Fundamentals of Customer-Focused Management: Competing through Service

(Hardback)

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Description

Customer-orientation, customer-centricity, and customer relationship management (CRM) are not new concepts or practices. But information technology has unleashed tremendous opportunities in dealing with a customer and in creating value to the customer. And yet the majority of CRM investments and initiatives fail because firms do not have the appropriate orientation to serving the customer. The principal aim of this book is to get the reader to think about th firm and the way it conducts its business in a certain waywith a customer focus. It is now becoming clearly evident that all firms compete on service. Providing superior service becomes a prerequisite for any differentiation strategy to succeed. To provide superior service for a competitive advantage requires a concrete understanding of what service-orientation means. This orientation, in the form of frame of mind, is essential for the firm to take advantage of opportunities and to address the challenges so as to gain a competitive advantage. For excellent service firms, the challenges and opportunities in providing services are a constant endeavor. For others, these challenges and opportunities are not that obvious. A complementary aim of this book, therefore, is to instill into the reader the principles of managing services.

Reviews

"A book to remind all of us of the simple truths forgotten in the last boom: If you don't want to wind up as dead as the deadest dotcom, you have to let people know what business you are in and why they should bother sending their dollars your way."-David F. D'Alessandro, Chairman and Chief Executive John Hancock Financial
"Meeting customer needs begins with a deep understanding of customers. It cannot be accomplished without a genuine committment to employees and the value creation and delivery process. John's book combines conceptual foundations with practical methods to make for a very interesting and useful reading about being customer-focused."-Tom Raffio, CEO/NEDD
"This book is very rich, which requires the reader to pay close attention to ideas....[e]ven the staunchest customer advocates need the type of reminder that this book offers. If a CEO, even a customer focused CEO such as Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, were to read this book, he would obtain workable ideas."-.
[V]ery well structured and logically organized....[e]xcellent as a management introduction to the area for professionals....The book should also be suitable for MBA students and undergraduate courses in marketing and management. The excellent structure of the book should make it quite easy to design a whole course around the book.-International Journal of Service Industry Management
This book is very rich, which requires the reader to pay close attention to ideas....[e]ven the staunchest customer advocates need the type of reminder that this book offers. If a CEO, even a customer focused CEO such as Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, were to read this book, he would obtain workable ideas.-.
This book views the "experience economy" through the prism of customer-focused management, and in so doing, creates a valuable one-volume synthesis of the subject. This cleanly written, well-organized, popularized presentation is useful for upper-division undergraduate students in various business courses and is a good introduction to the subject for practitioners in the field. Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through professional collections.-Choice
"Very well structured and logically organized....excellent as a management introduction to the area for professionals....The book should also be suitable for MBA students and undergraduate courses in marketing and management. The excellent structure of the book should make it quite easy to design a whole course around the book."-International Journal of Service Industry Management
"[V]ery well structured and logically organized....[e]xcellent as a management introduction to the area for professionals....The book should also be suitable for MBA students and undergraduate courses in marketing and management. The excellent structure of the book should make it quite easy to design a whole course around the book."-International Journal of Service Industry Management
"This book views the "experience economy" through the prism of customer-focused management, and in so doing, creates a valuable one-volume synthesis of the subject. This cleanly written, well-organized, popularized presentation is useful for upper-division undergraduate students in various business courses and is a good introduction to the subject for practitioners in the field. Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through professional collections."-Choice

Author Bio

JOBY JOHN is Professor and Chair of the Marketing Department at Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts.