Customers.Com: Create a Profitable Business Strategy for the Internet (Century business) [Hardcover]

Lots of books have been written about how to do business on the Internet, but few can match the understanding and passion for making e-commerce work of Patricia Seybold's Customers.com. Drawing on case studies of companies and organizations as diverse as Boeing, Babson College, National Semiconductor, Hertz, PhotoDisc, and Wells Fargo, Seybold identifies what makes e-commerce work successfully. She argues that any e-commerce initiative has to begin with the customer. She writes:

In the electronic commerce world, knowing who your customers are and making sure you have the products and services they want becomes even more imperative than it is in the "real" world.... The corner grocery needs only to approximate what customers really want because the convenience factor brings in the business. But when you eliminate this advantage--when customers can go anywhere to get what they want--you'd better know what they're looking for.

The first section of the book outlines five steps aimed at any organisation grappling with the challenge of doing e-commerce right. The final section offers a technology roadmap and suggestions for getting e-commerce initiatives off the ground. But the heart of the book is the 16 case studies of companies that have successfully embraced e-business and e-commerce. Each is well researched, and includes an executive summary and "take-aways" about what each firm did right. If you're looking to develop your business online, this book belongs on your desk, not your bookshelf. Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards, Amazon.com

"What sets Customers.com apart is Seybold's 20 years of experience in the technology industry and her straightforward writing style."

"Packed with real-world war stories that explain how to learn more about your customers, how to build customer loyalty, and how to save money, Customers.com is likely to develop it own strong customer base."

"A street-smart playbook for ecommerce."

This text shows how to use the Internet to keep customers, increase sales, and improve profits. It offers practical, easy-to-understand and apply advice based on proven marketing principles and on real, detailed case-studies of how well-known corporations are using the Internet successfully.

Who Should Read Customers.com? We wrote this book to bridge the gap between technologists and business people,all of whom have a common goal: to make it easier for their customers to do business with them! So, who might be interested in reading this book?

- Business executives who want progressive, customer-focused organizations - Visionary sales and marketing executives who want to understand how to take advantage of new interactive channels to reach and retain customers - Technology planners, architects, and managers, who are committed to delivering value to the business - Anyone who wants to understand how to thrive in the information economy

What's In It for You? Would you like to know how your organization can benefit the most from E-Business?

Would you like to know how your customers can benefit from your E-Business and electronic commerce initiatives?

What's the Book About?

Customers.com summarizes the best practices for electronic commerce today onthe Internet and beyond-call centers, kiosks, integrated voice response, smart cards, and even smart cars! You'll walk behind the scenes at over 16 pioneering companies-companies that have committed to doing what it takes to make it easier for their customers to do business with them.

How do today's cyber-businesses create fanatical customer loyalty? They carefully streamline every aspect of their customer's interactions with them. They insure that nothing ever falls into a "black hole." They reassure the customer each step of the way. Before the customer has time to wonder whether something's been taken care of properly, she receives notification that it has. Of course, we don't all have the opportunity of creating virtual businesses from scratch. Most of us have brick and mortar companies, with people, and sales forces, and distributors, and call centers. Yet, we're also trying to leverage the Web tomake it easier for prospects to find out about our companies and products and easier for customers to transact business with us electronically 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

In this book, you'll learn that you can't do business on the Internet in a vacuum. Instead, Internet Commerce needs to be part of a broader, E-Business strategy-a strategy that embraces all the ways you let your customers interact with you electronically: by touch-tone phone, by fax, by e-mail, by kiosk, by hand-helds, and via the Web. If you don't coordinate your Web initiatives with the rest of the ways you do business electronically, you'll probably waste a lot of time and money. You'll also learn what it takes to link these customer-facing initiatives back through the rest of your operational systems and out to those of your suppliers.

Here's what else you'll learn by reading Customers.com:

The Five Steps to Success in Electronic Commerce:
1. Make it easy for customers to do business with you.
2. Focus on the end customer for your products and services.
3. Redesign your customer-facing processes from the end customer's point of view.
4. Wire your company for profit: Design a comprehensive, evolving electronic commerce architecture.
5. Foster customer loyalty, the key to profitability in electronic commerce.

