Book Review: CUSTOMERS.COM

Customers.com: How to create a profitable business strategy for the Internet and beyond, Patricia B Seybold with Ronni T Mashak, Random House, ISBN 0-375-41557-2 $29.95.

Patricia Seybold is the doyenne of the document management analysts. This publication, originally written in 1998 and now in its 15th edition, is a well organised set of case studies exploring how a series of companies successfully exploit the Internet. The focus is on how these companies make it easy for their customers to do business with them - also the theme of Michael Hammer's latest book "The Agenda".

This is not a conventional Customer Relationship Management pitch. There is a brief introduction that explains the author's strategy of making life easy for the customer. She suggests that a business should view itself from the position of the final user of its products and services and consider what would make that customer more loyal to the business. It can then design customer interactions that profitably ease the burden on customers, using IT as an enabler.

The main part of the book comprises 16 case studies including American Airlines, Amazon, Babson College, Bell Atlantic, Cisco, Dell, General Motors, and National Semiconductor. These are organised into eight chapters, each related to a critical success factor such as "Target the right customer" or "Let customers help themselves". Finally, there is a synthesis of the lessons to learn.

I can thoroughly recommend this book. Rather than building a concept around a customer acquisition and retention process, it takes real world examples and draws specific good practices from these. The result is to show how the Internet can be used to identify customer interests and preferences.

A lot of investors' money and jobs have washed down the dot.con drain since this book was written. Whatever false expectations were raised and dashed, these case studies bring us back again and again to concrete examples. It reminds us how the basic innovations of the Internet can enhance our customer's experience.

I understand that "Beyond customer.com" is about to launch with 13 new case studies (http://myfsi.hp.com/magazine/wf11_2/seybold.asp). Seybold has simplified her message for tougher times. Her key points today are that customers are in control; that the quality of the customer relationship determines the value of the company; and that the customer experience defines the loyalty and the brand. However, don't wait for that, this original book is well worth a read.

Mike Evans
mike.evans@cambashi.com

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