down that path. I am constantly struck by how much time I have to waste to buy from companies, and how the one hand has no clue about how to help me with something that the other hand knows.

When this era is finally history, I suspect that companies will be divided into two categories: Those who used information to make customers' lives easier and more pleasant, and those who created technology (like endless voice mail chains) that drove customers crazy. Hopefully, the latter will soon be dead as a dodo. In which category will your company be?

I suggest that you ask yourself constantly, "What have I done to make life better and easier for my customers today?"

If you think about customer relationships as being like what a good hostess or host does, you should do well . . . as long as you implement your ideas.

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE CUSTOMER REVOLUTION IS LIKE A ROAD MAP TO SUCCESS, March 29, 2001

By 

Sandra D. Peters "Seagull Books" (Prince Edward Island, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Customer Revolution (Hardcover)

As a teacher and counsellor in business management and having assisted over 2,000 businesses in my lifetime, either through diagnostic assessment, financial analysis and/or business plan development, I highly recommend this book. When it comes to your customer, this book is what might be referred to as the "Businessman's Bible."

Without a customer, you do not have a business - the customer is the backbone of your business. The customer is paramount! Simply put in layman's terms, it is not a matter of what you want to sell to the customer that is important. It is what the customer wants to buy and how you satisfy that customer's needs that is critical to your company's success. The customer is doing you a favour by coming to you, the business owner, with money in hand ready to purchase your product/service.

It is irrelevant whether you are selling over the internet, in a retail facility, from your home or door-to-door, the same basic business principles of customer service apply. This book takes some recognized standard concepts and expands on these to keep up with modern technology. The author has presented a wealth of knowledge on building long-lasting, positive customer realtionships in today's modern world. "The Customer Revolution" is a must-read book for anyone in business today.

16 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Book Is Worth Reading! It's NOT restating the obvious., July 10, 2001

By 

Daniel Williams (Wellfleet, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Customer Revolution (Hardcover)

When was the following proclaimed?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident”…that all people have a right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

America and its schools have promoted this democratic principle for centuries. Right?

But did this “obvious” truth help our country resolve the complex social conditions that galvanized the civil rights movement in the 1960’s? Of course not. We’re still working on the race issue—despite the fact that so many American “leaders” say they get it.

Or what about “the obvious” truth that “people are our most important asset?” We’ve heard that one from business leaders for decades. But how many management teams have truly executed that vision consistently, with integrated HR policies and practices in their organization, especially during downturns? Not many.

My point is this. Just because something is obvious doesn’t mean that it’s real or that you can easily execute it. And that’s where Martin’s assessment falls short. In his criticism of “The Customer Revolution,” Martin say’s it’s obvious that “customers are, and always have been, the lifeblood of any company…If you are a successful business you already know the significance of customers.”

But talk to some of those successful businesses, some of which are discussed in this book, and it will be quite obvious to you that managing the quality of your customer relationships is a complex, imperfect and at times painful undertaking, especially when you have multiple organizations and product lines. It’s not as obvious as you think, Martin.

For example, I just installed Symantic’s industry-leading pcAnywhere, so I could download files from my office onto my laptop while spending time on Cape Cod.

When it’s not crashing, it runs like a snail. My 4-year-old daughter is more effective at helping me cope with my frustration than the support I’ve received from Symantic’s customer service department, which I find pathetic. Gone is my summer dream of simple file sharing on the Cape! So, do you think I’m going to do business with this “successful” company again? As Martin would say, “Duh?”

As for other businesses, perhaps less successful, capturing the “hearts and minds” of customers for the long haul is even more arduous. Many businesses today operate without any well-thought-out strategy for selecting and developing leaders throughout their organization--leaders who truly understand the requirements for managing customer relationships. Nor have they implemented the right business practices, IT strategy or infrastructure to succeed.

And that’s why “The Customer Revolution” is relevant for anyone who wants a more sophisticated understanding of the multiple issues you face when building a “customer-centric” business. This book adds value in two key ways:

1) First, it defines the extent to which power relationships have shifted in favor of customers over suppliers. Martin is right to say that the Internet has streamlined existing B2B relationships and saved costs. But he’s totally wrong to dismiss how the Internet has help intelligent customers challenge and disrupt standard business practices in such areas as pricing structures, distribution channels, and the way companies design and deliver their products and services to customers.

2) Second, and most important, this book offers a glimpse into what a customer-centric business looks like—the strategies and best practices that business leaders have learned from their successes and failures—in an environment where customers have greater control. The book addresses such questions as:

- How do you build your business based on customer scenarios?

- What does it really take to get into your customer’s head at every stage of your relationship?

- How do you build a brand—not just around products—but around the way you want customers to feel when they interact with them?

- If the quality of your customer relationships determines the value of your company, how then do you measure and monitor that value over time?

- What leadership competencies do you need to manage your company by and for customer value?

- How well are you building your customer franchise?

This book makes a significant contribution to the ongoing discussion about what it takes to build deep customer relationships for long-term survival and growth. For people interested in that topic, it’s worth the read. Hopefully, it will motivate some folks in business to wake up and smell the coffee before it’s too late. And that’s not “restating the obvious.”