Each of these steps has its own explanatory chapter. In each, you'll gain a good overview of how to think about your customers, your business, your information technology initiatives, and even, your accounting systems.

The Eight Critical Success Factors for E-Business:

The rest of the book is organized around a set of critical success factors we gleaned from studying the best practices of over 40 companies. They are:

1. Target the right customers.
2. Own the customer's total experience.
3. Streamline business processes that impact the customer.
4. Provide a 360 view of the customer relationship.
5. Let customers help themselves.
6. Help customers do their jobs.
7. Deliver personalized service.
8. Foster community.

Again, we've devoted a chapter to each of these concepts, filled with examples, so you can go behind the obvious and get to the real core issues involved in implementing each of these critical success factors. To bring these home to you, we illustrate each one with two detailed case studies. This is the real meat of the book. This is where you'll walk behind the scenes and meet people like John Samuel from American Airlines, Phil Gibson from National Semiconductor, Dudley Nigg from Wells Fargo, Carolyn Miller from the National Science Foundation, and many, many more. These are the heroes and heroines of the book-the people who have done what it takes to make it easy for their customers to do business with them.

Sixteen Detailed Case Studies:

American Airlines, National Semiconductor, Hertz, Amazon.com, Babson College, National Science Foundation, Bell Atlantic, Wells Fargo, Dell Computer, iPrint, Boeing, PhotoDisc, Dow Jones, General Motors, Cisco Systems,Tripod

I know you'll enjoy this book and find it a valuable resource for your own planning process. Although I wrote the book and Ronni Marshak edited it, Customers.com draws on the collective wisdom and contributions of the whole team here at the Patricia Seybold Group. It's our attempt to convey to you much of what we've learned over the last two and a half years about the strategic application of technology to the most pressing business issue today: how to win and retainprofitable customers!

"In the Net economy, business issues and technology issues go hand in and. Patricia Seybold's insightful book shows how companies can use technology to streamline business processes and keep customers coming back for more." --James L. Barksdale, president and CEO, Netscape

"Terrifically useful. If you have any interest in implementing a Web site for e-commerce, you really must read this book." --Geoffrey Moore, author, Inside the Tornado and The Gorilla Game

"Even if you're very, very good at being a dinosaur, you're still extinct. Patty's excellent prescriptions bring you right into the Interactive Age. A must-read if you expect to make a profit a year from now." --Martha Rogers, co-author, The One to One Future and Enterprise One to One

"Customers.com hits the core issue of e-business head on. A very informative, fun, and easy read." --Gideon Sasson, executive vice president, online brokerage, Charles Schwab

"This is the book for creating a serious Web strategy! I'm going to give copies to all my friends who are extending their businesses to the Internet." --Bill Joy, co-founder and vice president of research, Sun Microsystems

"The case studies in Customers.com are a treasure trove of insights into the real-world challenges facing anyone seeking to do business on the Internet. . . . Excellent reading for executives, producers, and technical managers alike." --Joel Ball, director, business intelligence, Disney Online

"Seybold reveals the secrets for profit in the digital economy with laser-like principles and practical tips." --Nicholas Rudd, chief knowledge officer, Wunderman Cato Johnson

"Patty Seybold has nailed it right on the head. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to prosper in the next generation of business." --Irving Wladawsky-Berger, general manager, Internet Division, IBM

Patricia B. Seybold Patricia Seybold has been a computer industry consultant and business visionaryfor more than 20 years. She is the founder and CEO of the Patricia Seybold Group, a worldwide strategic business/technology consulting firm located in Boston, Massachusetts. Seybold helps business executives and technology planners design E-Business solutions that will attract and retain customers. She specializes in pinpointing new information technologies that will change business processes and transform industries--prior to mainstream adoption.

