1.1. CUSTOMER OPINIONS
Fairytale Brownies, a mail-order company based in Chandler, Ariz., understands the value of seeking customer opinion through surveys. The company initially set up the survey for quality control purposes, but soon learned the responses, particularly to the open-ended question, provided it with useful information such as new product ideas. [1]
The merger, whether in banking or many other industries in which scores of deals have been undermined by customer erosion, may progress using only an assumed defection and its associated revenue loss as a financial measure in the projections of the combined company. This omission, or rough estimate, raises some very important questions. How can the financial impact of combining two organizations be defined if the extant customer base is not considered as a fundamental element in that assessment? How can a realistic financial evaluation of a company be determined if the customers' opinions of that company, its products, services, and support are not objectively considered? The fact is that the metrics of customer value should be a major input in defining financial value. Customer value is the quantitative and qualitative analysis of a company, its management, its representatives, and its products or services as defined by its customers. This can be expressed in absolute financial terms in quantitative value measurements and in relative market strength (in comparison with competitors). [2]
The remaining 40%Io is not definable and is probably based on prejudices, familiarity, habit, and other personal elements that are unique to the individual. If the vast majority of customers are totally satisfied with the elements of a product or service, these elements, ironically, are not likely to positively or negatively influence a purchase decision; they become accepted elements. If there is a range of satisfaction opinions with respect to specific elements, that potentially raises the importance of these elements in the decision process. The goal is to identify and quantify those "key de-influencers." Asking customers to rate the importance of elements that determine their satisfaction with a product or service, while seemingly straightforward, is doomed to failure. [2] Performance feedback, audit results, customer opinion surveys and product or process changes have always been networked through the supervisor to the operator on the line. The role of both the supervisor and line operator will not exist as we know them today in world - class manufacturing operations of the future. [3] Customer opinion surveys, focus groups and lobby intercepts are all excellent sources of information to help determine whether your organization's training and communications programs are producing the quality of service expected. [4]
Just about every company measures customer satisfaction. Do the results lead to real service improvements for their customers? Forward-looking businesses are right to measure customers' opinion of their service. How else can they react to the ever-increasing pressure to improve the quality of the customer experience? Yet few managers believe the information they collect has any real impact on the way their business operates. Customer satisfaction surveys are now so popular with organizations that both professional researchers and customers complain of "questionnaire fatigue" and an increasing "nuisance factor". [5]
"Your distributor is the face the ultimate customer sees. If the people who work for a distributor are less than they should be, you can have problems." Another agent explained that the way he got a line on the better distributors in his territory was to talk with people who buy related products from distributors. He asked them what they thought of the service they were getting from their distributors. "A customer's opinion can be quite valuable," he said. [6]
New physical facilities usually represent a substantial economic investment for libraries all over the world. This kind of investment is much more difficult in developing countries' libraries, where financial resources are always obtained in an uncertain manner. In those countries, when a library succeeds in getting a new building, it is always important to evaluate seriously how it will be seen and used by the customers. Frequently, the decision on building a new facility is made without paying enough attention to how the customers will face the new environment and even if the space is bringing actual advantages to their lives. Library managers should be attentive to their customers' opinions and try to use them in the planning of the services. It is always difficult to evaluate the customers' opinions due to the lack of human resources to accomplish more complex researches. For this reason, it is important to find less expensive techniques in order to listen to the customers. This article describes the use of one of those techniques - the focus group approach - applying it to the context of a Brazilian academic library and concluding that it can be adequate for this purpose. [7]
"We instituted our guest questionnaires in 1989 with the goal of improving communication and service." MOTIVATE YOUR STAFF. Recognizing the importance of guest satisfaction led Foodmaker Inc. to use customer questionnaires as part of the monthly quality inspections of its Jack-in-the-Box restaurants. By basing a percentage of its employees' bonus structure on these questionnaires, everyone from the grill person to the area manager is forced to face the importance of the customer's opinions. [8]
How needs and performance can be best matched is illustrated with the help of a N-P map like the one shown in Figure 1. (Figure 1 omitted.) By periodically surveying its customers, companies can map customer opinion and determine whether or not business performance meets customer needs. The forecast of sales volume will be the highest if the company meets high needs with high performance as shown by the high/high zone of the map. If the forecast is not what the management is looking for, it can improve it by re-prioritizing its activities and improving its operations. [9] Again, a simple scale of high, medium and low is used. The survey procedure is sensitive to customer opinion in two ways: (1) It allows customers a chance to voice their opinion concerning company performance. (2) It categorizes the performance ratings relative to customer needs. Chart 2 provides an example of survey data from one customer. (Chart 2 omitted.) [9]
Staples.com ramped up customer involvement to the point where the customers, in effect, became codevelopers, Ragunas says. Feedback is collected through internal customer service, e-mails, usability studies, focus groups, and from BizRate, a partner company that garners users' opinions on topics such as site performance and usability. [10]
In the participants' opinion, there was a positive behaviour change of every worker. In the same way, it is possible to believe that the library customers themselves felt the improvement and started preserving both the collection and the physical facilities. Confirming Hernon and Altman' (1996) statements, the information retrieval process used by the librarians is not easily understood by the customers (for example, one of the members of the group mentioned that the positive aspect of the open stacks is that they make it possible to locate information materials that cannot be located through the catalogues). [7] For our customers, there are two defining moments in their relationship with us: when they pay their premium and when they have a claim. A survey this year conducted by the New York-based Insurance Information Institute looked at the latter, sampling customer opinion on their satisfaction with claims. [11]
We restricted the question to actual claimants, defined as households with an auto insurance claim in the past three years. We found that 77 percent were satisfied with how their claim was handled, 20 percent were dissatisfied, and 3 percent had no opinion. Is this good or bad? How can we judge? If we were selling a product that brings instant gratification like Coke or Hershey bars, we would be quite distressed that 20 percent of customers did not like the product. [11]
Opinion varies about the status wholesale providers should give to VAS. "There is no proof that wholesale customers will buy or want VAS. The main reason service providers are pursuing VAS is the pressure on the base business," argues Gail Smith, VP of global business for Level 3, which wholesales IP services. "It is not necessarily the right long-term strategy - just a reaction to current market conditions." [12]
Writing in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Business Intelligence and Data Mining, Takahiro Hayashi of Niigata University, and colleagues, explain that their approach extracts subjective expressions from web pages. The system then scores them by degree of subjectivity and provides the reader with an indication of whether the website content expresses personal opinions or marketing speak about a product or service. The team has evaluated the performance of their system using 1200 web pages collected from four categories: product, tourist spot, restaurant, and movie. They found that their method is much more effective in finding personal opinion pages than a general search engine, in all categories. Part of the reason for this is that search engines, such as Google, tend not to rank personal pages highly. [13]
Finding genuine personal opinions surveys is much harder than finding commercially biased sites, the researchers explain. Their system relies on the fact that marketing copywriters and advertisers tend not to report negative comments about a product or service. The personal opinions of users of the product or service will be littered with both positive and negative comments depending on their standpoint. In Japanese, subjective expressions in written language might be described as: expressions with a negative meaning, sentence-nal particles, interjections, and specific symbols such as face marks (Kanji), which are equivalent to smilies in the West. [13]
The Post Office (PO) has this week launched its biggest ever customer opinion survey in an attempt to improve its poor reputation for service. [14] Directory enquiries was never going to be a market to set the nation a-quiver with excitement, but the fact that so much has been spent to make an impression on so few should be a warning to marketers everywhere. With just ten days to go before the old 192 number is switched over to 118 take-your-pick-of-operators, BT has issued the results of its continuous Customer Opinion Survey that finds 70 % of the public still believe 192 is the correct number to call for directory assistance. [15] The temptation to manipulate and influence study results has never been greater. Because human opinions are of such a delicate and indistinct nature, even a few creative adjustments here and there can have a strong impact on the final results of a customer opinion survey. [16] Comparing a survey with other surveys without the disciplined use of standards would be like comparing financial measurements using two different methods of derivation. It just doesn't work. Understanding customers must begin with a standardized methodology of surveying them to obtain a true and unbiased opinion. [2]
Using a survey to gather opinions for calculating customer value requires a minimalist approach. [2] A recent industry-wide banking survey disclosed that more that half of the customers of banks that merged had an unfavorable opinion of the consolidations. Approximately 20% of these individuals switched to another bank after that merger; most did so within six months. Since 1980 there have been more than 8,000 bank mergers, yet high customer turnover triggered by those events continues unabated. [2] The fundamentals of obtaining customer opinions must begin with the survey and how it is created, implemented, and analyzed. [2]
The N-P mapping provides a qualitative forecast. With this, one can at least determine the general direction of a forecast. It is not in anyway a substitute for model based quantitative forecasts. It provides a basis to judge whether or not the quantitative forecast is appropriate. Here the forecasting approach is based upon sampling opinion how effectively the company is meeting the expectations of its customers. [9] The customer may not always be right, but for Staples.com, the online extension of Framingham, Mass. -based office supply company Staples, the customer certainly makes the difference. While redesigning its Web site earlier this year, Staples.com concentrated its efforts on gathering customer opinions, on understanding customer interests, and, perhaps more importantly in the crowded online retail world, on learning how to keep them. [10] The Web, even as a simple informational and promotional medium, can remove the burden of routine requests to a call centre, and a well-designed site can heighten customer opinion of a company and generate new selling opportunities. [17]
Traditionally, researchers quantify customers' opinions using rating scales. Customers rate their overall satisfaction with the organization. In addition they usually rate the organization in several areas that directly affect the overall satisfaction rating, such as delivery time, out-of-stock conditions, helpfulness of sales personnel, accuracy of billing, etc. [18] Some companies conduct customer opinion polls, but because the goal generally is to achieve high positive ratings, rather than collect information on which to build policies, the questions are generic and broad. [19] Extensive databases allow a relative ranking of customer opinions to be defined with respect to other companies. [2]
Regardless of the reason, asking the customer's opinions can only help a business move to a customer centered strategy and away from an organizationally centered approach. [20] Your staff probably already knows your customers better than you do. Get them involved in the input program from day one. Impress upon them that soliciting opinions and brief periods of customer communication are expected. Gary Kearns, manager of a San Jose, California, Hungry Hunter restaurant, tells his staff, "If you're not servicing a guest, you'd better be servicing somebody who is." [8] Externally, the telco's employee recognition program is based upon customer opinion. [21]
If you dig deeply enough into any research survey project, you will eventually find some nuance of the program that can be called into question. This is almost inevitable, since any researcher will tell you that, alongside the statistical marvels and mathematical wizardry they perform, much of what researchers do is highly subjective and based on personal opinion. How can cheating on customer satisfaction surveys be allowed to happen? The answers are many, but most often they involve some form of organizational politics. Whoever has the management muscle to get his or her way in the company can usually construct reasonable sounding justifications for changes in the survey program. In any case, if your company has or is considering implementing a customer satisfaction measurement program, the previous examples should give you some idea of how these programs can be manipulated. [16] On a positive note, more and more businesses and organizations are realizing the benefits of developing a formal system of monitoring customer opinions and perceptions of the quality of a company's goods and services. Some are driven to this step out of a sincere desire to improve the quality of their organizational efforts, some out of competitive necessity, others due to the misperception that by executing customer satisfaction research, all the firm's problems will disappear. [20] There have been several newspaper and magazine articles and radio discussions about the improved quality of New Zealand goods. The survey has shown that the majority of operations managers have an optimistic impression of customers' opinions about the quality of their products. If managers accept these more accurate impressions of customers' opinions then they should be more highly motivated to improve quality further. [22]
There are of course, equivalent expressions in other languages, say the researchers. These various types of expressions can be extracted from a webpage and fed into the researchers' algorithm, which determines a weighted and categorized ratio of negative to positive expressions. This provides the basic indicator of whether or not a page is commercial or personal automatically. The obvious extension of this approach is to apply such an algorithm to the results of a search for a product or service carried out by a general search engine and so filter out the commercial from the personal and allow consumers to assess the wider opinions of the web community on that product. [13] Personal homepages, personal blogs, web forum sites and smaller customer opinion sites are regarded as personal pages and generally don't appear high in the search engine results pages (SERPs). [13] There are absolute scales that can be used to quantify customer opinions. [2]
The participants feel that the library team pays more attention to the customers' needs now. They also seem to be working together in a happier way, which helps in making them more attentive to their customers' needs. It was the unanimous opinion of the group that the level of service was significantly increased. [7] Opinion Research Corporation, an American market-research group, recently surveyed over 3,ooo executives worldwide, and found that "knowing a company very well" is the key reason to award new business. [23] Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission. The head of luxury-car maker Mercedes-Benz said his company is debating whether it is "advisable" to strive for the top rank in a widely followed survey of car customers' opinions about quality, saying that the study often penalizes brands based on "American taste." [24] Direct marketers conducting surveys include open-ended questions to gather prospects' or customers' opinions on offers; acquire names; assure quality control; or, sometimes break the ice. [1]
At the top level, there are four major aspects, or inputs, that influence an individual's opinion (see Figure 3). They are price, quality, delivery, and features. The variations of satisfaction with those inputs will have consequences on the Overall Satisfaction level. The relationship between those inputs and the satisfaction level can be derived through techniques currently used in data mining. [2] Accomplishing a quantitative research was not the aim of the study, but rather to know better the customers' opinions; the focus group was seen as one of the options for qualitative research, constituting a promising tool for data collection. [7]
The sites will contain listings and opinions about a wide range of services in a community, from auto-repair shops and beauty salons to restaurants and roofers. "It is essentially a substitute for other online yellow pages," Rick Levine, a co-creator of Word of Mouth, said recently. "'I`he value to consumers is that other people's opinions may be closer to their own than a yellowpage description a merchant is paying for." [25] To help learn its customers' opinions and expectations regarding the EPA mandated 2002 engine emissions standards and their potential impact on trucking, Peterbilt Motors Co. has added an online survey to its website, www.peterbilt.com, the company recently announced. [26] A summary of the group's opinions follows, emphasizing the main points of agreement. In their own words, the participants considered the library a "terrible place" for study and research. [7] When you solicit input, rather than just sit back and wait for complaints, you use your customers' opinions as a springboard to improvement and increased profits. [8]
Think of an online yellow pages that includes customers' opinions about the business, and you get an idea of the Word of Mouth concept. [25]
RANKED RECOMMENDED SOURCES
(26 source documents numbered in order of appearance in text)
