Rating: 
Summary: The first success factor is targeting the right customers
Review: "Would you like to know how your organization can benefit the most from electronic commerce? Would you like to know how your customers can benefit from your electronic business initiatives? Patricia B.Seybold writes, "That's what this book is about. This book summarizes the best practices for electronic commerce and electronic business today on the Internet and beyond."In this context, she identifies eight critical success factors in electronic commerce and e-business as following: 1. Target the right customers- * Know who your customers and prospects are. * Find out which customers are profitable. * Decide which customers you want to attract (or keep from losing). * Know which customers influence key purchases. * Find out which customers generate referrals. * Don't confuse customers, partners, and stakeholders. 2. Own the customer's total experience- * Deliver a consistent, 'branded' experience. * Focus on saving customers time and irritation. * Offer peace of mind. * Work with partners to deliver consistent service and quality. * Respect the customer's individuality. * Give customers control over their experience. 3. Streamline business processes that impact the customer- * Start by identfying the end customer. * Streamline the process for key stakeholders. * Continuously improve the process based on customer feedback. * Give everyone involved a clear view of the process. 4. Provide a 360-degree view of the customer relationship- * Provide one-stop shopping for the customer. * 'Remember' everything your company know about the customer. * Ensure that everyone in the company has access to the complete customer picture. * Put an underlying technical infrastructure into place to provide a 360-degree view. 5. Let customers help themselves- * Let customers help themselves to information and perform transactions on-line. * Let customers interact using whatever media they choose. * Give customers the ability to design their own products. 6. Help customers do their jobs- * Develop a deep understanding of how your customers do their jobs. * Continuously refine your business processes to make it easier for your customers to do their jobs. * Give customers direct access to your inventory. * Gve customers the ammunition and tools they need to make purchasing decision. * Prepare bills the way your customers need them. * Make it easy for your customers to satisfy their customers. 7. Deliver personalized service- * Develop a warm, personal relationship with each customer. * Let customers specify and modify their profiles. * Custom-tailor information presentation and offers based on customers' profiles. * Provide appropriate service and information based on customers' needs. * Give customers access to their transaction histories. * Encourage customers to 'leave something of themselves behind.' 8. Foster community- * Seduce customers into the fold. * Introduce customers to others with common interests. * Introduce and reinforce common terminology and values. * Let customers 'strut their stuff.' * Encourage customers to become part of the 'in crowd.' Finally, she writes, "I strongly recommend starting with the first success factor, targeting the right customers. If you don't start there, the rest of the factors may be well executed, but you'll be wasting time on the wrong customer population. After that, however, there are no hard-and-fast rules to decide which success factor to work on next. Indeed, most of these factors are interrelated, and you'll find, as you begin to focus on one, that you've gone a long way towards finding solutions to others." Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended!
Review: Although it was just published in 1998, Customers.com quickly attained the status of an Internet business classic. Of course, that title might be a bit dubious now that the book has outlived many of the companies that tried to put its strategies into practice. But despite your view on the viability of e-businesses, there's no denying the innovation and thoroughness of Patricia B. Seybold's work. Don't be misled by her breezy style; this is an authoritative and informative book. Seybold gets right to the heart of the links between business and technology. Using plenty of examples from major corporations, she suggests eight major strategies for harnessing the power of technology, especially the Internet, to advance your business. Since the book's initial publication, many other authors have espoused these e-tenets, but we [...] advise you to read the original - Seybold probably said it first, and probably said it best. Remember, the collapse of the tech bubble didn't wash away the Internet, which could still prove to be a critical element of your business.
Rating: 
Summary: The title says it all.
Review: Although this book was written in 1998 (I read it in Dec 98) the main themes still hold true. The author takes bricks-and-mortar business concepts and applies them to the on-line world. Obviously some material is dated but in general her theme of identifying the true customer and focusing on what the customer wants can be used in any business environment. She cites numerous recent examples of how companies used the Internet to re-invent their business models. Most of the chapters are written in MBA-type case studies. Ms. Seybold however, was wise enough to remove the technical jargon and put it in a seperate section at the end of each case. The non-tech person can read this book easily without being bogged down by technical information. Likewise, tech people will find the actual details of the implementation strategy somewhat interesting. I would give it more stars but their have been a few books written recently on internet strategy that are slightly more timely.
Rating: 
Summary: An education in itself...
Review: Being a college student, I was at first reluctant to read Seybold's book as a class assignment. In hindsight, it's one of the best decisions I could've made. This book presents dynamic ideas that are being overlooked at universities today. Rather than focusing on the "how to's" Customers.com gives you the "why's" of the customer market. Talk about making me think! Not only did this book provide an excellent point of reference for class discussions, I found myself unconsciously transferring the knowledge into my job. One thing to take note of: THIS IS MORE THAN A TECHIES BOOK! Anyone in business will undoubtedly benefit from reading it. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!
