Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good to kickstart thinking, 3 Jul 2000
I enjoyed this book, and found the first 2 sections the best. The Third section, covering how wonderful the future will be, is like reading about a soppy soap-opera - I guess I've been in IT one too many years to be this cynical.Excellent for asking difficult questions, but I can't help but wonder if the principles are still the same: What business are you really in, and how well are you doing at serving your customer. These are fundamental questions that will never go away, and need to be asked well before you even get down the path of setting up awesome technology systems. AK
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Practical stimulating & readable, but somewhat overblown., 16 May 2000
This is a book which is based on practical experience of advocating and building web sites as a principal element in engaging new markets or re-engaging with current ones, mostly with large consumer-oriented commercial companies. It is a call to arms for people in such companies to reorganise for a new world in which power has shifted from supplier to consumer. It is practical about how to organise your company's web presence as the central element in engaging with these new empowered customers. The author thinks (in my view correctly) that companies which are non-hierarchically organised ("upside-down" companies with facilitative rather than directive management) will have an advantage in coping with this new market situation. In my view the author goes over the top in the degree to which he appears to be suggesting that the re-invented company can hand its future and its reputation over to its community (-ies) of customers, and in the extent to which he advocates that companies should operate internally as free markets of co-operating individuals. However, the ideas are stimulating, the read is easy if a little repetitive, and the half of the book devoted to fictional illustrations (about both people and organisations) is good ammunition if you are championing this kind of change in your own company. The headline points of the book in one paragraph: Markets are conversations amongst human beings. Set up your web site to be a medium for communication, like the phone. The Internet isn't a collection of documents, it's a network of people. In this network, your measure of success should be the potential customers you get to your site, and how many you promote up the loyalty pyramid from beginner to intermediate to expert. You will do this by interacting with them and encouraging them to interact with each other. To have a proper interaction with your customers, you must divide them into interest groups, and you must organise your company around these groups. Everyone in the company should be encouraged to talk and listen openly with customers. Customers will recognise the truth, and your company will prosper. Recommended.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A web site is not a separate offering from your business, 5 Nov 1999
By A Customer
I could easily distil the message of this book into one line: if you want to remain competitive in the future, a web-site is not a separate offering from your business, but an integral part of it. As in his previous books, David Siegel explores how the Internet, and the World Wide Web, can be used as tools to enrich your business, not only as inter-communication channels, but as part and parcel of the whole customer experience. FYE is a book about the technologised business future, but its ultimate message is the old-fashioned maxim: "the customer is always right." Although a generalisation, what Siegel advises is that businesses who want to 'get' the Internet must first ask what their customers want out of the Internet. A flashy, buzzing web site, filled with all the latest bells and whistles, plug-ins and streaming video up the wazoo is nothing if it does not provide for the customer; this kind of web site (brochureware, on-line advert, virtual building) is no more than a folly, something built for the glorification and edification of its owner. Instead, the best businesses on the Internet and the Web shift the whole organisation so that the web site is the front-end of a much more customer-oriented company. What Siegel calls the Customer-Led Revolution is the need for a business to give its customers what they want. How he suggests we as business leaders put this into practice is the heart of FYE, beginning with a shift in business philosophy and mission statement by reorienting entire companies to serve one's major customer groups. With examples from many forms of manufacturer, wholesaler, distributor and service provider, this book provides powerful business models as hypothetical case studies, each of which ultimately asks what a company's customer groups desire from it. On final analysis, what one realises is that Siegel is very aware of the coming technology and how it will impinge on our daily lives. With faster connections, global digital delivery, and a ubiquitous integrated Internet, the world in 2010 is largely what previous generations thought the future would be: easy, fast and democratic. Whether all the businesses which exist today will still be around in ten years' time remains to be seen, but one thing is certain; that David Siegel will be right at the forefront of the Customer-Led Revolution.
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