Seybold is a widely acclaimed speaker at international conferences, industryevents, and senior-level executive briefings. Her visionary insights and her ability to focus on the essential issues involved in designing customer-facing business processes and in implementing leading-edge technologies make her popular with both business and technology audiences.

Seybold has written thousands of insightful articles and columns in her company's own research services and publications over the past two decades. She hasalso written numerous columns for business publications, such as CEO magazine and top computer industry publications, including ComputerWorld, and has edited and co-authored a series of five books, the Seybold Series on Professional Computing, published by McGraw-Hill, addressing PC software environments for business users.

Ronni T. Marshak Marshak, vice president and senior consultant of the Patricia Seybold Group, specializes in workgroup computing issues and products, including workflow automation, documentation management systems, interface design, and competitive product-positioning. Most recently, Marshak has devoted much of her research to the Group's new Customers.com(tm) practice area which focuses on successful electronic commerce solutions. Her analyses and expertise in this field have significantly contributed to Patty Seybold's forthcoming book Customers.com(tm): Making It Easy for Customers to Do Business with You, which will be published in the fourth quarter of 1998 by Times/Randomhouse books. Marshak has provided consulting for such vendors as IBM, Microsoft, Lotus, Digital, and Hewlett-Packard.

As editor-in-chief of the Workgroup Computing Report: Applying Technology to Business Processes, a monthly research newsletter in its 17th year, she explores the issues, technologies, products, and vendors that surround organizational computing, specifically at the departmental level. Her articles have also appeared in such publications as Fortune magazine, Network World, and ComputerWorld.

Marshak is the author of Word Processing Packages for the IBM PC and co-author of Integrated Desktop Environments and Database Software for the IBM PC: The Desktop Generation, all published by McGraw Hill as part of the Seybold Serieson Professional Computing. She also has chapters in The Workflow Paradigm: New Tools for New Times, published by Future Strategies Incorporated, and Groupware Technology and Applications, published by Prentice Hall.

Provide a 360-Degree View of the Customer Relationship

In order to be successful in electronic commerce, everyone who touches the customer needs to be able to see the total picture-a 360( view-of that customer's relationship with your firm. Many organizations are currently embarked on relationship management initiatives. Yet, when you examine these efforts closely, you usuallyfind that they are addressing only one or two aspects of the customer's relationship with the organization. For example, companies typically streamline and automate the sales process. Or they focus on help-desk processes. Occasionally, an insightful organization might combine the two processes and their underlying systems and data. In such cases, a salesperson could be made aware of an outstanding service issue with the customer he's wooing, or a service rep would know just how valuable this particular customer is to the firm.

But even this doesn't go far enough. There are still any number of customer interactions not addressed by salespeople or help desks. For example, exactly who does the customer call with questions about a bill, when a delivery hasn't taken place, or when he has an idea for a new product or feature he could use?

Example: Microsoft

Let's look at how Microsoft is instilling this 360( approach in everyone who works with its enterprise accounts. Today, Microsoft provides each of its large enterprise customers with his own set of Web pages. This is where Microsoft consolidates everything it knows about the account, not only in terms of software and systems installed and on order, but possible competitive situations (where the customer might be considering solutions from another vendor), possible strategic or tactical initiatives that the customer is considering implementing, and the customer's up-to-the-minute service records.

A Complete Picture of Customer Interactions

Although the customer's account manager "owns" this customer Web site, key executives, such as Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, will consult this database before they interact with any of these accounts. Key consulting partners may be offered access to this information in exchange for entering their client engagement notes on the site (providing rewards on both sides for sharing the information). The benefit to the customer is that he feels he is being served by "one Microsoft," even though there may be hundreds of different interactions with the company each month.

The enterprise customer and her team of professionals also have access to this customized Web site. They can view and modify their own contact profiles as well as update the records on their information systems infrastructure, and they can ask for assistance. This account-centric Web site is where key members of the customer's team can check on delivery status of products ordered, request technical support, check on the status of a service call, or ask for background information on new products. It's the customer's window into his relationship with Microsoft.