2. What good customers are worth to a shrewd buyer
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/11.html
7. Using the focus group approach for evaluating customers ' opinions : the experience of a Brazilian academic library
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/17.html
13. Inderscience Publishers; Personal discrimination on the Web
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/0.html
8. Feedback Helps Boost Repeat Business
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/36.html
9. Understand your customer before preparing forecasts
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/27.html
10. Infoworld e-business 100: Staples.com
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/15.html
20. Using customer satisfaction research to get closer to the customers
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/33.html
25. Worst oil change ever: Now online
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/16.html
1. Untapped Gold
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/8.html
11. Mishandling claims will sink insurers
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/19.html
16. How to cheat your way to higher customer survey scores
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/31.html
22. Comparative perceptions of product quality management
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/34.html
21. How do you recognize employees for their accomplishments?
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/6.html
6. A guide for agents selling to distributors
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/25.html
4. Great service expectations: Avoiding "bad hair" days
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/28.html
18. Use logistic regression with customer satisfaction data
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/22.html
24. Autos Brief -- DaimlerChrysler AG: Mercedes's Chief Questions Attaining J.D. Power Ranking
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/7.html
5. Viewpoint: Why customer satisfaction research doesn't get results
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/12.html
17. Call centres slowly evolving to merge with Internet
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/20.html
19. What I learned on the campaign trail
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/24.html
23. Business: Puffed up
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/18.html
26. 2002 Engine Survey on www.peterbilt.com
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/10.html
15. Consumers never knew they wanted more than just 192
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/9.html
14. PO in pre sell-off customer survey
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/32.html
12. Where's the value in wholesale?
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/13.html
3. Chrysler and minivans: Are we there yet?
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/29.html
2. What good customers are worth to a shrewd buyer
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/11.html
7. Using the focus group approach for evaluating customers ' opinions : the experience of a Brazilian academic library
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/17.html
13. Inderscience Publishers; Personal discrimination on the Web
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/0.html
8. Feedback Helps Boost Repeat Business
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/36.html
9. Understand your customer before preparing forecasts
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/27.html
10. Infoworld e-business 100: Staples.com
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/15.html
20. Using customer satisfaction research to get closer to the customers
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/33.html
25. Worst oil change ever: Now online
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/16.html
1. Untapped Gold
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/8.html
11. Mishandling claims will sink insurers
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/19.html
16. How to cheat your way to higher customer survey scores
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/31.html
22. Comparative perceptions of product quality management
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/34.html
21. How do you recognize employees for their accomplishments?
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/6.html
6. A guide for agents selling to distributors
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/25.html
4. Great service expectations: Avoiding "bad hair" days
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/28.html
18. Use logistic regression with customer satisfaction data
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/22.html
24. Autos Brief -- DaimlerChrysler AG: Mercedes's Chief Questions Attaining J.D. Power Ranking
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/7.html
5. Viewpoint: Why customer satisfaction research doesn't get results
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/12.html
17. Call centres slowly evolving to merge with Internet
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/20.html
19. What I learned on the campaign trail
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/24.html
23. Business: Puffed up
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/18.html
26. 2002 Engine Survey on www.peterbilt.com
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/10.html
15. Consumers never knew they wanted more than just 192
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/9.html
14. PO in pre sell-off customer survey
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/32.html
12. Where's the value in wholesale?
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/13.html
3. Chrysler and minivans: Are we there yet?
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/29.html
The British spend almost twice as much per head on online supermarket orders as the Dutch, the world's second most enthusiastic internet shoppers, and almost four times as much as Americans, according to Datamonitor, the business analysis company. Unlike the U.S. start-ups, Tesco did not build expensive, dedicated warehouses to service its internet customers. It took orders online and sent pickers around its stores to fill customers' baskets. Not only did it cost Tesco far less to establish its online business than the U.S. start-ups, its well-known name and huge customer base also meant it did not need to market itself from scratch. Some of the web-only companies mocked Tesco in the early days for its relatively low-tech approach, but its online service outlasted them all. In the U.S., supermarket companies such as Safeway and Ahold are now more closely following the Tesco model in their online sales. It must be galling for Tesco to have come bottom in a recent customer survey of five online UK supermarkets. [1]
Joban Spa Resort Hawaiian--Joban Spa Resort Hawaiian, the first leisure-industry company in Japan to win the Deming Prize for quality control in 1989, measures everything. Joban starts its measurement system with the customer's needs and works back into its systems and processes and measures everything. It has measured everything from the level and type of background music the customers enjoy to videotaping people standing in check-in lines to determine how long they'll wait before becoming annoyed. Florida Power and Light--Florida Power and Light, the first U.S. company to win Japan's Deming Prize, identified eight priority areas for improvement based on customer needs. They then selected the appropriate quality indicator that would help them monitor progress in each of these priority areas. Their quality indicators measured those things their customers found important. The quality indicator for reducing customer dissatisfaction, their first priority, was the number of complaints to Florida's Public Service Commission per thousand FPL customers. Another quality indicator in the priority area of reliability measured was the number of transmission line force outages. Florida Power and Light listened to the voice of the customer and then they worked "to do a better and better job of meeting their needs and expectations." Xerox Corporation--In 1980, Xerox found itself in trouble--they were losing their once dominant marketshare. When they benchmarked themselves against major competitors, they found themselves way behind in both unit cost and in quality. [2]
"We've always been sensitive to that balance between having a relaxing dining experience and feeling like somebody is always trying to sell you something as you're involved in that process, so that's probably why we've been slow to develop a program in-house," says Dormán. As such, Jack Stack is proceeding cautiously with the development of a contact management program for its retail customers. Currently, the company tracks store visits through its customer service team in its shipping division, flagging callers by catalog, online or retail source. Another way the company leverages in-person interaction is via an insert that comes with the customers' bills in the check presenter. Jack Stack Barbecue Vice President Travis Carpenter says this insert promotes the shipping business with information on the program as well as a 10 percent discount offer. Called Jack's Bucks, this in-restaurant promotion helps acquaint customers with the store, Web site and catalog. [3]
Firms that achieve sustainable competitive advantage capitalize on other weapons in the strategy arsenal including strategic synergy between marketing and other functional area and organizational strategies as shown in Figure 6. There are strategy-structure-management/operations synergies inherent in the integration of the processes of their formulation and implementation. In the following section we trace the sources, elaborate on the terms and conditions, and enumerate the outcomes of capitalizing on these synergies. Earlier in this paper we indicated that the literature cast marketing strategy in the context of either marketing process models or corporate/business strategic planning models. Our contention was that while the focus of the strategic planning model variety is on achieving corporate financial objectives through designing and implementing product, pricing, promotion, and place (distribution) programs, the focus of the marketing process model variety is on the formulation of segmentation, targeting, differentiation, and positioning strategies designed to create, communicate, and deliver value to the customer to ensure their satisfaction and gain their loyalty, i.e. achieve marketing objectives. Since, neither of the models standing alone captures the multidimensionality of marketing strategy formulation and implementation from a customer, company, and competitor vantage, we decided to present both types of models accenting the view of the 3Cs of market places/space. In this section of the paper we start with the marketing process model of creating a positive customer experience. [4]
If it tells you where the issues are and how to fix them, that's analytics." It's also about identifying why customers leave an IVR. One of the main reasons is that "more often than not, you're asking them to do something they do not want to do," Fluss says. "Or the system could be slow, or you could be asking them for information they don't have. "There's a lot of information available, but you need actionable information like this to make a difference." As a side benefit all this can result in a reduction in agent call volume, Fluss says. Another analytics solution growing in parallel with CEA is desktop analytics, an internally focused technology that measures departmental performance and the agent's interaction with desktop servicing applications to cut call handling times. The two solution types, though still very nascent, are already making positive contributions to contact centers and their customers, the report states. Among the contributions, the report identifies helping contact center and enterprise managers address important goals, such as generating revenue, reducing customer attrition, increasing the use of self-service applications, improving agent satisfaction, and reducing agent attrition and turnover. "These applications are delivering cost savings of 5 percent to 10 percent to organizations," Fluss maintains. "When implemented properly, they help managers achieve their cost- savings goals while improving the customer and agent experience. [5] Why doesn't the valuable information gathered through customer service satisfaction surveys result in improved service? Because the real challenge for organizations is not in collecting customer feedback but in using it effectively. Nearly all organizations ask customers about their performance - easier to ask for data than to act on it. [6]
Remember, customers' requirements are like moving targets. Track the internal procedures that are supposed to produce the results the customers tell you they want. Once you have an established list of attributes to measure and have decided upon a unit of measure for each, then you must work these into performance and process standards for each business unit which provides a product or a service. Tell your people everything you learn--You must always focus on both the internal, as well as the external customer. It is just as essential to measure process performance as it is to measure the organization's overall performance to its customers. [2]
Product price points range from 54.95 for a ribs dinner package that serves two to three people to 359.95 for the Jack Stack's Signature Feast that serves 20 to 24 people. Customers can supplement their barbecue packages with add-on items, such as other meats, side dishes, desserts, sauces and rubs, and even a copy of the latest catalog. "It's actually a challenge to sell barbecue nationwide, because the preferred regional flavor profiles vary so widely," explains Steve Trollinger, executive vice president of J. Schmid 6a Associates, a catalog and multichannel marketing services firm in Mission, Kan., that works with Jack Stack Barbecue. "It so happens that Jack Stack is, for all practical purposes, the definition of 'Kansas City barbecue' and benefits from the cachet associated with that positioning. The result is that Jack Stack can be very 'niche' with the product offering but appeal widely because it's known as the representative brand for the genre. [3]
The guiding principle here is to build a continual feedback loop to get customers' opin- ions on everything from products and service to marketing and media. "We want to know how the shopping experience went for them, how the marketing experience went for them; if they bought a gift, how that went. How important things like packaging are and timeliness of delivery, and some of those other things that we can offer some control over and adapt to and change to, if that's where we see our customers directing us," says Dorman. It's all a part of building the business by improving the customer experience, a practice that Jack Stack Barbecue comes by naturally. [3]
The Citrix Ready initiative provides partner management, joint solution testing, joint marketing, and go-to-market tools and support so that partners can embrace and extend Citrix application delivery infrastructure solutions to leverage the dominant market strength of Citrix, global presence, brand recognition and worldwide go-to-market channels. With a global customer base exceeding 215,000 organizations, Citrix provides Citrix Ready Partners with a huge opportunity to leverage the Citrix brand to extend their market reach and expand revenues with new enterprise opportunities. About visionapp visionapp is a leading provider of solutions, such as visionapp Server Management and visionapp Workspace Management, that make it easy for IT groups to create, customize, and maintain their infrastructure, as well as the information and services they deliver to users. For more than a decade, visionapp has specialized in scalable products and shared services platforms--enhancing delivery systems and service-oriented infrastructures while maximizing their investments in a strategic, competitively focused IT organization. [7]
A huge amount of money was spent in the construction of the new space, including rebuilding, equipment and furniture: R770,330,00 (approximately US640,000). The researchers had their attention called to this technique of interview in rather a casual way, from an informal chat with a member of the staff who had already worked with this kind of methodology in advertising agencies. From this point on the interest in the application of the method in the information services environment was awakened. Having this objective in view, a search of the professional literature was made, looking specifically for papers discussing the use of the focus group approach in relation to academic libraries. In this manner, it was possible to identify several texts dealing with the subject. In their book Service Quality in Academic Libraries, Hernon and Altman (1996) develop their research from information obtained by the application of the focus group approach. Another use of the technique can be found in an article by Radford (1998), in which the author deals with the problem of non verbal communication between customers and reference librarians. Rose et al. (1998) also use this technique to analyze the technostress at the reference desk of the Health Sciences Library of the State University of New York. [8]
As a corporation, we developed a quality policy "To Be The Best." This policy requires that every individual and operating unit fully understand the requirements of their customer, and deliver products and services that satisfy customer requirements at a defect - free level. From this policy, the quality improvement process (QIP), which promotes the defect - free philosophy, was developed. The customer - supplier relationship is what drives this process. Everyone in our plant is encouraged to know who their customers are, both internally (those in the plant who provide product or services) and externally (outside suppliers, vendors or contractors). We are all encouraged to understand our customer requirements and to measure performance against those requirements. [9] The ACSI is a national economic indicator of customer evaluations of the quality of products and services available to household consumers in the United States. Domino's Pizza unseated not only its biggest pizza competitors, but the U.S. largest limited service restaurants, with an overall score of 77. [10] Many different elements are associated with a service or product, e.g., quality, features, price, etc., that a customer unconsciously integrates to form a level of overall satisfaction. The knowledge of these details is important if the current customer base is to be thoroughly understood. [11]
Many studies have validated that the human decision process is primarily emotional and that we tend to rationalize after the fact by offering "logical" reasons to others and to ourselves. A customer may be unwilling to reveal, or to even be conscious of the fact, that the relationship they have with a sales person, as opposed to quality, is the fundamental reason that he or she purchases a service or product. [11]
Financial value, strategic value, market value, product and service assessments, and key management evaluations are common elements in the analysis of mergers and acquisitions. The value of the customer, however, usually the fundamental driver of business success, is either ignored or given only cursory attention by acquirers and their banking advisers because a detailed assessment of customers often is regarded as a "soft" process and seemingly not quantifiable. [11]
"You can't take one area in isolation. You need a holistic view -- to make sure everything is working together from an end-to-end perspective supporting both the business process requirements and the technology requirements." When the company works with its customers in the telecoms management area -- supporting for example the full service broadband and the service delivery platform requirements -- "we can advise them on how they can reuse the investments they've already made in the telecom management area, and show what's required to become more lean operators", he says. It's not a "big bang" that Ericsson is proposing to operators, he is quick to point out. "It's an evolutionary process. [12] By matching high business performance to high customer needs, the company can assure right products to right customers, high customer loyalty, reduced customer churn, and strong and continuous revenue streams. [13]
Whiteware and household appliances are also good examples of products which we expect to be delivered in perfect condition every time. A few years ago manufacturers would have budgeted for several customer complaints and warranty claims on these products per 100 produced but today these defects have been reduced to almost zero. Japanese manufacturing firms have strongly influenced these improvements in satisfying customer needs. With their Kaizen philosophy of continual improvements in operating performance, they have pushed customer acceptable quality levels higher and higher. In some industries this has been one of the main contributing advantages which has created new product brand leaders. In many companies this continual striving for improvement has resulted in enhanced customer satisfaction, increased market share and long-term company viability. [14] The company might be delivering high quality service where customer need is low. This paints a picture of customers' apathy and a situation where slow growth would be expected. Another example may be of a situation where the company experiences low performance in a high need area. This depicts an inferior growth outlook because customers are minimally satisfied. [13]
1.2. SERVICE QUALITY
Many companies have been using electronic forums and on-line services for technical support, and the existence of on-line communities around products provides selfservice opportunities to customers. The Web takes this self-service component further, allowing a company to present a large amount of information on its products and services in an organized and visually attractive manner, and update it frequently. [15] The information can be used to create a reasonable future forecast of sales. The critical role of the customer in defining the value of a company, his or her expectations from the company as a service or product supplier, and the synergistic culture that exists between the customers and the company is critical for the success of most mergers. [11]
Merchants also should ensure the shopping cart provides all the information shoppers need to complete the purchase, including: a link to detailed information about shipping options, delivery time frames and costs; customer service contact information; a link to product guarantee and return information; and certification logos. [16]
While price is important in most cases, don't always look to the distributor who low-balls customers. Look for a distributor who is flexible when he needs to be, but is more than willing to offer the kind of service that his or her customers need most." As more manufacturers switch to manufacturing processes that require just-in-time delivery of product to keep their lines running and the storage costs down, they are going to be looking to distributors who can provide the service. "This means that a distributor is not only going to have to be able to afford a warehouse and the people who will run it, but they are going to have to finance inventory," an agent told us. "This means that the financial factors are going to be even more important than they are now. Any agent looking for distributors in this situation is going to have to be able to assess the figures and to make intelligent presentations to the principals he or she represents." [17] The two basic goals of quality measurement are to facilitate uniform attainment of product or services that meet established customer requirements and to contribute toward the reduction of overall costs of non-conformance. [2] A. Parasuraman's and Len Berry's book Marketing Services: Competing Through Quality, says there are basically three ways t identify the customer's potential level of dissatisfaction: monitor customer complaints, ask the customer how satisfied he or she is, and "blueprint" your organization service system to identify potential trouble spots caused by bureaucracy. [18]
New technologies making their way into the call center analytics space are expected to make a giant splash in the next three years, according to new research by DMG Consulting. Principal among them is customer experience analytics (CEA), a new concept in speech analytics that dissects the entire customer interaction through every touch point - Web and interactive voice response (IVR) selfservice, agent interactions, and the fulfillment process - to improve customer service and automation rates. In its report titled "Contact Center Analytics: Emerging Customer Experience and Desktop Analytics Solutions," DMG predicts the number of CEA implementations will approach 1,000 by the end of 2011. DMG conservatively predicts CEA growth rates will hit 90 percent this year, 60 percent in 2010, and 50 percent in 2011. [5]
Thirty-five years later, the Jack Stack Barbecue business has grown to include four Kansas City area restaurants with retail stores; a multimillion-dollar catering division and private dining service; and a thriving mail order business for barbecue meats, sauces and rubs, and logo apparel. The secret recipe behind the brand's success brings together a focus on the product and customer service to deliver a top-notch barbecue dining experience, whether the customer is in one of the restaurants or in the comfort of his own home. [3]
A high quality reputation often is necessary to ensure continuity of business in many industries. Customers experiencing poor product quality might tell ten of their friends but, in contrast, a good quality experience will often only be told to two or three people. This news spreads rapidly in today's international product markets through networks of potential customers. [14]
Consumers mostly believe that the government should set minimum standards of quality for all products, but managers mostly disagree. Consumers also mostly believe that manufacturers are more interested in making profits than serving customers and managers mostly disagree with this. These indications show a public distrust of managers' ethical policies regarding prices, product quality and profitability. The good news is that most consumers now have a favourable impression about New Zealand goods compared with those made overseas. [14]
Mystery shopping is another too to obtain valuable information regarding the success of your training program. Are your employees effectively determining the needs of the customer? Do your employees have appropriate product knowledge and offer options suited to the customer's needs? Do your employees reflect genuine concern for your customer A mystery shopper can obtain answers to all of these concerns while your employee simply executes his or her regular routine. Another tool is the closed account survey or "autopsy report," information gathered from those customers you've lost. Today's consumers are usually receptive to any forum which allows them to vent the reasons why they chose to abandon one financial organization for another. Finding out exactly why a customer has decided to move their accounts elsewhere may help you retain more of your existing customers. [19] Frequently, many do not even know what is available. Failing to know what is available, employees are unable to bring those services and products to the attention of your customers. Essential front-line employees may lack sufficient training on how to determine customer needs and then match those needs to specific services. [19] Whether by implementing Total Quality Management or another management theory, customer service training is an ongoing process for all of your employees. Employees don't know what differentiates their bank from others, nor do they offer the customer all services available. [19] In that sense, the focus group was quite positive to the library because it made evident that the situation was far from satisfactory. It showed that some of the problems regarding the photocopy services were still to be solved despite the librarians' perspectives: since 1998, due to management decisions, contracting out the photocopy services was seen as a promising way to approach the problem and guaranteeing a higher level of quality for the customers. [8] Make the feedback relevant, personal and timely. If customer service measurement is approached in the right way, managers will stop talking about how they measure service and start talking about how they improve the quality of customer service. [6] Helen Stott, PR manager for Europe and Asia at Telia International Carrier (TIC), which provides bandwidth, voice and IP services, claims, WAS is an important part of our strategy. It will help us enhance quality of service and improve customer retention." [20]
Many companies generated customer loyalty by improving electronic service quality (e-service quality) but the effects needed to be further examined," scientists in Tainan, Taiwan report. "The first purpose of the study is to integrate relevant literature and develop a comprehensive research model of electronic commerce to identify its antecedent and consequential research variables. This study tests the interrelationships among the perception of e-service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The second purpose of this study is to examine the moderating effect of customer perceived value on the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty. Through a questionnaire survey, the results of this study indicated that e-service quality has influence on customer satisfaction and then generates customer loyalty, which is consistent with Bagozzi's appraisalemotional responsebehaviour framework. Another key finding is the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty, which is stronger for customers with high perceived value than low perceived value," wrote H.H. Chang and colleagues, National Cheng-Kung University. [21] Companies can talk about getting the "voice of the customer" into the organization, but that voice can be barely audible over other calls on management time - cost, quality, time and productivity - to name but a few. Another reason for inaction is that issues about service reported on customer satisfaction surveys are often not actionable at an operational level. User friendliness of systems, access to helplines, or number of staff available, can be outside their direct control. [6]