Rating:
Summary: An intelligent and systematic approach of customer focus.
Review: Customers.com by Patricia Seybold is a successful and systematic effort to deal with the first and most important step of every business: defining your customer and focussing the entire e-marketing mix and all business processes on the customer. For e-retailers the entire book is important, because every aspect is in some way applicable to business-to-consumer e-commerce. It shows clearly that a presence on the Internet requires a redesign of a number of fundamental, customer impacting business processes. The structure of the book is very simple. The first part explains the "five steps to success in electronic commerce", and the second part describes "eight critical success factors" and a number of case studies that are analyzed and used as a benchmark for any other e-business. I very much like the intelligent analysis of the business cases. The most important success factors were explained, including the opportunities to improve customer focus and business processes. Just like "Futurize" by Siegel this book "Customers.com" by Seybold is a must for every manager who is starting to make a presence on the Internet.
Rating:
Summary: Decent Examples - no failures
Review: Customers.com is most useful if you interested in a few of the case examples (e.g. for a class), but isn't a great straight read. Things I liked: * Detailed examples (mostly based on direct interviews with the people involved) * Focuses on the business issues, but still includes relavant technical info Things I dis-liked: * Didn't include any failures -- I personally learn more from reading about failures than sucesses, and almost every example here was a near perfect success. P. Seybold seemed to leave out anything negative about the case examples. * Re-uses the same examples over and over again throughout the book -- makes it difficult to read straight through. * Doesn't include much relevant data than what I assume was learned from interviews.
Rating:
Summary: It's the Best! A great road map to e-business success.
Review: Customers.com is well written with idea after idea how an e-business can succeed in the Net Economy. The advice in this book is priceless and very pragmatic. This is one of the best books I have read on the internet economy and is useful at all organizational levels ... CEO, VP, Webmaster, Marketing Manager, etc. With this book, the author proves herself as a top caliber business consultant ... the consul she provides in this book is easily worth 500 times the price of the book. As an example, Seybold lists Five Steps to Success in Electronic Commerce. These are somewhat simple strategic steps ... but miss or falter on one of these steps and you are in the proverbial valley of e-business failure. Seybold mentions the concept of a CCO (Chief Customer Officer) ... an original and superb idea from her. If a CIO helps manage information and a CFO helps manages finance, then the CCO helps manages CUSTOMERS. Her book packs a terrific punch. I hope she writes another book soon as good as this one. This book exceeded all my expectations as a reader, so mark me down as a highly satisfied reader and customer of Customers.com.
Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly enjoyable and informative!
Review: Despite the previous negative reviews, I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It takes a somewhat novel perspective on web technology by refocussing the reader on the raison d'etre of web technology itself: serving customers better. Ms Seybold puts web technology in its proper place from a manager's point of view: a means to an end. She drives her point home with numerous anecdotes and helpful advice. Her emphasis on fostering community on the web site to enhance the customer experience is revealing and refreshing. Having served as Customer Services Manager of a small utility company for 3 years, I can appreciate the importance of her customer-first, top-down, starting-from-the-outside-in approach to web design and development. Admittedly, a more indepth coverage of the underlying technologies used in the success stories covered would have been quite helpful. But the book delivers what it promises: it provides a framework for re-aligning organizational thinking along the proven lines of strategy before structure. After all, what's the use of having a web site that shows off the state of the art but forgot to leave room for the customer.
Rating:
Summary: Remains solid
Review: Got this when it came out and gave it a read. Three years have passed and I just referred to it to support writing a paper on technology. The details are good and the higher level dialogue do a nice job of getting the message across without belaboring anything. If you are about the web and doing business, this is worth the bucks and time.
Rating:
Summary: Patricia Seybold "gets it"!
Review: I bought Customers.com on Friday afternoon and finished it the following Tuesday. I even put aside the latest Tom Clancy to read it. As a project manager for an organization that is beginning a rapid movement to e-commerce, the insights offered were invaluable. Too often we focus on improving our internal systems and neglect to focus on the customer-facing applications. Patricia Seybold "gets it" - and so do the 16 companies she profiles in this book. With examples of successes (and shortcomings) from companies covering a wide spectrum of businesses, I found dozens of real life, practical examples that I can begin to use now. The style is easy to read. Each case study describes what the subject organization did right, what they did wrong, and what their next steps should be. I heartily recommend this to anyone (business or technical) who is or will be involved in e-commerce. Whether you're defining business and/or technical strategy or implementing, this book is for you.
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