Smart Customers, Stupid Companies: Why Only Intelligent Companies Will Thrive, and How To Be One of Them [Paperback]

I dare you to try reading this book without getting at least ten brilliant new ideas for your business. You won't be able to do it. I've never encountered a book that has such a masterful blend of future-think and business common sense - and I read a LOT of books. Kasanoff and Hinshaw have done an absolutely marvelous job here, showing with relentless logic and specific examples how new technologies are raising customer expectations, and what a business ought to do about it.

The authors catalog four "disruptive forces" that both threaten every current business model and offer diverse opportunities for innovation - social, big data, digital sensors, and the internet of things. Then, for each one, they take you through a kaleidoscope of implications and examples.

I don't want to spoil the pleasure you're going to have from reading this concise and highly entertaining business masterpiece of creative thinking yourself, but let me just give one example of the kind of "ideation" tools Kasanoff and Hinshaw have packed into it. As they catalogue the many ways remote sensors could be used for business purposes, they insert this paragraph:

"Today, digital sensors can: monitor your tire pressure and avoid dangerous blowouts; analyze the gait of elderly citizens and warn of falls before they occur; follow the gaze of shoppers and identify which products they examine - but don't buy - in a store; monitor which pages readers of a magazine read or skip; float in the air over a factory and independently monitor the plant's emissions; detect impacts in the helmet of an athlete and make it impossible for them to hide potential serious blows to their brains; reveal when a dishwasher, refrigerator, computer, bridge, or dam is about to fail; trigger a different promotion as a new customer walks by a message board; analyze the duration and quality of your sleep; warn drivers that they are about to fall asleep; prevent intoxicated drivers from operating a motor vehicle; warn a person before he or she has a heart attack; detect wasted energy in both homes and commercial buildings; warn a parent or boss when anger is creeping into their voice, to help prevent them from saying or doing things they will later regret; tell waiting customers how far away the pizza delivery guy is from their house; analyze the movements of employees through a factory to detect wasted time and efforts; trigger product demonstrations or interactive manuals when a customer picks up or examines a product; congratulate an athlete when she swings a tennis racquet properly or achieves an efficient stride while running. What can they do tomorrow?"

You can't read that paragraph without your mind leaping ahead to the opportunities that these kinds of technologies might offer for your business. For instance, does your business involve any form of retailing or a physical establishment where customers come to transact business? The authors suggest that today "a physical store can be just as smart or smarter than a website. So can an office building, or a dealer's showroom. We don't think of `bricks and mortar'" as possessing this sort of intelligence, but with each passing day there are fewer reasons why not.

Smart Customers, Stupid Companies is chock full of "aha" ideas like this. I couldn't put it down, seriously.
I should also disclose here that I've been one of Bruce Kasanoff's biggest fans ever since he worked for Peppers & Rogers Group more than 10 years ago. His previous book, Making It Personal, is also worth a read. But this current work is - seriously - one of the best and most exciting reads I've had in a while.

I loved this book. It contains enough examples and arguments to indicate exactly how your company needs to meet the smart plugged in customer. This aligns with recent machine to machine research RocketBuilders carried out. well written and beautifully argued. The authors look at four disrupters:

Social Influence (WofM)
Pervasive memory ( Amazon and Zappos)
Digital Sensors (machine to machine everywhere)
The Physical Web

I loved these quotes:

1. We are confronting a fundamental shift in the ways that companies interact with - and serve - their customers.At many firms, their "social media strategy" involves creating a Facebook page, monitoring social sites for mentions of thecompany or its products, and generally extending its existingbusiness model into the social media world.But this approach stops short of confronting the real issues.If you could physically see the thousands of social influencers

crowding the space between your sales team and your customers - if they were physically present in your store or office - you would no longer accept the misguided notion that a few extra posts online would solve your problems.The reason so many companies are vulnerable is because the state of relationships between companies and customers is so poor. Products and services tend to be impersonal. Responsiveness tends to be uneven at best, or miserable at worst. It is reasonable to assert that frustration, annoyance, and anger have been building among customers for decades. They are tired of being treated as numbers, of being misled or even lied to, and of being considered targets instead of living, breathing human beings.

2. CRM doesn't actually track relationships or experiences, it tracks transactions. As a result, CRM doesn't take into account the customers' views of the company, and doesn't capture how these interactions make customers feel, much less what they want or need. Yes, CRM does a great job tracking company perceptions of value, and tracking those interactions that are important to the company - sales, marketing, service, etc. - but it fundamentally misses what customers think, feel, and want as a result. It delivers an inside-out perspective that means the conclusions reached by companies about customer relationships are skewed, based on the interactions that occurred rather than the customer perceptions that resulted. While CRM can tell the company that two customers have the same set of interactions, it can't tell which customer is delighted, and which feels trapped, upset, and may be actively bad-mouthing the company online. This is important information.

This is a must read for leaders in the tech industry ( and every industry) . What you do not know will hurt you.

Take the time to read this book and it will change the future of your business. Gets right to the point about how consumers have taken control and are shaping the future of business. Adapt or die is the message and I totally agree. It is well written, direct and in your face and gives fact-based data on how customer experience can make or break a company. I recommend this book and hope you will too!