Strategies For Building A Customer Focused Organization

Differentiate your business by sharpening your Customer Focus or risk giving your competitors a competitive advantage.The-best-of-the-best do this. They know that the only long-term strategy that effectively creates customer loyalty, long-term profitability and which strengthens both internal service performance and productivity is a Customer-Focused strategy.This outstanding book explains what it takes to become truly Customer-Focused. It provides detailed, step-by-step instructions on what you need to do to create customer focus throughout your entire organization. We describe in detail, 12 proven 'best practices' strategies which you can learn from and use to create your own customer focus strategy and implementation plan. This book contains over 200 pages of detailed explanations, real world examples, stories and case studies as well as exercises and worksheets which have been designed to help you achieve greater customer focus in your organization, company, department or team.

Drawing on the expertise of leading marketing scholars, this book provides managers and researchers with insights into the fundamentals of customer centricity and how firms can develop it. Customer centricity is not just about segmentation or short-term marketing tactics. Rather, it represents an organization-wide philosophy that focuses on the systematic and continuous alignment of the firm’s internal architecture, strategy, capabilities, and offerings with external customers.

"The customer is the sole reason organizations exist," Craig Cochran points out throughout this concise and practical book, which outlines the fundamentals of building process controls around internal and external customers' true needs. Cochran walks readers through a self-assessing customer focus inventory and from there explains how an organization can shape its processes to meet its customers' demands. Learn how to develop customer surveys that produce useful data for refining production and administrative processes. Understand the importance of customer-satisfaction training. Motivate top management to instill a customer-focused orientation throughout the organization. -- From publisher's description.

In order to be successful, companies need to listen and respond to customers' needs and expectations. This helps companies to find out what customers really want from them and what they really think of their services. It also helps them to keep existing customers and attract new ones.There are five main ways of getting feedback from customers. You can simply observe your customers' behavior, hold a focus group, or conduct a survey. You can also use your salespeople and customer service teams to glean feedback from customers. The Web, e-mail, and social networking allow you to gather feedback from customers in any location. Each provide their own types of data, and companies should choose which ones suit them best.There are four main steps involved in exploring customer needs. First you need to gather information about the customers' current situation. You then try to discover their desired situation. You also need to investigate any past experiences they may have had with products similar to yours and finally you carry out a gap analysis.Companies need to manage customer expectations in order to try and provide the final outcome they expect. Customers expect a collaborative relationship, choice, and good value. They also expect prompt response and dispute resolution, a feeling of importance, transparency, two-way communication, and relevant marketing campaigns.CRM systems help you to efficiently manage your customers' expectations. There are different strategies for this that ensure that the needs of your customers are met quickly and completely. CRM also helps you to provide effective, efficient processes and put your customer at the center of the organization. Finally CRM provides end-to-end connectivity that links the organization with its internal and external customers and its suppliers.Every organization that wants to move to being more customer focused should have a strategy in place. This customer-focused strategy is built around three key decisions.The appropriate scale and scope of your strategy is the first crucial decision. This refers to the elements that need to be involved in your organization's customer focus solution.Next, you must decide the level of integration between these elements. Finally, you need to make the decision whether to create a low, moderate, or high level of customer focus.When designing your strategy, taken into account the relevant operational strategies for becoming more customer focused that already exist, including Six Sigma and customer relationship management (CRM).

A Powerful New Approach to Performance Management from the Creators of the Balanced Scorecard In Today's business environment, strategy has never been more important. Yet research shows that most companies fail to execute strategy successfully. Behind this abysmal track record lies an undeniable fact: many companies continue to use management processes-top-down, financially driven, and tactical-that were designed to run yesterday's organizations. Now, the creators of the revolutionary performance management tool called the Balanced Scorecard introduce a new approach that makes strategy a continuous process owned not just by top management, but by everyone. In The Strategy-Focused Organization, Robert Kaplan and David Norton share the results of ten years of learning and research into more than 200 companies that have implemented the Balanced Scorecard. Drawing from more than twenty in-depth case studies-including Mobil, CIGNA, Nova Scotia Power, and AT and T Canada-Kaplan and Norton illustrate how Balanced Scorecard adopters have taken their ground-breaking tool to the next level. These organizations have used the scorecard to create an entirely new performance management framework that puts strategy at the center of key management processes and systems. Kaplan and Norton articulate the five key principles required for building Strategy-Focused Organizations: (1) translate the strategy to operational terms, (2) align the organization to the strategy, (3) make strategy everyone's everyday job, (4) make strategy a continual process, and (5) mobilize change through strong, effective leadership. The authors provide a detailed account of how a range of organizations in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors have deployed these principles to achieve breakthrough, sustainable performance improvements. Presenting a practical, proven framework steeped in rich case study experience, The Strategy-Focused Organization helps solve a universal management problem-not just how to formulate strategy, but how to make it work. Building on one of the most revolutionary business ideas of our time, this important book shows how today's leaders can shape their own companies to meet the challenges and reap the rewards of a new competitive era.

In economic downturns, the marketing budget is often the first to get slashed. Why? Because many CEOs believe that marketing is unable to deliver results where it counts: the bottom line. Nirmalya Kumar argues that marketing's future depends on altering its function and mindset to address the burning questions CEOs care about most. Kumar, who counsels top executives at multinational corporations, challenges marketers to change their role from tactical implementers of traditional marketing functions-;like advertising and promotion-;to strategic coordinators of organization-wide, transformational initiatives aimed at profitably delivering value to customers. Kumar outlines seven strategy-focused, cross-functional, and bottom-line oriented initiatives that can put marketing back on the CEO's agenda-;and elevate its role in shaping the destiny of the firm.

As customer orientation continues to gain importance in the marketing field, there has been a growing concern for organizations to implement effective customer centric policies. Customer-Centric Marketing Strategies: Tools for Building Organizational Performance provides a more conceptual understanding on customer-centric marketing strategies as well as revealing the success factors of these concepts. This book will discuss how to improve the organization’s financial and marketing performance.