Managing Customer Experience and Relationships, 3rd Edition

Chapter 1 Evolution of Relationships with Customers and Strategic Customer Experiences

No company can succeed without customers. If you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business. You have a hobby.

—Don Peppers and Martha Rogers

Think about it: By definition, customers are every company’s source of revenue. No company will ever realize income from any other entity except the customers it has now and the customers it will have in the future. Brands don’t pay money. Products don’t. Sales regions don’t. Thus, in many ways, a firm’s most valuable financial asset is its customer base, and, given our new and unfolding technological capabilities to recognize, measure, and manage relationships with each of those customers individually, and to create and improve their experiences with our companies, a forward-thinking firm must focus on deliberately preserving and increasing the value of that customer base. Customer strategy is not a fleeting assignment for the marketing department; rather, it is an ongoing business imperative that requires the involvement of the entire enterprise. Organizations manage their customer experiences and relationships effectively in order to remain competitive. Technological advancements have enabled firms to manage customer relationships more efficiently and to create better customer experience, but technology has also empowered customers to inform themselves and one another and to demand much more from the companies they do business with. The ...