Managing Customer Experience and Relationships, 3rd Edition

Chapter 13 Organizing and Managing the Profitable Customer-Strategy Enterprise, Part 1

Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so.

—Bertrand Russell

Throughout this book, we have described the customer-strategy enterprise by defining the principles of creating a customer-strategy business. In this and the next chapter, we will focus on how a firm establishes itself as an enterprise focused on building the value of the customer base and how it can make the transition from product management to managing for customer equity. What does a customer-value-building enterprise look like? How does a company develop the organization, skills, and capabilities needed to execute customer-oriented programs? How does the enterprise create the culture that supports these principles? How will it integrate the pieces of the organization that have traditionally been managed as separate silos (or “chimneys” or “smokestacks”)? To begin our discussion, this chapter examines how the customer-strategy enterprise is different from the traditional organization.

If we can measure it, we can manage it. Now that we have become better at the metrics of customer valuation and equity, can we hold someone responsible for increasing the value of customers and keeping them longer? Most companies have brand managers, product managers, store managers, plant managers, finance managers, customer ...