The proposed solutions are detailed in Table II. With input from clinic administration and based on the analyses from the simulation experiments and the patient preferences listed, the scale of preference relations (shown in Table I) were applied according to the SSQS procedure. The resultant prioritized solutions and their weighted rankings are shown in Table III. Solution B (CIT 45, HBA 3, CT 17.7) is preferred, although its average waiting time after scheduled appointment (WTASA) is larger than that of solution A. Solution B's higher WTASA is offset, with respect to patient preferences, by its superior performance on average total time in the system (TIS). This study has researched the topic of integrating total quality management, customer satisfaction and simulation techniques in health care to develop the simulation service quality system. The purpose of this research was to present possible alternatives for improvement to achieve the timeliness standards at a U.S. Veterans' Hospital by developing recommendations to reduce the time a patient waits for service. [22]
Although TQM has existed for decades, it has only been in the past few years that America has begun to embrace it more fully. Whether it's through Deming's 14 steps or Kaizen, America's corporations are discovering that the concept of continuous improvement is rooted in getting closer to the customer. With the book Service America!: Doing Business in the New Economy, by Albrecht and Zemke in 1985, the service sector has also begun to understand the importance of bringing the power of the customer into the center of its business. Both of these movements strongly advocate customer satisfaction research as an integral part of a quality organization. [18] U.S. Executive Order 12862, entitled Setting Customer Service Standards, requires each federal agency to develop and implement customer service standards (Department of Veterans Affairs, 1994). The purpose of this research is to propose alternatives to achieve the timeliness Customer Service Standard for United States Veterans' and thus try to enhance the hospital's efficiency by improving the quality of its services. [22] Today's consumers are savvy purchasers. Average consumers may not know very much, if anything, about CRA or present value analysis, but they know when they are receiving quality service. They have great expectations when it comes to customer service. [19] Techniques are available to objectively define customer priorities. There are methods of quantitatively defining the financial impact of changes in the customer perceptions pertaining to price, quality, delivery, support, service, etc. Given these capabilities, customer value can be objectively defined and utilized in characterizing the value of a potential acquisition. [11] Companies who supply the automotive industry, like MTD, have used FMEAs with much success. Federal Express has achieved success by giving their Service Quality Indicators (service characteristics) a weighted score value based on the relative importance of each characteristic to the customer. [2]
You could do nothing, hold your breath, sit back, wait and see, act fearfully. Or you could take risks, make waves, be bold, think about inspiring your customer and adding value to your customer experience. Innovators will see these topsy-turvy times as chances to gain ground, launch new products, create their own opportunities and draw customers closer to their brands. Fortune magazine recently revealed its list of most admired companies in their industries in the category of innovation. [23]
Successful innovation is customer driven. It gets as close as possible to the customer's current process. A deep understanding of how customers operate today - and why they do what they do - gives insight into how to improve the process; how to create a step forward for the customer. By directly engaging customers in the innovation process, they become deeply committed to, and invested in, a solu- tion's evolutionary path. This makes innovation a primary differentiator, an- other way of creating value for customers by enriching their experience and rein- forcing loyalty over time. [24] The framework captures strategy-structure-management synergies presented earlier as antecedents to value creation. It casts value creation in terms of the broader process of creating a positive customer experience, and specifies marketing outcomes required to generate desirable financial results. [4]
Providing customer value is the corner stone of the marketing process of creating a positive customer experience. [4] As for e-mail marketing, Jack Stack collects e-mail addresses during the checkout process and via a promotions program where prospects and customers can sign up to receive sales alerts. According to Dorman, the company runs a couple specific sales each year - an Add-On Sale, where customers can tack on products to barbecue packages, and a summer Rib Sale - and then supplements those efforts with weekly promotions for either new items or trigger messages. [3]
A selection of production, selling, marketing, financial, legal, or any other functional silo of the firm. A selection of decision support system orientation such as business intelligence, management information systems, marketing information systems, or a learning organization with data warehousing, data mining, and knowledge management systems. A selection of a base for organizational structure design such as functional, geographic, product, brand, market, channel, and customer. [4] Forecasting in a competitive market is based on the likelihood that customers will buy a product or service. Whether or not they would depends on how sound the company's marketing management is. [13] Quantification of the customer culture characterizing the degree to which the fundamental elements of product, service, and personal relationships influence customer purchase habits. [11]
How satisfied customers are with the firm's sales personnel, the features of the product, or product pricing, to cite a few elements. As with the Revenue Index, both an absolute number and a relative ranking with respect to the database of surveys can define the results of each survey question. Figure 2 illustrates the percentile ranking for the question, "How satisfied are you with response to your questions about the product?" For example, if 45% were Totally Satisfied, this would place the response to that question in the 55th percentile. A very interesting and tempting query to the customer is if he or she intends to repurchase your service or product in the future. [11]
1.3. CUSTOMER VALUE
In one case, account representatives being held accountable for survey scores visited the customer's office and asked the survey questions directly, filling in the customer's answers on the survey form. When someone in the company finally questioned this approach, a parallel telephone survey conducted b an independent firm uncovered dramatically lower results. In another example, a hotel chain had its employees slip a survey under the doors of guest rooms. Employees quickly figured out that they were only hurting themselves by giving surveys to guests who had problems at the hotel. 2. Re-contact customers who have been sued and encourage them to alter their previous answers. One of the more insidious forms of cheating, this approach involves looking through customers' answers, contacting those who gave a less-than-desirable rating, and gently badgering them into giving a revised evaluation. During the course of follow-up conversations, customers are encouraged to state that they were "satisfied" after all. Exclude potentially unhappy customers from the list of those to be surveyed. If it is known beforehand that some customers will give low survey scores, a reasonable explanation can sometimes be constructed for excluding them from the survey. The technique was used to its fullest extent in a program where detailed listings of customer answers were relayed to company managers in the field each month. For the following week, these managers--the same ones held accountable for customer scores--were allowed to specify exclusions of individual customers from the database before the results were ever tabulated. [25]
"There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the impact the 2002 emissions-compliant engines will have on our industry. The online survey is a way for Peterbilt to gauge how its customers perceive the various issues and their expectations on how those issues should be resolved," says Nick Panza, Peterbilt general manager and PAC-- CAR vice-president. "As Peterbilt continues to work closely with its engine suppliers, the information we learn from the survey results will be useful in helping ensure our customers continue to get maximum overall value from their investment in a Peterbilt vehicle." The survey includes twelve questions and explores topics such as if the new engines will accelerate or delay the decision to purchase a new vehicle, how the pre-owned market will be affected, and how the engines will affect vehicle weight, durability and cost. [26]
Considering the above mentioned points, the library has now the intention of implementing the suggestions obtained in the interview. With the exception of those regarding the acquisition of specific information resources, that do not depend exclusively on the library's decision but on the policy adopted by the University of Sao Paulo, most of the suggestions are very simple to put into effect and do not demand a great amount of financial resources. Taking into account the results of the focus group approach, it was decided to include this kind of activity in the SBD/ECA's planning process. It shows how listening to the customers and allowing them to express their opinions in a spontaneous way can be productive. The work corroborated both the literature and the viability of using the focus group approach for the academic environment. [8]
How to use the library computer resources was not very clear to the customers. As they mentioned in the interview, they approved the acquisition and upgrading of the new machines put at their disposal but they considered that more information for using the on-line public access catalogues was needed. It became evident that the group did not have a very extensive knowledge about the services provided by the library. They commented, for example, that they were not acquainted with the Current Contents of Journals, a reference tool published by the SBD/ECA, which the librarians consider a very important source for research. [8] Customer value can be important in determining valuation and can provide the management of the merging organizations with the equivalent of a management consulting service. This information has the potential to offer a significant value and to be an influence in postmerger tactical and strategic actions. [11] E-business strategy contributes to enhancing firm efficiency through reduction in transaction cost (e-commerce), enhancing business intelligence, improving supply chain and customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning. These contributions are shown in Figure 5. The significance of these strategy links lie in the performance synergy between effectiveness and efficiency that lead to productivity gains necessary to create customer value. [4] Customer value, satisfaction and loyalty are necessary variables to generated desired marketing outcomes including market share and business share. The antecedents, processes, and outcomes of creating customer value are presented in detail in the remainder of this section. In the process of this presentation we advance propositions and frameworks that link marketing strategy formulation and implementation to performance marketing and financial performance outcomes. [4]
Profitability is a metric of the efficiency of marketing strategy. The above discussion clearly demonstrate that the focus of the marketing process model variety is on the customer, i.e. formulation of segmentation, targeting, differentiation, and positioning strategies designed to create, communicate, and deliver value to the customer to ensure their satisfaction and gain their loyalty, i.e. achieve marketing objectives. Therefore, we capitalize on the above discussion of financial metrics to transition to the last section of this paper focusing on the strategic planning model variety for marketing strategy formulation and implementation. [4]
The current focus is on optimizing performance, by working with J. Schmid & Associates, e-commerce marketing firm DMinSite, and consumer data and analytics firm NextAction to develop more customer demographic information to guide prospecting and retention efforts. American Express helps on die retail side, providing demographic data on customers who use this payment method and who respond to the promotional campaign. Jack Stack reviews this data weekly for campaign adjustments as well as quarterly to make bigger program changes. [3]
Most customs clearinghouses are responsible for checking breakbulk and containers," said Jerry Nagel, president and chief executive of Rickmers-Linie (America) Inc. in Houston. Rickmers has upgraded its auto-attended telephone answering system because customers prefer that communications method. "Most of our customers actually prefer the M-O of a phone call," he said. Carriers such as Rickmers-Linie and Chipolbrok, whose workhorse multipurpose vessels carry project cargo globally on liner or semi-liner schedules, follow their vessels' position based on satellite navigation, showing the information on their Web sites, Pegg said. Intermarine is working with vendors and clients to develop a system later this year that tracks electronic data interchange activity, said Greg Stangel, vice president of marketing and systems in Houston. [27]
The Yankee Group believes that Webbased approaches to customer service will evolve to the point that hybrids of Web and agent calls will become commonplace in two to three years, in the same way the hybrids of IVR and agent calls are at the present time. [15]
The challenges in Internet-enabling the call centre are technological and organizational: determining how to leverage the more developed call centre infrastructure to take advantage of the emerging Internet/intranet infrastructure at companies, and how to culturally integrate the objectives of two or more separate functional groups within an organization. The Yankee Group believes that Webbased approaches to customer service will evolve to the point that a hybrid of Web communication and agent calls will become common, in the same way that hybrids of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and agent calls are common at this time. [15]
In a way, that seemed to imply the viability of the focus group approach to the reality of the Brazilian libraries. Having in mind this hypothesis, the authors tried to follow the orientations provided by the bibliography in spite of having to adapt them to the limitations and objectives of the specific study they were carrying out. The focus group approach has its origin in the social sciences and in the marketing research of the 1940s. It was used for the first time in the information environment in the 1980s, to research an automated subject retrieval system used by library users (Drabenstott, 1992). The technique can be defined as an effective method to identify feelings and convictions about situations, products and services, as well as how these motivations build people's behaviour. [8]
Oreos illustrate two important aspects of product innovation. Nabisco stayed close to its customers. It understood how needs varied among consumers and changed over time. The company developed its product to meet the needs of a continually broader set of consumers. [24] One agent we talked with stressed that the distributor must be financially sound. He said, "Remember, the distributor is going to buy your principals' products. You want to make sure that he's in a position to pay his bills on time, and that he is in a position to buy enough of the product so that his or her customers can have what they need when they need it." He also stressed that the distributor should be in a position to pay his help well enough to attract good people. [17]
And, as expected, MANA members came through again. An agent who sells retail products to distributors told us that in her field, it's important for the distributor to take an active part in merchandising activity with his or her retail customers. She said, "A good distributor is a detailer in our field. He or she visits the retail customers regularly, checks on stock, and does whatever restocking is needed, often on the spot. A good distributor not only works with factory generated promotions for the retailer, but often sets up his or her own promotions for in-store use." Actually, the picture this agent painted of a good distributor in the retail field is not much different from the pictures agents painted for us in the industrial field. [17]
Probably the only difference is the extent to which the agents work closely with the distributor. An agent who sells fluid control products to industrial distributors told us that he not only does regular inventory checks of the distributors in his territory, but that he often makes calls with distributor salespeople on their customers. "Because our products are technical and require special backup before they can be specified as a component in a customer's product, I think it's important for me, as a factory representative, to back up the distributor salesperson in some customer calls. [17] I always let the distributor call the shots. It's his show, and I'm there to back him up." Back on the retail side, some distributors often provide training services to their retail customers on the products they sell. [17] Customer recommendations for improvement of the product or service offerings. [11] By focusing on discrete improvements that enhance the customer experience, merchants can provide measurable proof that e-commerce remains a winner - not only for 2009, but for the long term. Relios Jewelry provides its customers with all the necessary information they need to complete their purchases, including certification logos, shipping rates and customer service information. [16]
Especially for long-distance travelers, the stores are the perfect environment in which to alert customers to Jack Stack's mail order business. "We have a number of collateral pieces inside the store that make it clear to our guests that we have those services available to them," says Case Dormán, Jack Stack's president and CEO (and son-in-law of the company founder). "We'll have marketing pieces spread throughout the store in tactful places," he explains, emphasizing the importance of not detracting from the dining experience with a hardsell offer on these services. [3] Positive customer experience, value, value-adding chain, and integrated marketing communication mix constitute the marketing mix for relationship marketers. Transactions and relationships are both typologies of exchange and marketing outcomes that mediate positive customer experiences into business and market share outcomes. [4] E-business strategy is mediated to all other strategies of the firm through corporate strategy. While other strategies, such as marketing, may be designed to improve effectiveness of the firm, e-business strategy defined as the total sum of e-commerce, business intelligence, supply chain management, customer relationship management, and enterprise resource planning is designed to enhance firm efficiency. [4] E-strategy enables efficiency of transactions and relationships through e-commerce, business intelligence, customer service management, relationship management, supply chain management, and enterprise resource planning. [4] Adams boils Akamai's service philosophy down to three tenets: Work for the customer, measure success based on customer success, and use service and support as a core business differentiator. [28]
The company also does site-traffic analysis. Site improvements are first tested by customer groups, he adds." We observe how they do it, where they get stuck. We do rounds of that until we get to a point where we know that it's intuitive and customers can find it and use it properly." Staples.com added enhanced user tools, including "Feature Finder," a context-sensitive sales and search assistant; a "Favorite Items" shopping-list function; and revamped small-business services such as payroll and Web hosting. [29] "The reference architecture is the base you need to have," says Sjoman. "It has the tools for a multi-service environment. It means you can use more generic solutions for different services without splitting them into stovepipes." Operational efficiency and customer experience are both closely linked to revenue and margin, says Sjoman. "That is why you need to have a holistic view and have a clear view of the relationships between those elements. [12] Tesco hit back, saying the Which? survey did not reflect "the reality we experience with customer feedback from some of our 1m regular online shoppers". They, said the retailer, "love our unrivalled delivery area, our cheaper alternative suggestions, bagless deliveries, convenient delivery times and efficient service". [1]
According to the survey, customers believe that only one attribute, product quality (b), is high in performance. [13] Surveys and questionnaires must be designed with a business question in mind: "What will we be able to do with the answers?" Of course the aim should be to improve the quality and consistency of the customer experience. [6] Memorial Hermann uses the "Big Dot" strategy backed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Its four key initiatives are quality and safety, customer experience, operational excellence and growth. [30] Quality improvement activities which have quality measurement criteria based on the voice of the customer are critical to the continued success of any organization. Continuous quality improvement means meeting the needs and expectations of both the internal and the external customers. We must remember at all times that customers' expectations are like moving targets and we must learn to aim ahead or we will miss them. [2]
The result: in a decade of intense competition Motorola has maintained a position of leadership in the electronics industry. Federal Express--Federal Express, the first service industry to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1990, established Service Quality Indicators (SQI) to measure and tell them where they are at any given time toward reaching their goal of 100 percent customer satisfaction. The SQI contains 12 components weighted to reflect those categories which have the greatest impact on their customers' needs and expectations. The number of average daily failure points for each of the 12 components is calculated by multiplying the number of daily occurrences for that component by its assigned importance weight. [2]
Specifically, the issues involved the achievement of the timeliness objective: to be seen by a doctor within 30 minutes of the appointment time. An investigation of these issues were conducted within the framework of a conceptual model named simulation service quality system, focusing on the deviation from the target to the actual performance of the system. In considering this result, recall that in the VISITAS model the performance measurement is the deviation from the appointment time to the time the doctor starts attending the patient. The hypotheses tested were that there are significant main effects and interaction effects between the check-in time, the health benefits advisers and the consultation time (control variables) that may be responsible for increasing the time a patient waits to see a doctor. The hypotheses were tested by means of analysis of variance with eight different scenarios. Each of these three factors proved to be significant. Sensitivity analyses showed these effects to be stable over modest ranges. Clearly, from the results, these factors affect the quality of the service provided with respect to patients' measured preferences. [22]
1.4. FIRST CUSTOMER
If a customer rates the quality of service as excellent, or if a customer comments about a particularly well-done job by a specific employee, the staff member receives a commendation. All of these accolades are published on the telco's Intranet and can be viewed by all staff members. Quarterly, all names of those who have received accolades are entered into a raffle, and the winner receives 250. [31] You even have a great customer service training program for your new employees. Or so you think. A bank with a "great customer service training program" had employees, through no malice of forethought, make these statements to the bank's valued current and potential customers. [19] Part of the reason would appear to be that customer expectations on service have grown enormously in the past 10 years. Service companies-hotels, airlines, banks and mutual funds-have all gone out of their way to be intensely customer-focused. [32]
Research performed by Taiwan Ratings suggests that the ambitions of Taiwan banks are very much focused on what theTaiwan government estimates are some 50,000 China-based Taiwan corporates, says Eva Chou, a financial analyst at thefirm. "They are not really interested in lending to China's corporations, so I think the move will for Taiwan banks to service Taiwan customers. To really expand their revenue engine to Chinesecorporations - that would be a long way to go." Ms Chou adds, however, that the opportunities for Taiwanese retail banksin China are much fewer - especially for those banks initially focusing on operations in Hong Kong. "I think the benefitis very limited because the exposure of Hong Kong branches is very small," she says. [33]
The library of the School of Communications and Arts of the University of Sao Paulo (ECA/USP), now called Service of Library and Documentation (SBD/ECA), was founded in 1970. It aims to give support to the teaching and research accomplished by the nine departments of the school (Library Sciences and Documentation; Communications and Arts; Cinema, Television and Radio; Journalism and Publishing; Theatre; Fine Arts; Music; Public Relations, Tourism and Advertising) and the School of Dramatic Art, a high school course maintained by ECA/USP. The SBD/ECA's collection is composed of books, theses, newspapers, music scores, disks, audio and video discs, films, pictures, compact discs, CD-ROMs, exhibition catalogues, plays and comic books, in a total of 133,100 items. Its community is composed of students, faculties, researchers and employees of the school, a total of 2,336 people. It serves an average of 550 customers a day, both from the University of Sao Paulo and from other institutions. In 1997, the SBD/ECA received financial resources from the Foundation for the Support to Research of the State of Sao Paulo (FAPESP) to rebuild its facilities, which had no substantial restorations since 1982. [8] `TThe negative-review issue was raised around here from Day One," Rogosienski said. "If a company is providing poor service, people are telling others about it all day long," he said. "We're telling them that this gives them the ability to turn a bad situation into good customer service." [34]
There were not good conditions for work, which gave an impression of disorganization and lack of harmony among the library staff. The students have made clear that they needed to know more about the services provided by the library. In that sense, they suggested that the library should make its services known to the customers. Specific problems were mentioned regarding the photocopier, both concerning its cost and the period necessary for using the service. The rebuilding of the library was of capital importance to the improvement of its physical environment. [8] Companies find it hard to act on customer feedback because there are a number of common corporate misconceptions acting as barriers to service improvement. It is widely acknowledged that managers have to deal with too much information. [6] By effectively monitoring your customer service program, however, you can obtain valuable information that will allow you to make appropriate changes. [19]
A. Bank Clothiers. Both are letting customers return their new purchases (autos and suits, respectively) if the customers lose their jobs in specified time ranges. Not only does this strategy sound like the right thing to do for consumers, but customers who may have to take advantage of the offer will likely remember these companies as soon as their circumstances change. All brands can revisit their customer-empathy meter. Brands can too easily stray from their mission by many seemingly innocuous decisions. [23]
Hubs of ATMs, mini-branches and full-scale premiumbranches litter the city, jostling for space among shops, malls, railway stations and the metro. One such branch can be found at the Taiwan headquarters of Standard Chartered Bank Taiwan, which first entered the Taiwan market in 1985.Downstairs, in the bank's luxurious 'priority banking' branch, a gleaming mini-grand Yamaha piano sits amid thedecorative water feature and coffee bar. In this impressive space, the bank's wealthy priority customers may work, book flights, socialise with friends, andeven throw a small party, says Vivian Shyy, managing director of customer experience management, consumer banking,Standard Chartered Bank Taiwan. "We are not trying to position ourselves as traditional banking, we are trying toposition ourselves as the six-star hotel: we focus on loyalty, not only pricing," she explains, adding: "Prioritybanking is about lifestyle." [33] One article stressed the importance of Total Quality Management. Another article showed in graphic detail what it costs a bank to lose even a small-scale customer. [19]
