Customer Relationship Management: A Strategic Imperative in the World of E-Business

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Summary: Energy is a worthwhile thing. Save it!
Review: Energy is a worthwhile thing. Save it and skip this book. It reads like a loosely integrated collection of contributions. A more cohesive and comprensive set of basic ideas can be downloaded from the Customers-dot-com companion website at the same address for zilch.

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Summary: Good CRM Framework
Review: I disagree with the previous reader - this book is not too "fluffy". I think that the editor and contributor (Stanley Browne) has done a very good job of pacing the reader through the fundamentals of CRM to the more complex areas of balanced scorecard implementation, data warehousing, and analysis. I have read dozens of customer service-oriented books over the past year, and I believe that this is one of the better efforts to define where business is currently moving in that respect. The case study "vignettes" in general are OK (although somewhat well-worn), but the detailed studies are actually very comprehensive and interesting.

In summary, this book contains some critical points for anyone considering or in the process of implementing a so-called CRM system. It will help you avoid common pitfalls and is well-worth the investment.

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Summary: New-era Marketing
Review: I have been in the Call Center and CRM industry for 5 year now. All this while I saw IT Executives delivering Jazzy applications to my Call Center, which turned out to be useless, 80% of the time. The reason, No link with people who are going to use it and no feeback from the customers who are being served.

Finally I moved into IT and implemented the Customer for Life through Systems and Smiles approach after 2 years of struggle. I hope this book was available then. Anyways the book is a must read for all IT Heads and Customer Service Managers, so that both can get together for the Customers benefit.

Excellent work. Cheers!

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Summary: Stanley Brown
Review: Stanley Brown sheds significant light on this "elephant in the dark" called Customer Relationship Management(CRM). He presents a comprehensive, practical and progressive overview of the customer-centric business model from the perspective of PricewaterhouseCoopers CRM specialists. We learn through the course of this book that CRM is not just about customer care. It is about company vision, corporate philosophy, corporate culture, learning organizations, operating principles, business processes, effective communication, incentive programs and many other aspects of companies that have historically demonstrated that they were built to last. All this is presented through cogent analysis and practical case studies. But there is more. We learn how the application of new technologies can create a "virtual intimacy' with our customers that heretofore was not possible. An intimacy that is all about "the customer stupid" and nothing about "the stupid customer". An intimacy that challenges the word "Management" in Customer Relationship Management and suggests that the word "Building" may be more appropriate.

Mr. Brown takes us a long way on the road to building intimate relationships with customers living in the impersonal world of e-business. However, the technology that is available today can take us even further. Advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, non-linear video, unified messaging, workflow, speech synthesis, real-time animation and object-oriented technology make the potential of cost-effective tactical adaptation even more exciting. Systems could derive rules that change business processes and create simulated live-agents that anticipate your needs and proactively fix your problems. This seems highly unrealistic in a business climate that all too often thinks CRM is taking calls from unhappy customers but not in the CRM world as depicted by "Customer Relationship Management: Linking People, Process, and Technology".

Ed Acker President Learning Innovations 41 Highway 34 South Colts Neck, NJ 07722 [e-mail]

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Summary: For those with an implementation challenge!
Review: This is the most practical book I have read on the subject of customer relationship management (CRM). Those looking for an introduction to the subject might be better served by reading a slightly higher-level and more theoretical book such as Driving Customer Equity by Rust et. al.. However, if you understand the basics of customer care and are interested in purchasing or implementing a CRM system at your firm, this book will prove itself a highly useful resource. It will increase your understanding of strategic CRM, help you build a case and align key organizational players, and navigate tricky and potentially devastating implementation issues.

As a collection of separately authored pieces, the book works better for me as a resource than an end-to-end read. It could benefit by having a subject index.

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Summary: Some interesting subjects, but too shallow arguments
Review: To be honest, I have not understood, however not completely, what the authors want to say or explain. Interesting subjects are surely showed, but just lightly touched. Of course, you must agree that a profitable customer is better than a non-profitable one, and that maintaining her/his loyalty makes company to get the related revenue for a longer period. I think also that you may well acknowledge that new technologies do not suit to old organizations. But I am not sure that more than three hundred pages were necessary to say it. I have found some chapters much more interesting than others (for example The Tools For CRM), but if the question for such kind of books is "Which problems is this book helpful to solve to?", unless you consider a problem preparing a slide presentation, I have not been able to find any.