Customer relationship management: Literature

Customer service professionals, in the wake of changing customer demands and the digital information explosion, can leverage customer insight and digital channels to assume leadership in a new age.

Read about how Canadian banks can gain marketshare and attract new clients by becoming aware of client attitudes and taking steps to positively impact customer perceptions.

For both the teen and boomer segments, service is the defining point for a successful shopping experience - this paper summarizes some key IBM research findings relevant to retail opportunities targeting these two groups.

IBM surveyed over 4000 retail consumers and found which retailer attributes help turn shoppers into advocates. The results also suggest a financial upside to building advocacy.

Drugstore retailers face increasing competition from multiple retail pharma counters and online/mail-order companies, but can work to increase market share by focusing on the customer experience.

By understanding what drives customer advocacy, grocers can better differentiate themselves in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

While many competitors will be focused solely on improving cash positions or drastically cutting expenses, solid retail industry performers can approach this new economic environment as an opportunity to grab market share, increase customer loyalty and distance themselves from the competition.

Online retailers have yet to optimize customer relationships; to become a customer focused online retailer, companies need a new approach for developing and applying customer insights.

Our study results show that retailers need to catch up to other industries concerning how thoroughly they report on the customer dimension, and in the implementation and use of risk management tools.

Surveys conducted across five retail segments – grocery, large-format apparel, mall-based specialty apparel, drugstore and online – reveal key attributes that help turn everyday shoppers into loyal Advocates. And financially speaking, Advocates are the most valuable customers of all.

In a changing insurance environment, providers must be able to identify their advocates and articulate their advocate's preferences, then use this information to help tailor their business models in ways that improve the customer experience and, in turn, can drive growth.

Despite some looming hurdles, Indian automakers are bullish about their industry's future.

To increase passenger satisfaction and become operationally efficient, airlines and airports need to adopt a new business model that features a flexible infrastructure and greater collaboration.

To increase passenger satisfaction and become operationally efficient, airlines and airports need to adopt a new business model that features a flexible infrastructure and greater collaboration.

Despite good intentions, what retailers deliver is not always what shoppers want. Bringing customer insights into everyday operational decisions can help retailers close the gap.

Read about how airlines and airports can prepare for the future flood of passengers and their baggage – not just to cope with the challenge, but to profit from the opportunity it brings?

Innovative business models for “how to sell” are now almost as important as innovative products - CE manufacturers need to deftly manage their mix of sales channels.

Manufacturers may find a tremendous business opportunity "hiding" in their Service function.

Unlocking customer advocacy in retail banking: The customer focused enterprise

The growing bifurcation of the marketplace between the two extremes of product commodity and customer needs-based solutions will make rapid losers and winners across different industries. Innovative companies know that they cannot merely sit safely in the middle anymore.

Financial markets firms must be able to succeed in an environment where analysis, not knowledge, is the value creator, and where it’s not seconds that count, but milliseconds.

Today’s well-informed consumers have far greater expectations of the shopping experience than previous generations – and if retailers are to fulfill those expectations, they need a much better understanding of their target customers than ever before.

Over the past decade, companies in multiple industries have come to see customer care centers (CCCs) in a new light: as critical components of their customer service and distribution strategies.

Convergence of local and national voice services dramatically changed the telecom landscape. Now, voice and data services are converging. Soon, customers will be able to access any content or application using any device.

Any serious discussion of the future of the retail banking industry eventually raises a basic question: will future customers still need retail banks? The answer, it turns out, depends on banks themselves.

A new, superior retailing model is emerging. This model provides the retailer with powerful new capabilities based on cross-channel optimization.

Consumer products companies must develop the ability to anticipate environmental shifts. Superior data analytics and insight development will be required for winning companies to execute with accuracy and agility in this rapidly changing world.

Consumer products companies will need to elevate customer focus to the same level of importance as the consumer-focused dimensions of their organization and integrate the two to drive mutually beneficial trade relationships while maintaining strong brands.

Once focused on a generalized core group of services and customers, banks today are faced with the dual challenges of serving diverse stakeholder needs while selecting which areas of the industry and company value chains they want to specialize in.

Today's market forces are shaping a global consumer marketplace that will look radically different in 2010, affecting retailers as never before. Traditional strategies will be eclipsed by unprecedented customer diversity, market polarization and dominant megaretailers.

Consumer decision process (CDP) modeling is a combination of traditional market research and unique quantitative modeling that takes the guesswork out of why consumers do or do not buy.

This paper discusses why industry and market forces will propel media businesses to become more open to business partners, customers and consumers -- opening content reserves and formatting, production processes, packaging and sales options without opening the company to increased vulnerability.

IBM researchers identified key areas of success and put them into perspective for electronics companies that want to be prepared for both the best and worst of times -- before they happen.

At one time, the pharmaceutical supply chain was featured on the boardroom agenda only when things went wrong. Today, it is subject to much greater scrutiny, as companies everywhere focus on how best to launch new drugs, assure the safety and supply of those drugs and simultaneously cut costs.

This paper provides IBM's perspective on challenges facing the container shipping liner industry, the key driving forces shaping the industry, IBM's views on how the industry may look in 2015, and what strategic challenges and imperatives container shipping liners will need to address.

Burdened by different priorities, many retailers have lost focus on the total retail experience and as a result customer satisfaction is down. What must retailers do to differentiate themselves in the marketplace and regain their focus on the customer?