A Total Quality Management Society was formed and has been active in educating and training managers in quality improvements. Independent quality assessors have been trained and accreditation has been forced on many firms by their export customers. [14] Many hospitals are searching for ways to change the delivery of patient care through total quality management (TQM). The measurement of quality is becoming the driving force behind efforts in TQM. A widely accepted TQM principle is to know the customers and to meet or exceed their expectations (Tennor and DeToro, 1992). [22] Let customers tell you which end results to measure--After your list has been developed, rank order the product's or service's characteristics by occurrence and severity and by relative importance and level of satisfaction to the customer. Methods such as quality function deployment (QFD) and failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) are excellent ways of doing this. [2] We began doing customer studies looking at how people were using the site, and looking for new ways in which to organize things and identify spots where maybe it wasn't as intuitive as wed like." Launched in 1997, the original Staples.com targeted the office-supply market, which includes such a wide range of products that a simple search for "paper" would bring up thousands of results with variations on size, paper type, color, and thickness. [29] The front line of the assembly operation is typically the furthest distance between the product and the customer. Manufacturing performance feedback mechanisms must now be focused on customer requirements and be user - friendly, such that people responsible for building the product understand and conform to these requirements. [9] Despite the excellent performance, customers' need is only medium. Because of this attribute customers cannot be expected to buy this product in large quantity. [13] The customer has a serious problem with product features (c). This is the only attribute rated high in need, but it is rated low in performance. [13]
In a worse case, low performance might appear at the same time customer need is low. This portrays an extremely poor business situation, no hope of improving the sales of the company. [13] In general, the customer value analysis provides the quantitative and qualitative information that allows an assessment of the value of the existing customer base to the business. It also provides an external assessment of many of the functions of the company that directly and indirectly interface with those customers. [11] "To fulfill our vision of Thunderhead NOW as a true enterprise platform, we recognized that providing comprehensive management information functionality was a strategic imperative." "With these latest innovations, our clients will be able to achieve even greater levels of efficiency, reduce their operational risk and have the business insight necessary to help them retain customers, optimize revenue results and improve compliance." [35] Thunderhead NOW is the first customer communications management solution to incorporate in-depth management information functionality. "Analyze NOW provides critical information for our clients to maximize the impact of their customer communications as well as continuously improve the business processes that drive them," added Manchester. [35]
"Today, with Contribute NOW, we are again changing the face of the industry, distributing the power to create and continually update customer communications throughout the enterprise. By enabling any business user, regardless of their role, to quickly and easily contribute new content, we give our clients the power to make each and every customer communication, regardless of the delivery channel, both highly personal and compliant." Recognizing the strategic importance of customer communications, Thunderhead has also introduced Analyze NOW, a comprehensive set of analytical tools designed to give management professionals unprecedented insight into their customer communications. [35] In general, business customers are more likely to be wooed by price, product range and personal relationships. [36] Know why you're measuring--We don't measure to please the boss or ourselves, we measure to be sure we deliver to the customer the product or service requested or needed. [2] We must learn to listen to our customers. Start by asking them which characteristics of your product or service are meaningful. [2]
Much has been made about the Web's potential as a new channel for customer service and electronic commerce (e-commerce), which ties in with the inbound call centre, currently the primary channel for customer service and telecommerce. In its explosive growth of the last three years, the Web has evolved from a purveyor of simple, relatively static electronic content to a channel more capable of providing customer service and e-commerce capabilities. Both of these uses for the Web have been limited at present by the following issues: Lack of standards; security/privacy concerns; immaturity of technology; and greater level of comfort (and inertia) with call centre agents for satisfying customer inquiries and completing transactions. These issues hinder the development of widespread e-commerce, most notably in the short-term. [15] Call center applications vendors. A variety of independent software vendors (ISVs), most notably developers of customer interaction software (CIS) such as Scopus and Vantive, have products that use Web interfaces and technologies to standardize the look of their clients and add some extra features. [15]
One can imagine a salesperson from a marketing research supplier calling on a prospective customer and "pitching" satisfaction research. The salesperson would describe the various benefits and the versatility of this research, and stress many of the points made about the technique that are described in this article. One could further imagine the interested client asking this salesperson whether his or her company uses satisfaction research themselves to reap all the same benefits. [18]
With that in mind, we have developed the iPower Website Program to give Kia customers a highly engaging internet shopping experience," says Ryan Wein, Kia Motors America's Internet Lead Marketing Manager. "We chose Cobalt because they understand customer's needs and they offer a comprehensive solution that will greatly benefit Kia dealers. [37]
We know how it is possible to transform a situation to achieve benchmark values." These in-depth experiences, understanding and knowledge are gained because Ericsson manages network operations for telecoms service providers serving more than 100 million end-users worldwide, says Sjoman. "Our customers are both wireless and wireline operators, and we are operating their multi-vendor network environments". The company has its own network operations centres in Australia, India, Brazil, the U.S. and in Europe. "It is from those NOCs we operate and manage our customers networks, like the 3 networks in UK, Italy and Australia, Bharti in India as some examples," he says. [12] The company counts many of the world's leading private and public sector organizations as customers, including Bank of America, RBS Insurance, UBS, Prudential, Unitrin and the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Thunderhead services its global customer base from offices located in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. [35] Personalize the message and educate the customer about all the unseen things the company and its employees do to provide safe, efficient, economical, reliable service. [38]
While Akamai Technologies' Web-content delivery efforts are technologically complex, its support stance is fairly simple: Put the customer first, a tenet that helped win the company one of this year's Stevie Awards in innovative customer service. [28] Not doing so wastes time and money and sends negative messages to staff and customers alike. Involve staff who provide service to customers so they are committed to the process. [6] "Our knowledge comes from the network operation part of our managed services offering and as a systems integrator in telecom. We deliver more than 1,000 systems integration projects a year to our customers, majority of them direct linked with telecom management solutions," says Sjoman. [12]
"Everyone offers the same products and everyone is so concerned with market share and trying to gainvolume that pricing becomes no issue: you just price your products away." This leaves services as one of few growth areas. In recent years, many banks such as Standard Chartered have pushedaggressively into the wealth management space, but the fees from this business line are also in decline. Tom Ko, CEO of wealth management at Jih Sun Financial Holding, says that the severe downward pressure on costs has become "anindustry-wide problem" while profits, he says matter-of-factly, grow "less and less" each year. The global economic downturn has exacerbated these systemic problems. A heavily export-dependent economy, Taiwanreported a record decline in gross domestic product of 8% for its fourth quarter 2008, prompting the central bank toslash the base rate by 25 basis points in February. The move has dramatically eroded the sector's net interest margin,one of its only remaining revenue streams. "We have been losing a chunk of that income so we're struggling - all banksare struggling - to make money," says Mr Hock U. With a return on equity (ROE) of just 2.47% for 2008, Taiwan's consumerbanking sector is already the least profitable in Asia, while its non-performing loan ratio is on the rise. [33]
Public perceptions of product quality were included in a lifestyle survey of over 3,000 households in 1989. This survey included a wealth of data about how New Zealanders live, their circumstances, opinions and values. One part of the study indicated what the principal person in each household buying goods thought about the quality of New Zealand products and whether this has improved in the past few years. These public perceptions were analysed and then compared with New Zealand manufacturing companies' operations managers' perceptions about their product quality by analysing responses from 117 companies. This quality management study was developed from pilot study interviews in 15 companies, followed by postal questionnaires sent to 347 New Zealand manufacturing firms. [14]
Consumers' perceptions of the quality of products also will be influenced by the sales service given and product reliability, whereas operations managers might think of finished goods quality in the factory warehouse. All of these factors tend to give operations managers a more optimistic view of the improved quality of New Zealand products than average consumers. Most consumers and managers agree that they will trade off some quality for a cheaper price but only to a limited extent. [14]
Operations managers in New Zealand firms feel strongly that the quality of most products has improved tremendously over the past few years. They almost all agree that their company's product quality has increased in recent years and, that consumers should have seen an increase in their product quality compared with overseas made goods. They also mostly agree that New Zealand-made goods are better quality now than overseas made goods. Most consumers in fact are neutral in their perception of improved quality and there are as many disagreeing as there are agreeing. Consumers mostly agree that New Zealand-made goods are better quality than most overseas goods, but they are not as strong in this view as managers. [14]
1.5. CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
An agent trying to find strength in a territory for a retail product that might be complex and sold to consumers should probably look to distributors with a strong record in training. An agent who sells consumer electronic products told us that his most successful distributors are those who provide good and regular training to their retail customers. "There's nothing worse," he said, "than to watch a befuddled retail salesperson try to sell a CD player with all the bells and whistles when he hasn't a clue what the bells and whistles are for. The distributors I have sought out for my principals all have training as one of their strong suits." [17] With our consumer base of 59 million households, social networking can be a powerful tool for engaging customers firsthand in product development. [24] Products in the future will have to be almost as varied as individual customers. Companies will have to be even more consumerdriven in designing and marketing their products. It will also require that sensors, controls, and computers be able to achieve highly flexible manufacturing to produce these customized products. [39]
The ability to personalize offers and better understand customers is a key factor in successful direct marketing. And, the best way to find out what is in customers' heads, is to ask them. JASON VERLEN is vice president, survey applications business center at SPSS Inc. He can be reached at jverlen@spss.com. [40]
"As an educational trade association, it is our responsibility to help provide information and best-of-breed solutions to small and medium-sized merchants," said Brandon Dupsky, Managing Director, eCommerce Merchants. "We chose CREDITZ as a partner because they have deployed a creative marketing and reward engine built to address the primary CRM needs of online ecommerce businesses. CREDITZ Digital Currency is a new form of payment and a loyalty network system all-in-one package that is designed to be a win-win proposition for eCommerce businesses and their customers. CREDITZ are paid to customers for purchasing from online merchants who appreciate their business. Customers are then able to return and spend those CREDITZ back where they earned them or with any other merchant in the CREDITZ Network. It's simple and easy to implement, providing instant customer satisfaction while allowing eCommerce Merchants to directly benefit with increased sales and profits. "We believe this partnership provides members of the eCommerce Merchants with a unique resource to set them apart in a highly competitive online marketplace," says Roy Hayes, EVP of CEO America, Inc. "We are committed to helping eCommerce businesses grow by giving each of their online customers a free CREDITZ account and adding up to 200 CREDITZ (2 value) to each account to help them start building their CREDITZ balance. We are partnering with eCommerce businesses to help them show appreciation to their customers and finding ways to increase loyalty to their brands." This article was prepared by Marketing Weekly News editors from staff and other reports. [41]
"We believe Melissa Data's inclusion in the report and our position as a leader in customer satisfaction reflects our commitment to being a partner in data quality with our customers," said Gary Van Roekel, vice president of sales and marketing, Melissa Data. "We believe data quality provides immediate ROI and is as important to SMB customers as it is to enterprise -- that's why we strive to offer robust, multi-platform solutions like our Data Quality Suite of APIs and the Total Data Quality Integration Toolkit for SSIS. All our products are scalable and affordable, and we offer unlimited technical support to make sure each customer maximizes the potential of their data assets." [42] Andy Hayler, author of the report states, "As part of the research we carried out a customer satisfaction review of all the leading data quality companies." Hayler continued, "Customer satisfaction is, in our view, a very good indicator of the quality of a software product because customers that have gone through the entire implementation process are in the best position to judge whether a product actually delivers on its promises." [42]
The meeting continues with a walk - through of the supervisor's area, with the supervisor taking the lead, discussing area needs and requirements in the five categories of; quality, cost/cash, environment, lean systems, and volume. This isn't image folks. it deals with reality, with the supervisor in charge tabling issues on behalf of his people and his process. Our daily operational format is another innovative process, and we are very regimented in our approach to this process. Daily operational meetings, on both shifts, focusing on people, product, process and cost, consist of reviews of panel alignment, dimensional integrity, body tolerances, paint appearance and general customer satisfaction. These reviews are not held in auditoriums or offices, but on the assembly line. [9] A lack of documented research on the need for a specific product or service. "It's critical to the lender's decision-making process to have detailed research that accurately identifies an industry or consumer segment that will be receptive to the product or service," says Semanco. [43] Global business competition-technology has become a global commodity, which is developed, traded, sold, and marketed in every corner of the world. To achieve business growth in this environment, companies will have to improve and expand their efforts at finding technology, acquiring it, and putting it to work around the world. They must use this new technology to improve efficiency, reduce waste and energy needs, and create new products and services. [39]
Distribution of customer satisfaction levels for all the significant elements comprising the company's products, services, customer service, and company relationships. Both the Revenue Index and the measure of the various components of customer satisfaction would be available in both absolute terms and percentile ratings vis-a-vis other companies. [11]
Providing goods and services that people want to pay for and are satisfied with is the reason companies exist. These are not things that can be tacked on as an appendage or an afterthought. No organisation should need to have on its staff someone whose designated task is to provide customer satisfaction. That should be the job of every single employee in the organisation. That Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of easyJet, feels the need to employ a customer experience champion is worrying. He should himself be that champion. He is, after all, the knight. It is as though Don Quixote had sent Sancho Panza in to do battle on his behalf. [44]
The vast majority of dissatisfied claimants-more than 70 percent-are unhappy with the process of handling the claim, either in terms of service by insurance personnel or in the delay in settling the claim. We know from focus group research that claimants want their hands held throughout the claims process. Where possible, claimants should be given a clear description of the claims process in terms of procedures and time frames, so they know what to expect and are not surprised by new steps in the claims process or by the length of time it takes for the process to move from one step to the next. Another source of customer dissatisfaction may arise from the lack of job satisfaction on the part of claims adjusters. It is known from other service businesses that a key to customer satisfaction is job satisfaction among frontline employees. [32]
A successful Pre launch could bolster Sprint's reputation. "It will help accentuate the positive trends that I can see within the fundamentals with Sprint," Mr. Entner says. "Sprint's problems are so deep, it doesn't take much to turn it around," says Michael Nelson, Soleil/Nelson Alpha Research Inc. With the losses so bad, a slight improvement may trigger the stock to move even higher, he says. Mr. Nelson estimates that in the second half, Sprint will lose 1.5 million post-paid subscribers, the name for those potential high-margin users that pay monthly bills, such as owners of smartphones. It's a marked improvement compared with the roughly 2.3 million contract customers he believes will leave the service in the first half. [45] Recognize that customer feedback is a means to achieving improvements in customer service performance, not an end in itself. [6] Extraordinary performance without effective communications will not lead to customer acceptance. It is not enough to quickly restore service and hold media conferences to extol the company's achievements; the personal touch is necessary to reach the target audience. [38] "The minute you start aligning services customer industries, you are signaling the importance of understanding business implications and success based on customer," Adams says. Roskin says MTV's issues are unique, such as an extreme amount of piracy on one of its video sites. In the past, this meant MTV had to take down the site, a move that affects many stakeholders. [28] The Internet and the Web, employed in conjunction with the traditional call centre, have the potential to increase the customer service and marketing abilities of organizations. [15]
The Yankee Group believes that the continued growth of browser functionality, in conjunction with evolving networks and standards for supporting real-time IP based interactivity, will position the Web as a desirable channel for commerce and customer service, a channel whose functionality complements that of the traditional call centre. [15]
"We are not convinced that the way forward to profitability is through VAS. However, Level 3 is looking at VAS in some areas -- maintenance services for customers on our long distance network, for example." TIC's approach on the other hand is that the carrier wholesale market is about improving its customers' (carriers and service providers) offerings to its end-users through voice and IP-based services. This can be enabled through VAS. TIC claims a growing list of voice and IP-based services, including IP transit, IP VPNs, international voice termination and the Telia Clearinghouse portfolio. [20] A key principle of customer service measurement must be to make sure survey results cry out for action. [6] A common example is the use of an answer rating scale that makes it fairly easy to get high scores. By asking for a yes or no answer to a question such as, "Were you satisfied with the service," you can almost guarantee very high results. Most customers will have to be very unhappy before they will intentionally get someone in trouble by saying they were not satisfied. [25]
"Our philosophy's to be one step ahead in the service perspective," says Craig Adams, who leads Akamai's customer experience team. MTV Online Networks, a New York-based division of Viacom, experienced this firsthand. [28] Hungry Hunter's award-winning Encore Service program relies heavily on customer input. "All of our servers know that it's part of their job to communicate with customers." [46] If you expect your customers to monitor your customer service program for you, think again. [19]
Customers are getting used to being pampered and expect prompt, solicitous and attentive service. This change in expectations is probably the reason why the causes of dissatisfaction with claims handling have changed radically in the past 10 years. [32] "We're glad that our software and services have enhanced Citrix installation and empowered entire IT departments. It's wonderful to work closely with Citrix, whose goals for IT customers are so closely aligned with ours. It's an honor to be a finalist for the Citrix Ready Solution of the Year award, and we're glad that our hard work has paid off." [7]
The good news is customer service is something you can monitor and have control over. It is up to you to make your customer's great expectations about great customer service a reality. [19] Direct merchants can learn a lot from the packaged goods industry. For instance, Procter & Gamble constantly provides both its customers and its competitors with inspiration. With a continual stream of new product innovations across nearly 50 categories, P&G never rests on its laurels - whether it's an incremental improvement in packaging (Bounty's 25% thicker paper towels), or a reformulation in ingredients, or a line extension (three new Venus razors) or an entire new product. [23]
At Bank of America, customers play a key role at every stage of the product innovation process. [24]
"By analyzing the reasons why customers are not satisfied in self-service applications, the underlying problems can be fixed, and the IVR completion rate will increase." Most companies in the analytics space easily break down the self-service and agent interactions, but few take it all the way to the fulfillment process to see whether the customer actually did what he set out to do in the first place, Fluss maintains. These new CEA solutions, therefore, will change the face of analytics and what it can offer to enterprise call centers. [5] How can we foster increased saving? With Keep the Change, each time a customer pays using a Bank of America check card, the bank rounds the payment to the nearest dollar and transfers the extra change to the customer's savings account. Now, instead of check writers rounding up, the bank does it for them - but in a way that builds their savings. [24] Tell staff and customers alike when customer data translates into real time changes. A comment like "Yes, the lowfat entrees were suggested by a regular customer" lets a guest know that her input is, indeed, valued. [46] The N-P mapping requires customer surveys. A random sample from a customer data base is chosen, and customers are asked to rate their needs for each attribute. [13] The strengths of a company and the needs of the customers evolve and are refined by a self-defining process to create a specific customer culture. The company builds capabilities to match its customers, which in turn attracts and keeps customers that are drawn to those capabilities. [11] Here the company performance is somewhat lower than the customer need. [13]
Chart 3-A shows an example where one-hundred customers are queried about functional utility. (Chart 3-A omitted.) It is easy to see from the relatively symmetrical results that the average customer believes the attribute is medium in need and the company's performance is also medium. [13]
Apple Inc.' s smartphone reinvigorated a dated AT&T brand and continues to help it nab the highest quality subscribers from other wireless carriers, including Sprint. The Pre, meanwhile, will be the face of Sprint, whose reputation needs a jolt, and should help the No. 3 U.S. wireless carrier slow -- and maybe reverse -- the loss of such customers. It isn't clear how effective the Pre will be in attracting new customers. "If somebody has the iPhone, I don't know if they'll be able to get them to switch over to the Pre," says Roger Entner, head of telecom research at Nielsen & Co. "For better or worse, it's a very similar product." [45]
Our strategic client program, Treasury Exchange, serves to amplify our voice of the customer research. Clients are long-term program members in senior treasury and/ or finance roles within their organizations. They meet regularly - at frequencies varying from once per quarter to yearly. The program enables participants to share insights on best practices and learn from each other, while helping us to better understand their challenges and needs. A detailed executive summary that identifies key discussion themes helps pinpoint areas for deepening discussion and exploration. [24] Customer advisory boards and special client programs like Treasury Exchange augment our extensive voice of the customer research. It's important to be open to ideas from all sources. That's part of cultivating a culture of innovation. [24] GO FOR A GOAL. First, decide exactly what you want to achieve with your customer research program. [46]
While the vast majority of customer survey programs are honest by design, there will always be a few individuals who will go to extraordinary lengths to attain higher survey results. In the never-ending corporate struggle for truth, justice, and higher customer scores, this temptation to cheat is sometimes overwhelming. [25] After the Revenue Index is calculated, the next question is whether the measure is good, bad, or indifferent. That answer can be obtained through a comparative summary, which is graphically displayed in Figure 1. This statistical result is based on more than 50,000 individual customer surveys conducted for more than 100 different clients. [11]
Being different is not necessarily a reason not to merge but it should influence whether the target should maintain autonomy or how the partners should develop a carefully managed integration plan. In recent history, for example, Xerox Corp. instituted major reassignments of its sales force without recognizing the critical role of the personal relationships that existed between the customers and the sales people. The result was a loss of business and customers, which was particularly serious for Xerox as its market deteriorated. [11]
In 2003, Thunderhead redefined the document generation market with the introduction of its Thunderhead NOW enterprise communications platform. Thunderhead's open, standards-based technology puts business users, not IT professionals, in control of creating and maintaining customer communications and anticipating customer demand for electronic channels, including email, SMS and even even industry-standard XML formats such as DTCC Deriv/SERV and ACORD XML. With the introduction of its correspondent solution, Thunderhead again transformed how document generation technologies were used, moving these solutions from niche, back-office implementations to large-scale, enterprise deployments across thousands of front-office desktops at the core of the customer experience. [35] Ocado, which operates from a dedicated warehouse, has a different business model to Tesco and has yet to make an annual pre-tax profit. As Tesco's experience shows, being first in this market is no guarantee of customer affection. [1]
1.6. CUSTOMER CULTURES
"More likely than not, a little less than that for most of our customers," says Dorman. Armed with deeper insight into its customers, the company is turning its attention to better channel coordination, which includes building channel preferences into its business model. [3] Neither of the models alone captures the multidimensionality of marketing strategy formulation and implementation from a customer, company, and competitor vantage point. In this paper we attempt to remedy these shortcomings. [4] The framework for marketing strategy formulation illustrates a disciplined process of strategy formulation built around the three pillars of the marketplace/space, i.e. customers, company, and competitors. [4] A process is defined as a procedure, progression, mean, or course of action to administer or manage. Providing positive customer experience is a core process in the course of setting marketing strategy and developing its implementation plan. Therefore: P9. [4] The financial outcomes of positive customer experience, shown in Figure 11, are effects or results of marketing strategy formulation and implementation processes. It is a truism that healthy financial results are the upshot of sound marketing strategy formulation and implementation. [4] Customer experience, or more properly consumer satisfaction, is something that should inform a company's operations from top to bottom. [44]
Functional beliefs (e.g., product quality) are more influenced by physical attributes tested during trial than symbolic beliefs. While attractiveness in advertising can temporarily lower one's satisfaction with one's own appearance (as hypothesized in H4a and H4b) and result in no difference across model conditions in product evaluations (as hypothesized in H3), the theoretical perspectives discussed above argue that exposure to attractive models (as compared to more average-looking models or no models) will bolster consumers' perceptions of their own attractiveness and self-confidence when consumers use the product. H5: Women who viewed the advertisement with the highly attractive model will report feeling more attractive and more self-confident when using the advertised product than those who viewed the average-looking model (H 5a) and those viewing the control (no model) ad (H5b), controlling for satisfaction with one's own attractiveness. We tested our hypotheses in the emerging market of Romania. This venue provided a context in which international firms (e.g., Avon, Procter & Gamble, Colgate Palmolive, and L'Oréal) were beginning to enter the market, introducing Western cosmetic brands (PricewaterhouseCoopers 2004). [47]
Our in-depth interviews offer preliminary evidence that young Romanian women react similarly to women in more developed economies. They associate attractive models with higher quality and higher priced products, and are more inclined to purchase higher quality products. Our informants react both negatively and positively to attractive models in ads, reporting that they may denigrate satisfaction with one's own attractiveness, but coupled with product use, such models may have transformative abilities to shape the informants' own self-attractiveness and self-confidence. [47]
For example, consumers may infer prices based on the quality of the brand's trial performance. We expect that consumers' post-trial product evaluations will reflect their assessment of the highly diagnostic product. H3: Product trial will moderate the effects of model attractiveness on post-trial evaluations, such that, after product trial, there will be no difference across model conditions in consumers' post-trial product quality assessments (H3a), price judgments (H3b), and purchase intentions (H3c). Social comparison theory addresses how people develop selfknowledge and make choices based on their comparisons with others. Festinger (1954) hypothesized that humans have a drive to compare their own abilities and opinions with others for the purpose of self-evaluation, and others have argued that comparison may also serve self-enhancement and selfimprovement goals (see Wood 1989 for a review). Upward comparison (generally prompted by self-improvement and self-evaluation goals) is typically associated with attractive models, or those individuals who are "better off." [47] Information Difference does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Data Quality Landscape. [42] A good reputation for a high quality product which gives reliable service is now recognized internationally as a desirable attribute which can provide substantial competitive advantage. [14]
The important impact of the personal relationships at nonmetropolitan banks is often overlooked. The larger acquiring organization has positioned its core competencies as offering a broad range of financial products with competitive and occasionally slightly better loan rates or service costs. The strategic goal of those acquisitions is usually growth, efficiency, and control. [11] Springer has found that most customers purchase a bundled product: a combination of print and online that costs only 25 percent more than the print or electronic alone. [48]
Citrix Ready not only demonstrates current mutual product compatibility, but through our continued industry relationships also ensures future interoperability. "The entire visionapp team is proud of their accomplishments working with Citrix, Citrix partners, and Citrix customers," said Chuck Fritz, President and CEO of visionapp North America. [7]
Mager noted that while Springer's eBooks are available for purchase in packages only, the reference works can be purchased individually. "We want to give libraries the choice to add high-priced products to their collections," said Mager. For example, if a customer has purchased a clinical medical package (which includes eBooks and reference works), that institution can also purchase a biomedical reference work to complement its collection. It doesn't have to buy the entire biomedical package. While Springer's reference collection is already robust-it includes works covering 25 disciplines, from architecture and design to physics and statistics-Mager said Springer is focused on continuing its strong coverage across these multiple subject areas. [48]
Flexibility enables us to prioritize the most important features and integrate feedback and new insights from customers. It helps us to make smart choices with our investment dollars as products take more tangible form. [24] There are a number of ways in which we directly engage our customers throughout product development. [24] Brands also need to invest time internally to see where the "basics gaps" are occurring. Another outdoor apparel marketer, The Orvis Co., is concentrating on two areas of focus: keeping its best customers and finding ways to acquire new customers online. [23]
The reconfigured merchandise must tell a new story. Smaller may be the new way to focus your customers' attention and respect their time. Who isn't watching their spending more closely these days? Brands that speak to customers' more intentional shopping behavior demonstrate both loyalty and intimacy. Many brands are promoting a "name your sale" offer to give customers a bit more control over what they can afford to buy. Apparel retailers Ann Taylor and Talbots are both working to cater to modern women shopping within their budgets. [23] The cultural reaction to dissatisfaction is stronger, as it costs 310% times the revenue derived from a totally satisfied customer. This occurs through lost customers and associated negative PR. The impact of dissatisfied customers is rarely understood and taken into account. This aggravated class of customers offers poor leverage for the cost structure in the postmerger environment, and occasionally may be the root cause of a merger that did not live up to expectations. [11] The cost of drawing in a new customer is six times greater than that of hanging on to a regular patron. How is it done? How do we keep them coming back for more? Good food? Sure. [46]
The problem was the enormous scope of unforeseen difficulties and risks leading to project delay, cost and stress. It was believed that the problem arose as a result of poor project planning and communication; a lack of initial reference to the existing asbestos registers, and major refurbishment and /or demolition projects setting off with limited information on asbestos containing materials. By use of a case study methodology, this critical analysis studied the cost implications of setting out with varying degrees of information on asbestos containing materials, using 20 randomly selected refurbishment and/or demolition projects running concurrently with asbestos removals. It was hoped that the knowledge gained would facilitate the development of a strategy for cost containment for similar projects in future. The importance of this study lays in its multi-dimensional approach while paying particular attention to measures of project success of time, cost, quality, and customer satisfaction. [49] A projects audit was carried out against measures of success of time, cost, quality, and customer satisfaction and the results are shown in table 7. On this basis, the author of this article was satisfied that the majority of projects had been executed satisfactorily, with the exception of a few projects that suffered delays, cost overruns, poor quality, and failure to satisfy customers. [49]
The level of interest in customer satisfaction research has paralleled the growth of two intertwined fields, total quality management (TQM) and quality service. [18] The simulation service quality improvement system (SSQS) for the analysis of alternatives to achieve the timeliness Customer Service Standard is developed based on the study of literature related to TQM, customer satisfaction and simulation in health care. [22] The design and analysis of customer satisfaction surveys rarely involve front-line service providers. This excludes the very people who will be directly affected by improvement actions that should follow from the data gathering exercise. They should be involved; they are the people who can make the changes happen. [6]
Hren observes that companies seeking assistance in satisfaction research are not just looking for general research skills. They require the expertise that can collect and analyze data as well as "recommend how to use the information to drive change with the organization." This expertise only comes with time and experience in the field of customer satisfaction. [18]
The answer might not be what you imagine. During the course of writing this article, only five research companies could be identified as possessing their own customer satisfaction program: Burke Marketing Research, Consumer Research Inc., the Gordon Black Co., Maritz Marketing Research, and Walker Marketing Research. Although I am sure I have probably missed a few (and to those companies, I apologize), I am even more sure that this number is minuscule compared to the total number of existing research companies. Why wouldn't a research company, with all its research capabilities, employ such a tool? Why wouldn't any company? It requires extra effort and a strong commitment to the customer to embark on such a program. Nancy Bunn, director of Burke's customer satisfaction program, states that by employing satisfaction research internally, Burke really gets to listen to its customers and focus on their concerns. Bunn explains that at Burke, an independent auditor is used to contact its clients and to measure overall satisfaction ratings as well as specific ratings on individual projects, the account executive, and the project team. [18] Involving customers in development allows companies to stand out from competitors with features other than price, says Christine Loeber, Online Retail Strategies program manager at The Yankee Group, in Boston. [29]
Even though it is voluntary and takes place in the morning before the office opens, the response is great, said General Manager Jim Crabtree. "The breakfast is a great opportunity to recognize the positive initiatives taken by various employees, and to thank them for their hard work," he said. The telco also keeps its customers abreast of accomplishments of YVT's employees via the company newsletter. [31] In general, a key factor in burnout is a lack of control. Employees have to deal with customers faceto-face, but feel they do not have enough control to solve the customers' problems. An obvious solution is to extend the employee's sphere of influence so they have more power to solve the problems of claimants. Other methods of avoiding burnout include reinforcing support structures. Employees need to feel their superiors and coworkers appreciate and respect their work. [32] The need to integrate payments in the broader customer experience will involve mobile technology in some form and the analysis of information to provide insight. [24] The ability to synthesize information into insights will be an increasingly important part of creating a valuable client experience - not only banks connecting to customers - but of customers connecting to each other for insight. [24] Formal techniques focus on gaining deepened client insight and are important when we have limited information about an opportunity and the related customer need. [24] Capture the elements of customer service that are really important to customers. [6] In the mind of the consumer, about the only thing that differentiates you from your competitors is customer service. [19] Shares have nearly tripled since January to above 5, aided by recent moves to shore up the company's balance sheet, cut costs and improve customer service. [45] Thunderhead's innovative platform, Thunderhead NOW, empowers business users to own the end-to-end process of creating and maintaining customer communications and delivers significant efficiencies and cost savings. [35] "Together, our goal is to provide mutual customers with seamless, integrated, end-to-end application delivery solutions that improve IT efficiency, support increased mobility, reduce costs and accelerate business agility." [7]
A somewhat dissatisfied customer generates 7% of revenue but a totally dissatisfied customer costs 180% of the revenue of a totally satisfied customer. Interestingly enough, in Japan the weightings for the satisfaction metrics are virtually identical to those in the U.S. except for the totally dissatisfied customers. [11] Information analysis and synthesis could help treasurers to improve broader financial processes (for example, accounts payable or receivable), help optimize working capital and minimize cost and use payment information to deepen insight into customer behavior. [24]
The job title tells us that easyJet has fallen victim to the malaise common throughout British industry called marketspeak. This is a barbarous form of English designed to dress the mundane in a kind of linguistic finery and to impress the outsider. It fails in both attempts. It either sows confusion and bafflement, as in Mr Glynn's case, or it simply infuriates through its child-like attempt to bamboozle. We do not know what purpose the lady describing herself as a customer experience champion serves, but it seems likely that she is a kind of customer liaison functionary, employed by easyJet either to handle complaints or deal with less contentious enquiries. The use of the word "champion" is plainly intended to convey from the outset that whatever the nature of your enquiry, be it downright hostile or mildly querulous, she is on your side. In making this assumption, I rule out as implausible the possibility that her title is the happy outcome of some kind of internal competition within easyJet; that there are teams of customer experience executives sent on outward bound courses where they paintball each other to trees and play team charades in the hotel bar, from which trials Mr Glynn's correspondent emerged triumphant. At any rate, the implication that someone employed by a company to deal with customers is their apologist is plain silly. [44] Every company has a customer culture that is formed over time by the integration of the aggregate experiences between the customers and the providing organization. [11]
SP Shukla, the chief executive of Reliance Communications' mobile division, chuckles when asked about complaints from rivals about his aggressive marketing campaigns to win new subscribers. In the first quarter of this year, India's second-largest mobile operator launched a special offer that it called the "customer experience programme". This gave new subscribers a virtually free Sim card, Rs10 (20 cents) a day of free minutes for 90 days, and free calls late at night on Reliance's recently launched network based on the global system for mobile communications (GSM) standard. [50]
Though routine inquiries are already being handled by information provided on the Web, call volume to the call centre will not decrease, but increase, if the history of IVR is any indication. Though a greater percentage of calls may be handled by the self-service channels, the calls that do go through to agents will become increasingly complex, as the information they have obtained breeds more questions. This is ultimately positive, as the call going through represents a more involved customer, but it places more pressure on the agent to be a strong representative of the company, rather than just a conduit for routine requests. [15]
Internet standards and interfaces (HTML, Java, POP3, LDAP and so forth) form the basis of applications that can enhance the productivity of call centre agents (sales automation, customer interaction and so forth) and provide information in a more standardized form (realtime status reports, inquiry databases and so forth). The large Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) manufacturers (Lucent Technologies, Nonel, Aspect, Siemens) are still considering how best to integrate the Internet into their portfolio of solutions most typically, their IVR offerings are where the Intent applications reside. [15] Typically, some forms of information may be forwarded giving a profile of the customer so that the agent can look up the customer's history in the call centre database. [15] An optional space for customer name and telephone number allows call backs for further information. [46]
EMPLOYEE: "We only give that information to 'preferred customers,'" when asked about money market accounts by a potential customer. Could this have happened at your bank? Probably yes. [19] For corporate customers, banks are already delivering time-sensitive information to personal digital assistants (PDAs) and cell phones. [24] Privately held Chinatrust Commercial Bank is also considering the Chinese market, reports Mr Wei. For global banks such as Citi, the ability to serve Taiwanese corporate customers, particularly Western informationtechnology companies (many of which also used Taiwan as the staging post to enter the Chinese market), across a broader Chinese platform is a vitally important competitive advantage. [33]
"For companies that use more than one carrier, that's not enough." Some shippers rate their carriers based on their Internet technology and data-delivery capabilities. Some even consider this more important than a carrier's ability to move freight, he said. GT Nexus's trade portal links to breakbulk carriers to collect shipment-status messages via electronic feeds. These are then translated into a common format viewed via Web browsers, Kefer said. "We are doing this for a few heavy equipment customers who use ro-ro and breakbulk carriers to move large custom tractors (or large components) from assembly plants to dealers. [27]
Personal relationships that exist between individuals in the company and their customers (see Figure 4). One of these fundamental components of customer culture usually dominates in most companies. [11] Citrix honored all of the finalists, including visionapp, during Citrix Summit 2009. "visionapp exemplifies how partnering with Citrix enables both of our companies to deliver joint application delivery solutions that benefit customers worldwide and increase market leverage," said John Fanelli, vice president of solutions and communities marketing at Citrix. [7]
In most acquisitions of established companies, the customer base represents the business value of an organization. [11] The inclusion of customer value adds a critical element to support the evaluation. In most cases, this element will supplement the traditional process and it will take some time to become familiar with and gain comfort from its impact. [11] Inadequate sales skills are often noted as a problem. Customers are treated with an attitude of indifference, as if they were just account numbers. If employees understood the real value of a satisfied long-term customer and knew how to develop customer loyalty, their attitudes and actions toward customers would be different. [19] Working with a client recently, we were able to compare the effects on morale and motivation between gathering customer feedback involving front-line employees with data collection and the use of complaints data, compiled centrally and presented in league tables. [6]
Offers of bonus points, miles or cash back often determine which credit card we pull and where we use it. As more consumers use credit cards in supermarkets, drug stores and gas stations, credit- card issuers have started pulling those offers back. Why? Now that they got you accustomed to using plastic at the supermarket or gas station, it's on to conquering other marketplaces, says David Robertson, publisher of the Nilson Report, an industry newsletter. To be sure, says Mr. Robertson, rewards programs are so successful in attracting and retaining customers that they're not going anywhere. "What's going to happen is they're going to be fine- tuned," he says. [51] The use of logistic regression is well-documented in predicting response to direct marketing campaigns. Like multiple regression, logistic regression allows the analyst to determine which area affects the prediction of a satisfied customer through the logistic regression coefficients and their associated "logodds." [52] A selection of transaction selling, relationship marketing, or stage of customer life cycle. [4] Recognizing that all relationships start as transaction, not all transactions end up in relationships, acknowledging the fact that customers have a life cycle and the fact that not all buyer and sellers want to engage in relationships, we cast the relationship between marketing strategies and elements of the marketing mix in terms of the desired type of exchange, i.e. transaction selling or relationship marketing are shown in Figure 10 : P15. [4]
Not surprisingly, the polls confirm that customers are overwhelmingly happy, and another media release is issued. Competition and deregulation will force utilities to change to retain the allegiance of their customers. Instead of just announcing a new board member or a notice of a rate case filing, utilities will find it increasingly necessary to elicit a response or change in attitude from their customers. Political candidates "sell" both image and performance. They can provide a model for utilities in developing a new communications strategy. [38]
Avoid asking questions that might make you look bad. If you know that customer answers to certain questions will put you in a bad light, you can probably dream up a few reasons why those questions should not be included in the survey. In one example of this form of cheating, a senior manager lobbied for excluding a question that asked if customers thought the firm was "a well-run company." This question clearly reflected directly on his own performance, which was not sterling. [25] The survey also serves as a vehicle for building customer relationships. Respondents are asked if they would like a representative from Fairytale Brownies to call them, and if they say "yes," someone does. [40] The characterization of the customer culture may be obtained by including survey topics that address the higher-level questions that deal with satisfaction of the three major components. This is illustrated in Figure 5. [11]
Normally 10% to 20% of the customer base constitutes the major source of revenue and operational success. This does not imply that the remaining 80% to 90% are uninteresting and cannot contribute key data. It suggests that the survey emphasis should be on the most critical customers. [11] The data is translated and standardized once and applied to all customers. This amortizes the cost, complexity and ongoing management of collecting and translating data across an entire community of users," Kefer said. [27]
You cannot obtain objective customer data simply by asking several customers a few probing questions or by conducting a handful of focus groups, the so-called "audit" approach. [11] If a target company has a different customer culture than the acquirer and there is an integration of virtually any two internal groups from the different organizations, there potentially could be a significant loss of customers as a result. It is vital that the merging partners be cognizant of the customer cultures of both organizations. [11] Knowing exactly what your customers want is the fastest way to increase customer loyalty and sales, but only if everyone in your organization is motivated and empowered to act on the results. [6] There are many tools available to help you locate your whereabouts on the customer service road map. [19] Perhaps, following the example set by the English literature faculties of our universities, which have long forsaken appreciation and understanding for stale and profitless analysis, we can "deconstruct" a meaning from "customer service champion". [44]
Products and services include purchase order financing, factoring, asset-based lending programs, mezzanine debt, receivables management and business coaching. [43]
In the health care provider environment of the 1990s the quality of patient care available on wards will be one of the determining factors for referrals from GP fundholders, and the issuing of contracts from health authorities. Notwithstanding NHS Management Board directives, because of the nature of their business it is likely that hospitals and health authorities throughout the UK will wish to demonstrate commitment to quality assurance in patient care. Under the new purchaser/provider arrangements within the NHS, units will have to market their services. They will need to state how they guarantee and monitor the quality of service provided. [53] The researchers concluded: "Conclusions indicate that website owners should not only improve e-service quality, but also emphasise customer perceived value." Chang and colleagues published their study in Total Quality Management & Business Excellence (The impact of e-service quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty on e-marketing: Moderating effect of perceived value. [21]
In 1991, putting the Windsor assembly plant employee's pride on the line, exposing our strengths and weaknesses, plant management and members of the Canadian Auto Workers Union (CAW) applied for the Canadian Award for Business Excellence in the quality category. Criteria such as employee participation, measurement, quality indicators, business practices, innovation, customer satisfaction, future planning, leadership and safety were all categories which were scrutinized, in detail, at all levels of the organization. [9]
"The models that were out there at that point were things like Amazon.com, shopping for books - but shopping for office supplies is a very different proposition," says J.B. Lyon, vice president of business services at Staples.com. Revamping the site for its May relaunch took about seven to eight months and involved about 100 internal Staples.com employees and outsourced staff at various times, Ragunas says. [29] Mike Semanco, President of Hennessey Capital and the 2008 Michigan SBA Financial Services Champion of the Year, is seeing more downsized employees pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. He cautions that would-be entrepreneurs set themselves up for failure if they don't do their homework prior to meeting with a business lender or investor. Mr. Semanco explains the five most common mistakes entrepreneurs make when applying for a business loan and offers solutions to avoid them. [43] Extensis was founded ten years ago with the concept of providing PEO services to the small and midsized business community in the NJ-NY metropolitan area. By focusing on delivering high customer satisfaction and actively guiding their clients through the challenges of growing a business in this region, Extensis has delivered year-over-year growth. [54] According to Which?, the consumer organisation, Tesco received a customer satisfaction score of only 58 per cent, well behind the 82 per cent achieved by the top scorer, Ocado, an online service that sells products from rival supermarket Waitrose. [1] Consumers tend to believe that because the banking industry is so highly regulated, service and products offered from one bank to another are virtually the same. [19]
Ethnographic research helps Bank of America understand how to advance our core products in a way that stays close to customers' evolving needs. For example, through ethnographic research, we discovered a common practice among consumers of rounding up when writing checks. We took the idea of rounding up and turned it on its head - redefining the problem by associating payments with savings. [24]
Research also suggests that attractive models can affect consumers' price expectations about products. Tsao, Pitt, and Caruana (2005) report that when consumers lack direct experience with the product, they rely on advertising to form inferential price-quality beliefs. [47] Abstract (Summary) Our research in the developing market economy of Romania employs in-depth interviews and an advertising-trial experiment to examine the effects of attractiveness in advertisements on product evaluations and self-judgments. Our qualitative data indicate that attractive (versus average-looking) models yield favorable ad and product evaluations, but generate both negative and positive self-judgments. [47] In each dimension scoring was based on a scale of 0 (worst) to 6 (best). Melissa Data shared joint top marks in their customer feedback score in the research. [42] Monitoring customer complaints is commendable, but by itself it can be very misleading. TARP data show that 94% of unhappy customers never bother to tell us about their dissatisfaction. They may feel that complaining isn't worth the effort, would not have any effect, or they just don't know to whom to complain. [18] "Bankers can continue to focus on re-engineering products, systems and policies. They can break the mold and focus on the customer and the customer experience." [55]
A MANA member agent remembers his early days of representing a manufacturer of building products who was confused on just who his customers were. As the agent explained it to us, "This manufacturer, like most others in the field, sold through distributors to local lumber yards, and home and hardware stores. He thought of his distributors in less than friendly terms. He thought of them as necessary evils when, in fact, they were his customers. The distributors bought and paid for the products he manufactured. He didn't sell to the builders directly. He was always treating the distributors badly. [17] Praise Banners, a marketer of church flags and banners, knows the importance of unique and compelling product - especially for customers with conservative budgets. [23]
The customer culture of ABC Corp. is clearly customer service-driven while that of XYZ Corp. is dominated by personal relationships. Both show an impact of about 55%, which is unusually high and therefore clearly defines the potential for the loss of current customers. This merger certainly is not optimal if the intent of the merger is to form one organization with relatively homogeneous approaches to the market. [11] The next task is to find a unit of measure that will accurately measure each characteristic (customer need). The unit of measure can be numerical such as cycle time, time in route, numbers of defects, dimensional, percents of downtime, numbers of lost packages or delays or hours of durability. Or the unit of measure may be subjective such as a rating scale from 1 to 10 or on a scale such as poor-satisfactory-good-excellent-superior. [2]
1.7. CUSTOMER NEEDS
One can get a good reading about the customer need and performance by assigning a weight of 3 to the attribute of "high," 2 to the attribute of "medium" and 1 to the attribute of "low." [13] The weighted average of attributes are plotted in Chart 3-C. (Chart 3-C omitted.) It shows that the customer need is moderately high (weighted average 2.58) but the cmpany performance is above medium (weighted average 2.45). [13]
Business performance is clearly understood when a firm identifies specific attributes that are important to customers. [13] "Current, professional dress is important, as is a positive attitude and glowing references. Borrowers who have a chip on their shoulder from a previous business venture or employer will convey that message to prospective clients or customers and potentially put the business at risk. [43]
Lavish spending on advertising may also signal to potential customers that a company is rich and important. [36]
J. Schmid's Trollinger points to the coming integration of "e-mail offers with catalog mailings, particularly to the local market. The company is almost universally known in the Kansas City area, and all indicators say that engaging these customers across channels will exponentially improve retention and customer value." Given that Jack Stack has face-to-face interaction with plenty of its customers day in and day out, it's not surprising that it plans to take directional cues expressly from its customers. [3] A good communicator must delete the existing knowledge and replace it with a new "knowledge" designed to motivate the customer to action in support of the company. [38]
The integrative framework underscores the need to classify marketing strategy formulation and implementation variables into dependent, independent, mediating, and moderating variables. Such classification enables us to develop better understanding of the role and function of some, if not all, the variables. Good examples are targeting that mediates the company's offer to its customers and branding that mediate differentiation and positioning. [4] Citrix Ready showcases select trusted solutions designed to meet various customer needs. Through the online catalog and Citrix Ready branding program, customers can easily find and build a trusted infrastructure. [7] Our emphasis on what the customer needs continually drives us to new levels. [9] Customers compare an attribute as relatively high, medium or low in terms of need. [13] Observation provides insight into customer behavior and needs. Returning to the Oreo example, the idea for a bite-sized cookie began to germinate when Nabisco researchers watched young children grapple with dunking the full-sized cookie in smaller cups. [24]
Consumers know it. Today's consumers have no feelings of guilt when they move their accounts from one organization to another and no longer feel bound by the old-fashioned custom of customer loyalty. [19] Standard categories can be used to characterize customer value. As the goal of a survey in this context is informational and not action-oriented, the questions tend to be framed at a higher level. [11]
At first, we cast the design and implementation of a marketing-oriented, customer-focused marketing strategy into a framework that incorporate the strategic, structural, and management/operations antecedents to creating customer value. [4] The first and most direct element of customer value is the impact of the satisfaction of the customers on revenue. [11]
Value creation, a necessary but not sufficient variable, is the triggering mechanism in creating a positive customer experience. [4] The framework highlights the mediating role of positive customer experience in achieving strategic plan financial goals. In this paper we present taxonomy and integrative frameworks for marketing strategy formulation and implementation. [4] For the "Improving the Customer Experience in Banking" white paper: http://www.egyii.com/news.html. [55] With customer experience initiatives in banking being a top priority, it makes sense that we link all the different banking programmes together." [55] With an understanding of the site experience your customers expect, you'll gain a clear vision of the priorities for 2009. [16] As described in the diagram the KPI definitions required to'make things happen' have to be represented in all three areas, operational efficency, customer experience and revenue margins." [12]
Each issue salutes staff and offers support to the employee group, said Crabtree. "If we receive a letter or a phone call of commendation from a customer regarding a specific employee, we share that accolade with the individual, as well as the entire staff," he added. [31] Callback approaches to linking a Web customer with a call centre are the most common at present, as the technology required is simple. It is a modest step forward from the listing of an 800 number on Web sites for customers to call on their own, but the Yankee Group feels it is nonetheless a limited option. [15]
According to the members of the group, the environment is much more pleasant, bright and it is a pleasure to stay there now. They also mentioned that customers are more careful when using information materials. [8] Plus, Carpenter adds, it allows Jack Stack to gather customer information when the offer is redeemed. [3] As we indicated, the Web browser is evolving from a simple source of information into a more interactive medium, where customers can make purchases, get information about customer accounts, and obtain answers to commonly asked questions. [15] Our customers expect it," said Axel Kirchgessner, the company's vice president of information technology. [27] Rather it requires information that must be obtained directly from the customer and subjected to structured evaluation. [11]
Mailed nine to 12 times a year with two different creative campaigns, the catalog reaches Jack Stack's customer and prospecting authence of men and women, primarily ages 40 and older with average annual household incomes of 75,000. [3] "We're not looking to cater to a customer who is driven by discounts," Dormán explains. For mail order customers who opt in to e-mail communication, Jack Stack contacts them up to 55 times a year. [3] Two million of the PO's 28 million daily customers are to be asked over the next year if the PO lives up to recently set goals, which include reducing queue times to under five minutes for 95% of customers. [56]
Now is the time to find out precisely why. "It is very valuable to know what our customers are thinking," says Larry Pera, a Jack-in-the-Box restaurant area manager in Hayard, California. [46] Jack-in-the-Box views complaints as potential future business. A letter from the area manager is sent, telling the customer how their particular problem has been remedied. [46] Thunderhead NOW 5.0 empowers business users to contribute content to critical customer communications more easily than ever before. [35] Customers are definitely cheaper to keep. Taking up the repeat business challenge means keeping them happy. [46]
The real issue is not of quantity, but of quality and relevance. All too often, customers say that they are not asked about the things that really matter to them. [6] The fundamental issue is to improve the organization to meet the demands of world class competition that is driven by listening to the customer. This competition will continue to get stronger and the customer will continue to demand better quality for the price paid. [2] Quality is judged by the customer and true quality speaks for itself. [2] Continually monitor and review quality characteristics with your customer. [2]
We can get some sense of the significance of the 20 percent dissatisfaction level with claims by looking at experience in other countries. A survey just published by British Insurance Quality Service found that only 9 percent of auto insurance claimants were dissatisfied with the way their claim was handled-less than half the rate in the United States. Since the U.K. and United States auto insurance systems are roughly similar, it is not easy to explain why the U.K. claimants have a better experience than their counterparts here. [32] Quality assurance working groups, committees, workshops and training sessions make recommendations, inform and motivate people, set an activity or project in motion. These methods all have valuable roles to play, but there must also be a practical means for managers to ensure that quality service is provided to patients on a continuing basis, and to be able to demonstrate the level of service attained. [53] Operations managers are generally from a higher socio-economic group than average consumers. The type of goods which they are buying for their companies tend to be different than average consumer purchases. Therefore, managers' perceptions of quality will be different. [14] Increased competition is another factor which operations managers have seen at first hand more than consumers. This has made the companies which have survived import deregulation compete on product quality comparisons more than in the past. [14]
There are a number of reasons why New Zealand managers believe more strongly than consumers that product quality has improved. [14]
Consumers were about evenly divided between agree, neutral and disagree (see Figure 2). (Figure 2 omitted) The managers' perceptions of improved product quality was much stronger than the consumers' views. Female consumers disagreed with this statement (40.7 per cent) more than males (30.6 per cent). There was little difference between the views of those who had travelled overseas and other consumers. New Zealand residents born in Europe were about evenly divided in their agreement and disagreement. [14]
Participants were asked to return to Session 2 in two weeks. During Session 2, participants completed a follow-up questionnaire to assess their post-trial assessment of perceived product quality, price, purchase intention, and satisfaction with one's own attractiveness (Cronbach's.91). We also assessed consumers' post-trial evaluations of the advertised lipstick's experiential attributes (i.e., moisturizing and long-lasting), because these attributes can be important determinants of post-trial quality evaluations (Kempf and Smith 1998). Participants also completed seven-point semantic differential items to assess self-attractiveness ("Using this lipstick made me feel less/more attractive") and self-confidence ("Using the lipstick made me less/more confident about myself") (Richins 1991). When debriefed, participants' comments reflected their belief in the cover story. [47]
Tagus, a consultancy specializing in performance improvement products and services, was asked to look at the completed project and to refine the materials for marketing. [53] "The premise behind `Cluetrain' is that because people are taling to each other about products and services. the ability to `eavesdrop,' to get information about merchants and companies, is greatly magnified," Levine said. Companies that don't get in on the conversation will be left behind, he said. For Word of Mouth to fulfill its potential, however, the critical mass of citizen critics would have to grow substantially. [34] Assessment - Typically, a product, service, and technology analysis, a market analysis, and a management analysis are part of the due diligence process in determining a valuation. [11] Not just the service crew, but other employees wearing company identification. Get senior management involved in making those personal calls. This approach will captivate the media. They can actually follow along with the company's management and employees and communicate the sincerity as well as the message. [38] When the rack of 118 numbers launched in December of last year, Oftel said: "For the first time consumers will have an easy choice of directory enquiries services at a range of different prices." From August 24, the public will have to make a choice between the various services, as they find a call to 192 provides nothing more than a list of 12 alternative numbers.The proof of the system's desirability will be just how long it takes for that list of operators to rationalise to two or three. [57]
With a vast consumer population and burgeoning corporate base, united by a common language and culture, the cross-straitmarket, in particular the provinces of Fujian and Zhejian and, of course, Hong Kong, are perceived as the key targets.As the lowest Chinese base rate in recent memory is still twice that of Taiwan, at 5.31%, it is also a much moreappealing market, from a pricing point of view, in which to establish a lending subsidiary. For this reason, Taiwan'sbanks, although over-saturated, have historically been regarded by analysts as attractive investments for sophisticated international foreign players wishing to enter China. Until the first quarter of last year, however, Taiwanese restrictions on cross-strait financial services investments had largely frustrated this ambition. [33] The company continues to be burdened by poor customer service, despite working to make things better in recent quarters. It made the biggest improvement more than a year ago, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, but still remained behind the other national players. [45]
Work conditions were not adequate earlier. It caused the researchers a certain amazement to know that the group does not have either great needs or expectations regarding the services at this moment. Despite the difficulties found for the organization of the group and the limitations the work can eventually present, the experience was of great value both to the library and to the participants of the group. It provided a better knowledge of issues important for the improvement of the services. [8]
Then, says Sjoman, in order to achieve it "you need to leverage your own expertise in transformation programmes". That's where Ericsson offers its experience and knowledge: "We can leverage our skills -- we are a big player in the managed service business," he says. [12]
For example Ericsson is "one of the dominant players" in delivery of full service broadband solutions to operators and service providers: Ericsson has delivered and deployed major broadband networks covering IP backbone networks, wireline broadband access, HSPA mobile access and IMS on top of the different access technologies. "We have gained lots of experience in these projects from a telecom management view." He continues by giving another example: "As a systems integrator we are using our telecoms management experiences when we for example are defining and integrating service delivery platforms," says Sjoman. [12] The critical analysis proved an invaluable experience in furthering knowledge of the provision of project management services. The key issues and challenges encountered covered a broad range of the services that project managers provide for their clients. [49]
"By implement our developed reference architecture in our NOCs we reduce the total cost of ownership of the telecom management systems. The reference architecture allows us to replace the'stovepipe' tools with more generic solutions without losing service availability to end-users and revenue streams for the operators." He uses the stovepipe analogy again. It's typical, says Sjoman, for an operator to use completely different OSS/BSS tools in each service offering. "There are different tools in different stovepipes, tools for billing, for activation, for mediation and so on," he notes. [12] Future successful technology-based products and services will be pleasing to the senses, more or less intuitively obvious, safe to use, and fun. [39]
We are already seeing merchants, for example, use consumer payment information to tailor coupons to a customer's buying preferences. Banks can deliver robust information to consumers, for example, to help them weigh product features and engage in financial planning to evaluate a purchase within a desired spending budget. Perhaps, ultimately, clients will want to take their bank accounts with them, storing virtual money inside their mobile phones. Banks have an opportunity to reassert their unique role as the trusted brand in storing and moving money Innovation will be critical to our success. [24] McCracken's meaning transfer model (1989) suggests that beautiful models promoting cosmetic products will produce an "attractiveness enhancer" meaning for the endorsed product and the product user. In the context of beauty-enhancing products, McCracken's model suggests that an attractive model in advertising would lead consumers to believe that, through product use, they will be more attractive and will more closely approach that ideal image in the advertisement. [47] Elena uses Pantene, which "is advertised so heavily, but I think that my hair cannot look like hers. I pretend to look like her, but who knows how many stylists arrange her hair before she appears in the ad." Bianca provides a personal perspective of comparing herself to attractive models, yet gauging her own interest in the advertised products: "It is a comparison all the time. [47]
Consumers' ability to try the product enhanced the possibility of purchase likelihood. We hypothesized that women viewing attractive models would report less favorable satisfaction with their own attractiveness than those viewing average-looking models and those in the control group. An ANOVA with model condition as the independent variable and satisfaction with one's own attractiveness as the dependent variable and Bonferroni post hoc comparisons indicate that immediately after ad exposure, participants in the attractive model condition rated their satisfaction with their attractiveness significantly lower (?? 4.86) than those in the average-looking model (M 5.33) and the control (?? 5.31) conditions, supporting H4a and H4b, respectively. [47] H2: For beauty-enhancing products, women viewing ads with highly attractive models versus women viewing a control ad (with no model) will have: more positive ad attitudes (H 2a), higher quality assessments (H2b), higher price judgments (H 2c), and more favorable buying intentions of the advertised product (H2d). [47] H1: For beauty -enhancing products, women viewing ads with highly attractive models versus women viewing ads with average-looking models will have more positive ad attitudes (H1a), higher quality assessments (H1b), higher price judgments (H1c), and more favorable buying intentions of the advertised product (H1d). [47]
The dependent variables were assessed using seven-point items: attitude toward the ad (very negative/very positive, very bad/very good, very unfavorable/very favorable; Cronbach's.90; MacKenzie and Lutz 1989), product quality (very poor/excellent quality), price (very low/very high priced), and purchase intention (not at all likely/very likely). [47]
Maoris and Pacific Islanders were more in agreement (43.2 per cent) than disagreement (31.8 per cent). Managers were asked if they agreed or disagreed with this statement. This was asked to investigate the managers' confidence in their improved product quality. Managers were asked if they agreed or disagreed. This was asked to investigate their perception of consumers' views of changing product quality. Respondents were asked to indicate how well they agreed with this statement. [14] Managers must be able to maintain the impetus for staff at all levels to check and to continue to provide quality service. [53] Health care services, like all service companies, have problems in defining quality, establishing standards and controlling the desired levels of performance. [22]
Mailed to about 15,000 people, Carpenter notes the "majority are current customers or lapsed customers, and there's a little bit of prospecting in there, as well." He tallies the promotion's response rate at between 10 percent and 12 percent. Dorman and Carpenter have been pleased with the success of the American Express mailing and the restaurants' overall performance, especially during this recession. "Our restaurants have maintained their sales levels, for the most part. It is an environment where you really have to stay out there in front of your guests and continue to talk to them," says Dorman. [3] "A negative connotation is sometimes given to feedback because you feel like people are going to say really bad things, but if customers come forward and tell you things about your Web site that aren't working, that's a great opportunity," Loeber says." They've given you a second chance to make things better, and if they see those changes being implemented, that does a lot for customer loyalty." Such is the lesson learned by Staples.com. [29] IMPLEMENTING CHANGE. You will eventually use your customer input to make some changes, best taken like castor oil, in small doses. [46] Successful manufacturers in the future will maximize efficiency, eliminate waste, adapt to change and employ measurement strategies tailored to customer requirements. In order to achieve this profile, organizations across the industry are remodelling their internal operating structures. [9] Only implement changes that will help your customers as well as your restaurant. [46]
"For new customer acquisition, Orvis is experimenting with the next generation of behavioral marketing and figuring out that opportunity as we go," Wolansky notes. [23]
"We're starting out pretty small right now, with only a few hundred implementations today," says Donna Fluss, president of DMG Consulting, "but growth will be substantial from a percentage standpoint." Growth, she says, will explode once enterprise customers start to see the benefits. "CEA is really a new application, but it's definitely the kind of thing that organizations are asking about," Fluss says. CEA solutions take all of the recorded files from all of the IVR transactions and pull them apart "to determine what works and what doesn't, to determine why a customer drops out of an IVR," according to Fluss. [5] We are acquiring, commissioning, and developing titles in all fields of science, ranging from astrophysics to radiology." The main component of the expansion was to offer the entire slate of reference works in all media formats, from print to online, and to make them more accessible to customers who might otherwise not have been drawn to this content. [48]
"We knew we wanted to make some improvements in the purchasing flow, the checkout process, the registration process, and other places where we thought we could make it easier or faster for our customers to shop with us, says Mike Ragunas, CTO of Staples.com." [29] Staying close to the customer is one of the most important attributes of a successful innovation process. [24] Who is surveyed is as important as the questions that are asked. Any organization that understands its customers can easily divide the base into three classes - large revenue producers, strategic customers, and the broad remainder. Strategic customers are those with the potential to become key in the future. [11] "We're considering customer surveys. potentially doing some polling, say, after an e-mail cam- paign," Dormán explains. [3] Our problems are not just our problems in the foodservice field, but in all areas where employee and customer interaction happen. [58] ECMTA is a leading educational trade association for thousands of small and medium-sized online merchants, helping its members increase sales, reward brand loyalty, acquire new customers, strengthen the customer relationship, and give online shoppers a reason to return to their ecommerce websites thereby increasing their spending. [41] Relationships are typical outcomes at the commitment and loyalty stages of the customer life cycle. [4] Over the past six quarters, Sprint has lost more than six million customers as users have shifted to rival carriers, lured by the iPhone, Research In Motion Ltd.' s BlackBerry and other devices. [45]
If we can offer VAS at very little extra cost to the end-user we can drive revenue and build up our customer base." In terms of revenues, he admits that VAS are still a small proportion but he insists "revenues from VAS will increase drastically in the coming years". He points to voice as a potential market for VAS. Even though voice still accounts for a large chunk of revenues, there are very few VAS available in that market. [20] Customers don't want to commit to 20 year leases for fibre anymore because of the uncertainty of which companies will be around from one month to the next." [20] Two companies, however, earn the "we really get what you're going through" customer empathy award: Hyundai and Jos. [23] The following propositions set the terms and conditions for creating customer value: P1. [4] The characterization of customer culture. These elements can be combined to provide both quantitative and qualitative analyses based on an absolute and relative scale and then associated with revenue potential to characterize the value of the customer base. [11] The seller wishes to obtain the highest value while the buyer looks for the bargain. Characterizing the customer value can offer opportunities for leveraging those negotiations. This is particularly true for the seller if the customer value is quite high. [11] Once created, the value must be communicated and delivered to move the customer along the continuum from transactions to relationships. [4] Customer value cannot be derived by an internal assessment or even externally by an abstract analysis. [11] If the customer base made a target worth acquiring, don't settle for just guessing at its value. [11]
The framework implies a relationship that should be stated explicitly; i.e. targeting mediates the company to the customer. [4] The company has seen repeat buyers rise 75 percent from the previous quarter, about 70 percent of which are new Staples customers. [29] A first principle must be to make sure that questionnaires are designed around what customers want to say and not what the company wants to hear about. [6]
Owner loyalty, defined simply as repeat customers, is at a world class level of 63 per cent. [9] I spent more time mending fences than I did doing productive selling." Fortunately, the agent who told us this story said that the manufacturer did listen to him and he was able to convince him that his distributors were literally his customers. He was able to institute procedures that helped the distributors do their job very well. [17]
Internal measurement systems must be accessible and user friendly to the operator on the line. Assemblers must understand the data and it must put them in touch with the customer requirements. Decisions to forge forward in this direction will be fruitless unless measurement strategies within organizations can accomplish these two fundamentals. [9]
The magnetic appeal of China has led Taiwan corporates,on a government-approved basis, to invest some 76bn in the country between 1991 and 2008, although the real figure isthought to be much higher due to capital that is routed indirectly through third parties, according to Thomson Reuters. Servicing these firms' China operations has enabled Citi to become one of Taiwan's most profitable banks. "All theseglobal players want to go into the Chinese market and co-operate with Chinese customers, so we have become a veryimportant intermediary for their investment and banking transactions," says Mr Li. [33]
Although, in the past two years, a short sharp wave of foreign acquisitions by the likes of Standard Chartered, Citi and HSBC have been much-trumpeted by local market-watchers, the pace of change hasslowed again due to what Eunice Fan, a financial services ratings analyst at Taiwan Ratings, a partner of Standard &Poor's, refers to obliquely as "political issues". These include visceral opposition on the part of the sector'sstate-owned banks - which dominate some 50% of the sector's assets - to the consolidation process, in particularprivatisation; strong unionisation among workers fearful of job losses; and a general lack of political will. [33] Most notably, the Fubon Financial group, one of Taiwan'slargest financial services conglomerates, acquired almost 20% of Xiamen Commercial Bank in China's Fujian province earlylast year. [33] In regard to the quality of the service, the group showed interest in having more autonomy for using the library. [8]
The first section addressed all the important services the group offered--applications development, help desk, installation support team, etc. The next part of the survey focused on services the IS department didn't offer, including ad hoc programming and report writing, training on database tools, selection of new software, centralized PC and LAN support, and more. In this section, users were asked to rate the services and to indicate how much they'd be willing to pay for them if they could get them. [59] The "big three" carriers are announcing Internet gateway products and services that allow phone calls made over the Internet to be handled by a traditional call centre. These offerings are still in the early stages, and technology is still evolving, but they are important, as they represent the first effort by major carriers to bridge Internet traffic with the 800 network. [15] Unwillingness to assume a financial risk. "A business borrower has to show he has invested his own money, and perhaps that of family and friends, to get his product or service to the point where a business loan is needed. [43] Our research has shown that approximately 60% of the reasons for selecting a product or service in the United States tend to be consistent among purchasers. [11]
Like the journals and eBooks available on SpringerLink, the reference works also include a list of references at the end of each article that feature hyperlinks to the abstract of the cited article using CrossRef, PubMed, or other abstracting services. The main goal is to enable users to find answers to their questions regardless of their specific research needs. "The users have different motivation when they research a Web tool," said Mager. "Primary, secondary, and tertiary literature caters to different research needs, and we want to cater to them simultaneously. For instance, when a user enters "hemoglobin" into a search query, we have no idea which mode they are now operating. [48] Most important, a strong customer satisfaction program allows an organization to develop actionable strategies to reduce customer problems. The continuous nature of the research allows the firm to monitor the outcomes of these same action-oriented strategies. The results of this research can be applied in many different ways. [18]
Much has been written--and spoken--about the quality of students being educated by American business schools. This issue of HR Focus hopes to gain even more opinions and insights on the topic by including a survey designed jointly by the newsletter editors and staff members at the Indiana University School of Business. The results of this survey will be used to gauge the reactions of HR executives and recruiters toward students who graduate from both undergraduate business and MBA programs. [60]
Your training program may be top notch, the best in the business, but that will only get you so far. That manager you hired? He may be knowledgeable in some areas but when you talk about good service with him, you are speaking in abstract terminology. The details swim around him like Einstein's theories. [58] Kia Motors of America selected Cobalt for Kia's iPower Website Services program, a new phase of Integrated Marketing Services for Kia dealers. [37] Cobalt, the leading provider of digital marketing services to the retail automotive industry, announced that it has entered into a partnership with Kia Motors America (KMA) as the solely endorsed website provider for all Kia dealer websites. [37]
"There are operational efficiency gains through best practices -- for example best practice in trouble ticketing process, where the result is that we not only reduce mean time to repair or time to do required adjustments but also increase revenue potential by improve service availability." [12]
Consider an example: patient X, who has a scheduled appointment 10 minutes from the current time, is waiting in the check-in queue behind several other patients whose scheduled appointments are several hours away. By the time patient X reaches the check-in process he is late for his scheduled appointment causing a disruption in the nurse/ physician service schedules. Such disruptions ripple through the system, increasing time variability and hence increasing the average time patients spend in the system. The 45-minute maximum CIT policy reduces the number of these disruptions. [22]
The focus of the marketing strategy process model is on the formulation of segmentation, targeting, differentiation, and positioning strategies to create, communicate, and deliver the value to the customer resulting in gaining customer satisfaction and loyalty; i.e. marketing objectives. [4]
One cannot manage what one can't measure, and many of us have policies and procedures that reduce our ability to serve the customer. The process of mapping out the various relationships within and between departments serves to aid in the identification and elimination of these policies. The technique that is closest to the core concept of marketing in identifying customer satisfaction levels is simply to ask the customers how satisfied they are. Most organizations have not historically bothered to take this step. [18] What typically develops is as much a consultative relationship as simply that of a research supplier. Perhaps one of the most interesting things I discovered while researching this article was the small number of marketing research firms that sell customer satisfaction to clients and actually use this same tool internally. [18] Furse, D.H., Burcham, M.R., Rose, R.L. and Oliver, R.W. (1994, "Leveraging the value of customer satisfaction information", Journal of Health Care Marketing, Autumn, Vol. 14 No. 3, pp. 16-20. [22]
The service goal at Federal Express continues to be 100 percent defect free performance with emphasis on determining root causes and implementing solutions which prevent the defects from occurring again rather than simply fixing the consequences caused by the defective service. The weekly and monthly SQI summaries help guide Federal Express in their quest for continuous improvement of customer satisfaction. [2] Blueprinting one's service system is also a very important step in increasing overall customer satisfaction. [18] Customer satisfaction with the entire limited service restaurant segment remained even from 2008, at 78. [10] Joseph E. Toole is director, client services with Walker: Customer Satisfaction Measurements, Indianapolis, Indiana. The editor of this column is Sarah Kennedy, president, the Canadian Productivity Network, Mississauga, Ontario. [25]
A good customer satisfaction program serves as an external form of quality control that is service-centered, communication-centered, and continuous in nature. It allows an organization to monitor the thought and opinions of its customers in a comprehensive manner that is both accurate and precise. [18] The ultimate benefit was that of meeting satisfactorily the measures of success of time, cost, quality and customer satisfaction. [49]
Eqos on-demand software enables companies to work collaboratively with trading partners to enhance customer satisfaction, improve supplier performance, accelerate delivery times, and ensure compliance. [61] When two companies merge, there eventually needs to be a match between each organization's customer culture in order to avoid problems that can lead to defections. This requires an identification of the impact of the three fundamental elements on customers' satisfaction in both companies. It can be derived by using a process very similar to that used to determine the key drivers of customer satisfaction. [11] "You need to listen to your customers, and I think we've learned that that pays off," Ragunas says. "It's become ingrained for us, something that we really began focusing seriously on when we started working on this release. is a critical component." [29]
1.8. CUSTOMER COMMUNICATIONS, SATISFIED CUSTOMERS
I know that there are islands in the ocean that exist in all arenas of customer contact. They are few. To those who say I sound too pessimistic, I say that I am just realistic. [58] Ask continuously how well you and your competitors are doing. Track the internal procedures that are supposed to produce the results the customers tell you they want--as well as the end results. [2] Customer life cycle starts with awareness but it may or may not lead to exploration, commitment, loyalty and dissolution. [4] Excellent customer retention and gaining new customers are the rewards for hitting the high/high target. [13] Ninety percent of noncomplaining customers simply will never return. [19] Then prioritize category display order by revenue or popularity, and finish by heeding customer expectations. [16] Logistic regression calculates the probability of each customer being satisfied or not. [52] CONVERTING COMPLAINTS. Learn to treat complaints as valuable customer input. [46] With the release of NOW 5.0, Thunderhead introduces two new modules that further establish Thunderhead NOW as the industry's most advanced, enterprise-capable solution for creating and managing highly personalized customer communications for batch or real-time delivery via any channel, print or electronic. [35] The Pre is expected to do well with existing Sprint customers looking for an upgrade or iPhone alternative. Philip Cusick, an analyst at Macquarie Securities, says he estimates one million of the devices will sell each quarter, or roughly a quarter of the total phones sold to Sprint customers. [45] A lack of premises for group studying was mentioned and the members of the group also complained that there was no privacy for study. Listening to records or seeing videos were difficult due to the space available for these activities, always inconvenient to the customers. The participants also affirmed that, in spite of the efforts regarding the cleaning of the library, its image was not one of a very clean place. [8]
The basic fact that a claim has been filed implies that the customer has had an unpleasant or even a horrible experience. [32] We all must learn to aim ahead and exceed customer expectations if we are to achieve continued or improved marketshare. [2] In executing the acquisition and striving for efficiency, the acquirer often reduces staff, installs new faces at branch offices, and implements different policies. These actions can cause small-town customer defection from the new, seemingly impersonal approach of the acquiring organization. [11] Here is how it worked in an actual customer evaluation project we did for a client. [11] Next, customers are asked to rank the company's performance in delivering the attribute. [13]
"Not so big" is a term coined by bestselling author, architect and cultural visionary Sarah Susanka to focus on making things "better not bigger." Brands are boutique-ing themselves in various ways to make shopping more convenient for their customers. [23] "Customer responses have led to some improvements that we might not have instituted otherwise," Larry Pera says, "like no-smoking dining rooms and a more upbeat music system. [46] Customers include Co-operative, Edcon, H-E-B, HMV, Lidl, LloydsTSB, Michaels, RSA, Sainsbury's and Tesco. [61] Transactions are typical outcomes at the awareness and exploration stages of the customer life cycle. [4] The knowledge obtained by talking to one's customers can help the organization prepare itself for an increasingly competitive market and not only survive, but thrive. [18] The report measures each vendor in three dimensions: market strength, technology, and customer base. [42] James Irvine, Egyii Director of Programme Development, says "Financial organizations are struggling and it is the customer who is suffering, causing a break of loyalty and trust and a loss of business." [55] Logistic regression consistently outperformed multiple regression in denoting satisfied and not satisfied customers in the nine studies undertaken. [52] Organizations routinely set criteria for determining who is a satisfied customer and who is not. [52] A customer comment about "new phone" may be distinct from a related concept, "new phone ASAP" response. [40] A monthly drawing can provide lunch for the winner, as well as a customer base. [46] We also poll customers on every new food item before adding it to our menus." [46] Weed out the emotional overtones of an irate customer and you're left with something that went wrong. [46] Gathering and using customer feedback requires an organized effort. [46] "Thunderhead has truly established itself as the innovative force in the customer communications market," commented Thunderhead CEO Glen Manchester. [35] With CashPro, we established a customer advisory board, which has been closely involved in the product's development. [24] "With an on-demand platform, the various partners hook up to the network once and then all customers of that platform share that one integration. [27]
Make the most of your crisis situation as an opportunity to effectively communicate with the customer. [38] Simple, repetitive communications stylishly but inexpensively produced are essential to "reaching" the customer. [38] Springer is also working to make the reference collection affordable for customers. [48] Historically the assembly supervisor has been the primary link between the customer and the operator on the production line. [9] Again, the customer makes the decision. Another innovation was the formation of the "core team" headed by a member of the CAW. This team is comprised of 24 unionized workers assigned as teams to each division. [9] While trying to keep ahead of the avalanche of ever-changing federal, state and local regulations, many bankers have, however, forgotten that "customer" is just another name for "consumer." [19] As successful bankers you know your businesses are driven by customers. [19] The key is providing flexibility for the customer, you have to have enough depth to provision a number of routes and be able to react quickly," explains Smith. She points to Level 3's 'continuously upgradeable' network supported by SLAs "guaranteeing 100 per cent network availability, an average latency of 40 milliseconds or less in all regions, and less than one per cent packet loss". [20] The defection of customers is only estimated and considered a foregone conclusion. [11] Rather than focusing on "bells-and-whistles" functionality, focus on features that enhance relevancy and utility for your customers - and drive sales. [16] To be most effective as an agent working with distributors, you must have considerable knowledge about the customers of the particular industry. More than a few agents, looking to expand into other areas, have found that their extensive knowledge, gathered in another field, was little help to them when they started working with agents. [17] On behalf of your customers, I encourage you to take the road less traveled - even if it is a bit bumpy at first. [23] "I only see benefits of having a live response. It's only a benefit for the customer," she said. [27]
The use, supply, and importation of asbestos and asbestos products has been banned for all but a few exceptions by the asbestos (prohibition) regulations. Work with asbestos generally requires a license and the use of strict control measures, including personal protective equipment such as respirators. For this reason, the latest revision of the control of asbestos at work regulations (CAWR) introduced (from May 2004) a new duty on those responsible for nondomestic premises to manage the contained asbestos. [49] An important stream of work has investigated the combined effects of advertising and trial. One significant finding is that once people have tried highly diagnostic products (i.e., products for which trial offers tangible, credible evidence of the product and its attributes), pretrial advertising has little or no effect on their product evaluations (Hoch and Ha 1986; Kempf and Smith 1998). [47] Our collective work contributes to the ad-trial literature, providing a more realistic consumption context for trying symbolic products (Hoch and Ha 1986; Kempf and Smith 1998; Smith 1993), as well as to a growing dialogue about the impact of exporting idealized media images and consumer culture to the transitional economies of eastern and central Europe. [47] Trial assists consumers to form brand beliefs. Kempf and Smith (1998) also note that during trial, consumers make inferences about nonadvertised product attributes for which they do not have information. [47] "The mass production of identical products is being replaced by the flexible production of individualized products. Getting into the head of consumers, really understanding their motivations and behavior patterns rather than just their expressed desires, is the great challenge of consumer-product development for the next decade," Millett said. Human interfaces-as intermediaries between humans and machines, interfaces, such as software menus, need to go the step beyond "user friendly." [39] Personalized consumer products-consumers are increasingly better informed and harder to please. They will buy products that satisfy their own tastes, rather than accept whatever stores present. [39] Being accessible to the workers at our product reviews and working together meetings, put management in the position to be criticized, questioned and challenged on decisions that affected the workers, or the product, or the plant environment. It also diminished personal authority -- for some, power was lost. One of our first changes was relaxing the dress code. although this may seem insignificant, it did make a difference. [9] "Lenders want a relatively brief, easy to read plan that answers the who, what, when, where, why and how of the product or service. [43] Inexperience with the product or service. "Even if an entrepreneur is pitching a completely new product or service, she should have some experience-based connection with it. [43] Customers' disposition toward a product or service must be clearly understood. [13] "A value-added product is something you get on top of the base product to leverage extra revenue." Tom Wright, senior consultant at Tarifica, PBI Media, continues, "A VAS would be something like security or firewall protection with a service such as web hosting." [20]
Candidates have learned that nothing impresses an individual more than personal contact. Ideally this means someone knocking on the door, during daylight hours, introducing themselves, and actually speaking and listening to the resident. Utility companies rarely use this communication technique to present the company's message, even during a severe crisis. Citizens report that they want to meet the persons seeking their vote. It is logical to assume that they want to have someone personally contact them about a problem or crisis (e.g., explosion, service outage, pipeline leak). Voters/customers are particularly impressed when someone braves the elements to talk with them. [38] The group was determined so as to include only the masters degree students that used to go to the library before the reconstruction and who continued to use it after that period. This option was based both on the expectation of a larger use of the library by graduate students and on the largest level of demand by this group regarding library services. [8]
In our Yankee Group Telecommunications Planning Service Report, Business Multimedia Update: User Concerns and the Impact of the Internet, we expected the efforts of multimedia vendors to be focused increasingly on the Internet as the primary platform for communications and collaboration. [15] Although TIC is a proponent of VAS because of increased market consolidation, it believes the expansion of VAS will be restricted. "TIC's strategy throughout this period is based on using existing investments to develop competitive wholesale services," asserts TIC's Stott. "Based on a very selective investment policy, panEuropean carriers should concentrate on developing solutions that have already proven their business benefit and ROI." [20] You will find the many ways that offering PEO and HR services will allow you to protect and grow your business into the future. [54] The concept of iTunes was a new business model that changed the way consumers could store and listen to music. [24] To cite an earlier example, the iPod integrates communication speed, mobility and storage capacity. All of these come together, along with consumer readiness for change and the introduction of the iTunes business model. Within the banking realm, clients increasingly want banking solutions to integrate into their flow - whether flow constitutes, for example, a mobile consumer or the workflow related to a treasurer's broader financial processes. [24] Customer satisfaction research is supposed to determine which factors under the organization's control have the most impact on satisfaction. By understanding what variables drive satisfaction, the organization can change its business practices to create more satisfied customers, leading to increased sales and longterm viability. [52] Thunderhead NOW also enhances customer engagement, improving customer satisfaction, loyalty and revenue outcomes. Due to its unique combination of business user control, open standards-based architecture and broad enterprise capabilities, Thunderhead has quickly established itself as a clear market leader and is one of the fastest-growing software companies in the world. [35] To determine whether logistic regression could perform as well as or better than multiple regression in predicting satisfied customers, logistic regression models were compared to multiple regression models developed for customer satisfaction data for several companies in differing industries. [52]
Multiple regression requires the research analyst to treat the overall customer satisfaction rating as continuous data. [52] Customer satisfaction research can be used to develop long-term strategic plans as well as more immediate customer relations problems. It can be used as a valuable addition to training programs and even serve as basis for employee compensation and bonuses. [18] Plateau Telecommunications in Clovis, N.M., has a similar internally regulated employee recognition program. Employees may recognize their co-workers for an outstanding effort on a particular project by submitting a form to the telco's director of employee services. [31]
In systems integration projects with operators the company has seen examples where it has achieved increase in revenue on specific services simply by improving availability of the service as a result of our best practice for trouble ticketing. [12] Innovation results from thoughtful research into the complexities of our customers' needs, exploration into materials and processes, and designs responding to social and economic trends in the global market." Another aspect of innovation - risk taking - is just as important, the company says: "Herman Miller tries to maintain its appetite for risk. [23]
Program integration allows for enhanced reporting and visibility into interactive trends and opportunities while reducing lead duplication. These leading edge website bundles offer highly engaging tools and assets for consumer interaction, custom designs to enhance the Kia brand and more flexibility than ever before for the Kia dealer to create and manage website content, features and other important integrations they need to build their own unique brand. [37] The following five-step plan guides guest-sensitive restaurateurs to new levels of consumer awareness. It gives you the information you need to pursue a study of your patrons and achieve all the repeat business you can handle. [46]
Female consumers felt more strongly (73.9 per cent agreed at least a little) than males (59.3 per cent) that New Zealand goods are better quality than most overseas goods. Consumers who had experienced overseas travel had very similar quality perceptions to those who had not travelled. Consumers who said they were Maoris and Pacific Islanders felt stronger agreement than average (80.0 per cent). [14] "Kia and Cobalt agree that the best strategy for success is to maximize Kia dealer investments in online marketing and advertising through improved coordination by leveraging the Kia brand site features and content at the dealer level, which improves the consumer experience and increases visitor-to-lead conversion." [37] Trip Allen, Egyii's Director of Sales and Marketing, says "The Consumer and Retail space is a logical choice for us. The banks have requested that we move into this space. [55]
Services to consider include: PayPal and Google Checkout, along with BillMeLater, an instant credit mechanism allowing shoppers to defer payment - a helpful alternative for cash-crunched consumers. Before shoppers can fall in love with your site, they have to be able to access it in the first place. They expect sites to be faster than ever. [16] Measuring service performance must be part of daily work rather than a one-off activity. [6] Measurements of service performance were taken locally and reports on resulting actions were reported up the line to senior management. [6] The key aim of telecommunications management is to support the network transformation, says Sjoman -- the transformation to new-generation networks and the new set of services that NGNs will permit. "It's vital to have the knowledge and experience of how that is carried out," he says. [12]
Widdows, R., Henslar, T.A. and Wyncott, M.H. (1991), "The focus group interview: the method goes assessing users' evaluation of library service", College & Research Libraries, Vol. 52 No. 4, pp. 352-39. [8] Rose, P.M., Stoklosa, K. and Gray, S.A. (1998), "The focus group approach to assessing technostress the reference desk", Reference & User Services Quarterly, Vol. 37 No. 4, pp. 311-17. [8] Hennessey Capital is part of the Hennessey Group of companies including Hennessey Enterprises, Hennessey Ventures, Hennessey Capital Southeast, and InStream Services. [43] Compared with other service companies, health care outcomes are more difficult to define, measure and control (Faltermayer, 1994; Morrison and Helneke, 1992). [22]
For more information about the many services Extensis offers, please call (888) 473-6398, or visit www.extensisgroup.com. [54] In Service America, Albrecht and Zemke state "the ability to understand customers' needs and wants can be summed up in a simple phrase, 'Always be learning.'" [18] Operators need to move away from the stovepipes in the network -- one stove pipe for each service, each one independent of the next -- to a layered approach. Let's go back first though and recap the two cornerstones covered in those previous articles. [12] Although, Tarifica's Hall adds, "Wholesale providers need to provide a spectrum of services - not just pure provision of connectivity." [20]
Senior managers may set quality objectives across departments or units as an immediate response to get something done. There is now, of, course a growing movement towards concern for quality with a capital Q, with slogans and posters designed to remind staff of the need for their personal commitment to the issue. [53] Hypothesis 2 posited that attractive models compared with no models would result in more positive attitudes toward the ad (H2a), more favorable quality evaluations (H2b), higher price perceptions (H2c), and stronger purchase intentions (H2d). [47]
With regard to spokesperson characteristics, advertisers have long been inter- ested in understanding the effects of attractiveness on product evaluations and self-judgments. It is interesting to note that research brought to bear on the effects typically has focused either on advertising/product evaluations or on self-judgments (see Bower 2001 for an exception). With regard to attitude toward the ad, product, and brand, as well as purchase inten- tion, researchers have argued that the favorable impressions generated by an attractive model are transferred to ad and product evaluations via affect transfer (Lutz 1985) or because their attractiveness characteristic may provide relevant infor- mation for attractiveness-relevant products, such as clothing and cosmetics (Kahle and Homer 1985; Kamins 1990). [47] Women who use products advertised by attractive models report more favorable self-attractiveness and self-confidence. [47] Highly attractive models, however, do not always generate more favorable reactions than normally attractive or unattractive models (Bower and Landreth 2001 ; Caballero and Solomon 1984). As argued by the match-up hypothesis, they should be most effective when matched with attractiveness-relevant products (e.g., Kahle and Homer 1985; Kamins 1990). [47]
Recent advertising exposure can cause attractive models to become temporarily more salient, changing the comparison level for attractiveness judgments for a short time (Richins 1991). As such, women's satisfaction with their own attractiveness may initially be affected by exposure to a particular ad featuring attractive models, but as time elapses (e.g., our two-week trial period), the salience dissipates, and satisfaction with personal appearance is no longer affected by that particular ad. Our research is the first to empirically investigate the timing and nature of these expected temporary effects. H4: Immediately after viewing ads with highly attractive models, women will report lower satisfaction with their own appearance than women viewing ads with average-looking models (H4a), or women viewing a controlad (with no model) (H4b). After the extended (i.e., two-week) trial period, however, the immediate effects of model attractiveness on satisfaction with one's own attractiveness will dissipate, such that there will be no difference across model conditions in consumers' post -trial attractiveness satisfaction (H4c). [47] Future research efforts might investigate the effect of idealized images of advertising on post-trial product evaluations when the product performs poorly, as well as examine the relationship between self-judgments and product evaluations more systematically (Bower 2001). [47] Marketers are interested in ads that generate attention, create positive attitudes among consumers, and increase product or brand sales. [47] The yield onfinancial products is also negligible, says Chen Hock U, senior vice-president and head of personal financial servicesat HSBC, Taiwan. [33]
According to theChina Post, Taiwan and Beijing are due to sign a much-anticipated bilateral financial services memorandum ofunderstanding (MOU) in May, which will allow Taiwan banks to directly enter the Chinese market under a joint financialsupervisory framework. Several domestic banks are already preparing their cross-strait entry. E-Sun Commercial Bank,which is still awaiting Beijing's approval for its branch licence in Hong Kong, is focusing on China, says Mr Cheng,while state-owned Bank of Taiwan is also awaiting the go-ahead. [33] The service provided by the investment bank does not end when the deal is concluded. [11]
Value-Added Service - The ability to offer additional value-added capability could be a competitive advantage to m&a banking advisers and can be useful for obtaining repeat business or recommendations. [11] The people responsible for service delivery must be able to identify how to change on an ongoing basis. [6] Are you from the evil empire? Well, if you work in a corporate IS department, your corporate citizens might think you are. Often, there's a big perception problem about the value of corporate IS folks and the services they provide. [59] "We want to offer 'on-demand' service and automate the provisioning of capacity process. [20] Guillebon says the Multicast service increases the capacify of fibre to carry data and enables a wider distribution of multimedia content that most frequently congest the network. [20] Most of the survey addressed specific services, with the description on the left side of the page, and a rating scale of one to five across the top. So, users needed only to mark the rating scale. [59] The approach was uncomplicated. All he wanted to know was what corporate users thought of IS service. His project team carefully created a survey form--making it quick and easy to fill out. [59]
The results will be used to help improve services in five areas identified as needing attention: speed of service, politeness of staff, professionalism of staff, working order of vending machines, and branch availability of forms and leaflets. [56] We have been neglectful in our specifics about service as an industry, and our incompetence is showing. Chain executives are so far removed from the operation no matter how involved they are that there is no way they can truly know what happens in the units. Most independent operators are busy trying to cut labor or food cost, and their reliance on someone in the front-of-the-house with little or no training is costing them more than that 8-an-hour cook. [58] Initially, we statistically derived the relationship by tracking quarterly revenue and customer satisfaction measurements of 800 international and domestic company accounts over a four-year period. The conclusions of this statistical analysis were in some ways surprising. It demonstrated that a somewhat satisfied customer would generate 38% of the revenue of a totally satisfied customer. [11] Identification and quantification of the strengths and weaknesses of a company as viewed from the customer's perspective. Prioritization and quantification of the key drivers of customer satisfaction and their relationship to revenue growth. [11] P3. A positive customer experience is assured only when creating the value leads to customer satisfaction and their loyalty is engendered. [4] With CashPro, the innovation process becomes part of the client experience, thereby increasing customer satisfaction. [24]
In quality, our customer satisfaction audits improved by 37.7 per cent over 1991. [9] The main drivers of an organization's customer satisfaction are determined by how much each area contributes to the overall explanation of the multiple regression model. [52] The ratings on the subcomponent areas are used as independent variables in the multiple regression model. These models predict the customer satisfaction rating based on customers' ratings of the subcomponent areas. [52] The main sources of data for the model are the listing of daily activities for each physician (known as the workload report), health benefit advisers' personal notes on the number of patients scheduled and actually seen per period and direct measurements of other parameters as needed. The simulation model (named VISITAS) mimics the flow of patients through the clinic once they arrive on the day of their appointment. [22] Once the rating scale data have been obtained, many analysts use multiple regression to determine which subcomponent areas drive customer satisfaction. [52] Collecting customer satisfaction data that are not directly relevant to an organization's unique circumstances or part of its unique processes will not drive improvements. [6]
Measurement is only the first stage in a cycle of service improvement and review. [6] The photocopier is the only aspect of the service in which no significant improvements were noticed. [8]
Widdows et al. (1991) use it to assess students' evaluation of library service in an academic environment. Although the search of the professional literature has allowed the identification of only a few texts, they presented the technique in a practical and accessible manner. [8] You see, there was one comment made several times about service - either the lack of it, the lack of training for it or the inconsistency of it. [58] My die-hard passion for guest service was falling on more than a few deaf ears. Oh, I had the 10 percent of employees that we all get who do everything asked of them. [58] In operations, I preached the good sermons about great service. I gave excellent examples of what I expected to see and was specific about common situations and how to handle them. [58] Let's get real. While we all know that service is relative, there is no such thing as good, consistent service. It does not exist. I know that there are those who immediately will dismiss my comment or become indignant because I have never seen their operation, but I stand by the statement unequivocally. [58]
Ken Burke is the chairman, founder and chief evangelist of MarketLive Inc., an e-commerce technology services provider based in Petaluma, Calif. He can be reached at ken@mmlive.com, or visit www.marketlive.com/sitereview. [16] The defence ministry controls 25 per cent of the available airwaves for mobile telephony. This has left Bharti, Vodafone and other incumbent GSM operators with levels of bandwidth about half those of their overseas peers, leading to substandard service levels in many cities. [50]
Animosity between the leading three operators dates from 2003, when Reliance persuaded the government to allow it to offer mobile services based on the CDMA standard after being licensed as a fixed-line operator. Hostilities flared again in 2007, when Reliance persuaded the government to award it spectrum for a new nationwide network based on GSM, which is dominant in India and is expected to eventually replace CDMA. The government also allocated GSM spectrum to several other smaller carriers, most of them start-ups. [50] Clearly the CIT policy and the number of HBAs are interrelated as the HBAs service patients at check-in. [22] At the other end of the spectrum, responsibility for innovation can be centralized in a shared service center. [24] The radical undertaking comes just weeks before President of the Board of Trade Michael Heseltine is due to announce details of the planned privatisation of the national postal service. [56] The majority of manufacturing and service industries have faced a painful adjustment to the harsh realities of free-market economies. [14] In Minnesota, Rogosienski is gong-ho on the potential of Word of Mouth, even though the site, like that of the Post's in Denver, has been up hardly a week. "We're working with them closely to develop a much deeper service than just an online directory," he said. [34] Word of Mouth might be the first B2C2BC in online journalism: A business-to-consumer-to-business-and-consumer service. [34] A COLORADO MAN HAD A LITTLE PROBLEM AT A.JIFFY Lube shop in a suburb of Denver. They put the wrong weight of oil in his truck and left the old oil filter in the engine compartment, among other service failings. [34] Carrier services in general have traditionally taken months of negotiation and once the contract is finalised it can take longer to deliver it. [20] Supplementing super service with a request for feedback puts you one step ahead of the competition. [46] Personalized service? Of course. Giving them what they want? Yes, but, how do we know for certain what they want? Simple. Ask them. [46] For the sake of argument - and I know much will be said about my next statement - let's say we are specifically talking about front-of-the-house service, or that delivered by the host staff, servers, bus persons and counter persons. [58] Sceptics believe otherwise. "If privatisation goes ahead, then the PO has to act now to improve the poor public perceptions of its service," comments one observer. [56] The London Borough of Hillingdon (LBH) manages over 1,000 properties of different sizes, age, construction, location /environment. The majority of these are held primarily for service or socioeconomic reasons. [49] Food, while it isn't easy, is easier to control than service. Look at The Cheesecake Factory with its high-quality offerings. They have almost unequalled success in delivering plate after plate of great food. [58]
A selection of marketing management, market management, or relationship management focus. [4] Business share is the immediate marketing metric for relationships. [4]
As one would expect, market research suppliers have reacted to the shifting corporate emphasis toward customer satisfaction research. It would be difficult to find a market research supplier that doesn't claim to possess customer satisfaction research capabilities. Only a few actually have separate divisions within their organizations that do nothing but customer satisfaction research or are a customer satisfaction specialist. Why would a research firm concentrate on only customer satisfaction or create a separate division to address only this market? According to Gary Hren, managing director of Burke Customer Satisfaction Associates of Cincinnati, while this type of research looks easy, it's really very specialized. [18]
By weighting each category in the satisfaction scale by the percentage of customers choosing the various satisfaction levels and totaling the result, a Revenue Index can be derived. This index defines the percentage of the potential revenue that is being contributed from the customer base. If the Revenue Index is 67%, this means that approximately another 33% of revenue could be obtained through an increase in customer satisfaction. This also means that a 1% increase in the Revenue Index will result in a 1 % increase in revenue, as illustrated in Table 1. [11] Furse, Burcham, Rose and Oliver (1994) show that a strong correlation exists among customer satisfaction, patient's perceived health status and clinical results. [22]
Provision of customer value is a necessary but not sufficient condition to gain customer satisfaction. [4] Multiple regression assumes that the ratings are normally distributed on a bell-shaped curve. It is well-documented, however, that customer satisfaction ratings obtained on ratings scales are not normally distributed, but are skewed toward higher scale values. [52]
Customer satisfaction is a necessary but not sufficient condition to engender customer loyalty. [4] A binary overall customer satisfaction variable follows the logistic distribution and allows for the use of another regression technique: logistic regression. [52] On a 10-point scale, customers who give an organization an overall rating of 9 or 10 may be considered satisfied, while the rest of the customers are considered not satisfied. Viewing customer satisfaction ratings in this manner (are/aren't) invalidates the use of multiple regression because the dependent variable is not continuous, but binary. [52]
The solution also facilitates increased use of debit cards, thereby supporting retailers' efforts to discourage check payments. It was also a timely solution, which took advantage of evolving consumer behavior toward increased card usage. [24] You don't waste time by swiping your card or handing it to the cashier, and you typically don't have to sign for purchases of 25 or less. Citibank, MasterCard, Nokia and Cingular just started testing technology that will let consumers shop by using their phones instead of a credit card. (In essence, you'll be able to pay by touching the special reader with your phone instead of using a credit card.) Here's why the credit-card companies love it: It makes you spend more. [51] If your employees have a hard time determining what makes your banking institution different from the others in the city, consumers are equally confused. [19]
Last year Nation's Restaurant News did a special section called "Consumer Trends: What Do They Want (And Why)?" May 23, 2005, and something about it bothered me. I reread the issue until it finally hit me - all of the people interviewed for their thoughts on what operators should be addressing were targeting details that they do well and think others should, too. Once I realized this, reading their comments became humorous. and then sad. [58]
Affordable, home-based health care-increasing home health care will help contain rising costs while serving an aging population and will provide people with convenience and privacy. Micro security-people will be more concerned with their personal safety and guarding their homes and communities vs. monitoring and protecting national borders. Renewed infrastructure-more developed countries need to update their transportation, bridges, water, and sewage systems, while less-developed countries don't have advanced infrastructures. This requires new materials and construction methods to keep costs down. [39]
The moderator must know the exact moment to redirect the participants to the main subject when the group's attention is dispersed. He/she should also be attentive in order to prevent some of them from leading the group, motivating those that are too timid to express their opinions. According to the literature, both the moderator as the observer should be strangers to the group (Morgan, 1988). As counting on an experienced person in the interview would represent a larger cost - which could even result in compromising its viability - the researchers preferred to have the library's director in the moderator's role. There is no indication that the results have been compromised by this decision. [8] "There are two sides of the coin," says Linda Sherry, spokeswoman for advocacy group Consumer Action. [51] A fresh example: Within tiered-rate schedules, the card companies are hiking lower-tier fees without changing the top tier, says Consumer Action's Ms. Sherry. [51] Credit-card companies are still finding ways to hike fees that can slip under the radar of even the savviest consumers. [51]
As online commerce of all sorts develops, it becomes possible to divide it into categories. There are sectors that are efficient and impersonal - such as Amazon, which delivers the books or other items without any fuss but without any human contact either. There are sectors that are inefficient and acrimonious, and which include many of those requiring interaction with a call centre. The online supermarkets are in a category of their own, because they involve someone turning up on your doorstep every week. You get to know the delivery drivers better than their employers do. This was another difference I noted between Tesco and Ocado: drivers from both companies were friendly but Ocado's seemed happier. Tesco's drivers delivered the goods but also took a few minutes to complain about the long hours and how hard they were pushed. It is not a crucial difference, but when you are a mouse-click from changing suppliers, it all counts. [1] Valuable information, no! A recent repurchase represents loyalty and provides a very good statistical base for evaluation. [11] When advertising is followed by a negative trial, however, favorable pretrial information can lead to a more positive evaluation of the unsatisfactory experience than trial alone (Smith 1993). [47]
In the opinion of the group, a better work relationship among the library staff is expected in this period, as they become acquainted with the new facilities. [8] Morgan (1988) believes that the focus group is the explicit use of the interaction to produce data and insights. [8]
We are an industry of leaders and innovators, and our time to act is now. This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors and management at Nation's Restaurant News. [58] We believe that the Web will evolve significantly over time to incorporate more multimedia and realtime communications capabilities, so that a Web site's ability to satisfy all of a customer's needs will grow as well. [15] My hostess would quote wait times with no rhyme or reason and could not explain to me why. These were mistakes by educated people - people who I thought cared about their jobs, my opinion and what our guests thought. They didn't always, and that is what hurt the most. They cared when it was convenient or when they passed their tests at school that day. They cared when they needed money for rent or their cars needed repairs. [58]
Most managers disagreed (58.8 per cent) but most consumers agreed (74.4 per cent) (see Figure 6). (Figure 6 omitted) Again, the consumers' view was opposed to the managers' view. Respondents were also asked how well they agreed with this statement. [14] In 1982, Chrysler spent over 800 million to research, engineer, develop and launch the minivan. In making such a major decision, Chrysler knew that Windsor had the best qualified workforce in the world to launch a new world - class vehicle and, of course, the consumer has supported that decision. [9]
Consumers in the Which? survey appear to have said: we will be the judges of that, thank you. [1]
I've learned firsthand that the corporate communications staff at a regulated utility faces an extremely difficult task. It must present the company in a such a way as to create a favorable perception, regardless of the situation or resources available. This job is not unlike that of a candidate's "spin doctor," who toils to "position" the candidate before the electorate. Utilities tend to evaluate their communications efforts by the degree of public recognition and occasionally by increased sales. [38] Vickie Henry is owner and president of Feedback Plus Inc., a customer satisfaction and consulting company in the United States and Canada. [19] The reality is that the critical customer priorities, which are the key driving elements of customer satisfaction, must be indirectly identified. [11] Customer satisfaction studies are increasingly being used as the basis for performance evaluations, bonuses, and awards. [25]
RANKED RECOMMENDED SOURCES
(61 source documents numbered in order of appearance in text)
11. What good customers are worth to a shrewd buyer
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6. Viewpoint: Why customer satisfaction research doesn't get results
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8. Using the focus group approach for evaluating customers ' opinions : the experience of a Brazilian academic library
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3. Multichannel Hospitality
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58. Get real, operators: Consistently good service just a myth
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52. Use logistic regression with customer satisfaction data
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12. The third cornerstone: how to make it happen
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22. Achieving hospital operating objectives in the light of patient preferences
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20. Where's the value in wholesale?
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23. Which road are you on?
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33. Saturation point
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35. Thunderhead; Thunderhead Introduces Analytics and Collaboration Tools with New Release of Customer Communications Management Solution
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38. What I learned on the campaign trail
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16. Boost Customer Experience
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27. Untangling the supply chain
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesC/13.html
7. visionapp; visionapp Named Finalist for 2009 Citrix Ready Solution of the Year
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesA/18.html
49. A Critical Analysis of Asbestos Removal Project Cost Implications
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesC/6.html
45. Hopes Are High for Sprint, Pre
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesA/6.html
39. Customer opinion critical in the next 10 years
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/21.html
1. It is competition that delivers the goods
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesA/16.html
25. How to cheat your way to higher customer survey scores
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/31.html
32. Mishandling claims will sink insurers
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/19.html
48. Case Study: Springer Raises Profile of Reference Works
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesC/15.html
37. Cobalt; Kia Motors America Partners With Cobalt for New Dealer Website Program
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesC/11.html
53. Quality Assurance Ward Audit
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/37.html
42. Melissa Data; Melissa Data Ranks Highest in Customer Satisfaction in Data Quality Landscape Report
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesA/3.html
51. SmartMoney: Look Out for Costly Credit-Card Trends
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesC/17.html
55. Egyii; Egyii Announces Launch into Consumer/Retail Banking Space with a New ' Customer Experience ' Perspective
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesB/0.html
34. Worst oil change ever: Now online
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/16.html
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http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesB/5.html
28. I WANT (AND GET) MY MTV!
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesB/12.html
59. IS Departments Haven't Dispelled Their Image as Villains
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/35.html
31. How do you recognize employees for their accomplishments?
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/6.html
56. PO in pre sell-off customer survey
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/32.html
44. EasyJet's ' customer experience champion' is the height of hot air
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesB/19.html
54. Extensis Group Llc; Extensis Group Featured in ENTERPRISE Magazine
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesA/2.html
50. India's mobile operators slug it out for new subscribers
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesB/18.html
40. Untapped Gold
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/8.html
41. CEO America Inc.; CREDITZ Digital Currency Announces Strategic Partnership With eCommerce Merchants Trade Association
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesA/1.html
36. Business: Puffed up
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/18.html
21. Life Sciences; Studies from National Cheng-Kung University in the area of life sciences described
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesA/8.html
61. Eqos; HMV Selects Eqos to Streamline Promotions and Supplier Deals
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesA/19.html
10. Domino's Pizza; Domino's Pizza Tops in Customer Satisfaction !
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesA/5.html
30. Empowered to improve
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesB/10.html
60. A business school seeks customer opinions
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/26.html
57. Consumers never knew they wanted more than just 192
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/9.html
26. 2002 Engine Survey on www.peterbilt.com
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/10.html
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http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/11.html
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http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesC/18.html
24. Case Study: Product Innovation at Bank of America
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesB/2.html
47. HOW PRODUCT TRIAL ALTERS THE EFFECTS OF MODEL ATTRACTIVENESS: An Adapted Etic Approach in Romania
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesA/9.html
19. Great service expectations: Avoiding "bad hair" days
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/28.html
46. Feedback Helps Boost Repeat Business
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/36.html
6. Viewpoint: Why customer satisfaction research doesn't get results
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/12.html
8. Using the focus group approach for evaluating customers ' opinions : the experience of a Brazilian academic library
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/17.html
13. Understand your customer before preparing forecasts
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/27.html
2. The quality measure is customer opinion
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/30.html
14. Comparative perceptions of product quality management
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/34.html
18. Using customer satisfaction research to get closer to the customers
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/33.html
15. Call centres slowly evolving to merge with Internet
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/20.html
3. Multichannel Hospitality
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesB/7.html
58. Get real, operators: Consistently good service just a myth
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesC/19.html
52. Use logistic regression with customer satisfaction data
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/22.html
9. Chrysler and minivans: Are we there yet?
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/29.html
12. The third cornerstone: how to make it happen
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesC/16.html
22. Achieving hospital operating objectives in the light of patient preferences
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/23.html
20. Where's the value in wholesale?
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/13.html
23. Which road are you on?
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesB/4.html
33. Saturation point
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesB/17.html
35. Thunderhead; Thunderhead Introduces Analytics and Collaboration Tools with New Release of Customer Communications Management Solution
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesA/13.html
38. What I learned on the campaign trail
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/24.html
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http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/25.html
43. Hennessey Capital; SBA's 2008 Financial Services Champion Offers Advice on Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes New Entrepreneurs Make When Seeking Financing
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesC/8.html
29. Infoworld e-business 100: Staples.com
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/15.html
16. Boost Customer Experience
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesB/15.html
27. Untangling the supply chain
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesC/13.html
7. visionapp; visionapp Named Finalist for 2009 Citrix Ready Solution of the Year
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesA/18.html
49. A Critical Analysis of Asbestos Removal Project Cost Implications
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesC/6.html
45. Hopes Are High for Sprint, Pre
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesA/6.html
39. Customer opinion critical in the next 10 years
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/21.html
1. It is competition that delivers the goods
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesA/16.html
25. How to cheat your way to higher customer survey scores
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/31.html
32. Mishandling claims will sink insurers
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/19.html
48. Case Study: Springer Raises Profile of Reference Works
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesC/15.html
37. Cobalt; Kia Motors America Partners With Cobalt for New Dealer Website Program
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesC/11.html
53. Quality Assurance Ward Audit
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/37.html
42. Melissa Data; Melissa Data Ranks Highest in Customer Satisfaction in Data Quality Landscape Report
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesA/3.html
51. SmartMoney: Look Out for Costly Credit-Card Trends
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesC/17.html
55. Egyii; Egyii Announces Launch into Consumer/Retail Banking Space with a New ' Customer Experience ' Perspective
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesB/0.html
34. Worst oil change ever: Now online
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/16.html
5. Emerging Analytics Tools Could Cut Costs by 10 Percent
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesB/5.html
28. I WANT (AND GET) MY MTV!
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesB/12.html
59. IS Departments Haven't Dispelled Their Image as Villains
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/35.html
31. How do you recognize employees for their accomplishments?
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/6.html
56. PO in pre sell-off customer survey
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/32.html
44. EasyJet's ' customer experience champion' is the height of hot air
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesB/19.html
54. Extensis Group Llc; Extensis Group Featured in ENTERPRISE Magazine
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesA/2.html
50. India's mobile operators slug it out for new subscribers
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesB/18.html
40. Untapped Gold
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/8.html
41. CEO America Inc.; CREDITZ Digital Currency Announces Strategic Partnership With eCommerce Merchants Trade Association
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesA/1.html
36. Business: Puffed up
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/18.html
21. Life Sciences; Studies from National Cheng-Kung University in the area of life sciences described
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesA/8.html
61. Eqos; HMV Selects Eqos to Streamline Promotions and Supplier Deals
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesA/19.html
10. Domino's Pizza; Domino's Pizza Tops in Customer Satisfaction !
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesA/5.html
30. Empowered to improve
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/SourcesB/10.html
60. A business school seeks customer opinions
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/26.html
57. Consumers never knew they wanted more than just 192
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/9.html
26. 2002 Engine Survey on www.peterbilt.com
http://iresearch-reporter.com/themes/trim_demo/14/Sources2/10.html