To date, the best proxy for good and effective Customer Services (operations), has been set by Bill Price, with his book "The Best Service is no Service". I believe we need a more fundamental change though, in our perspective to finally start having a real and sustainable impact on business results, not just sitting on the cost-side of the equation.
I would like to explain so by elaborating on the "Five perspectives on Customer Services" we need today...
This is part 2 in a short series on Service Design. I would recommend reading part 1 before reading this. Recap: What is Service? As I tried to explain a couple of days ago, I think Service Design is about designing for Service, not serviceS. Where I defined Services as: Service is the personal sum… [Read more…]
George Julian has written a well researched, accessible and authentic post with a valid question: What is Service Design? I recommend that you read the post and the rich comments.
I will not try to come up with a definition of Service Design, but I'd like to share with you my view on the topic, coming from a Service Dominant Logic. Furthermore I will try to explain how I think Social CRM, Social Networking & Value co-creation tie into this.
Here's a collection of 60+ Reads and Tweets from 2010 that I shared as my personal favorites on Twitter, using the tag #fav10, on December 30 2010. It was a stream covering a wide variety of Customer related topics, like Customer Experience, Social CRM, Service Dominant Logic, Value Co-creation, Service Design, Innovation and a fair share of more general research. Enjoy & please share yours in the comments!
I've read many papers, blogs and articles telling me what being Customer Centric is all about. I agree with most of them when they provide lists of the differences between the product centric and the Customer centric organization. My issue with the many views, explicit or implicit, on Customer Centricity, is that they always seem to tell you what you need to stop and start thinking of or doing, but they hardly discuss or let you know where the boundaries are. Or at least discuss the notion of boundaries and their importance...
Customers have jobs to do. And so do Companies. In essence the trick is to align and focus the company’s activities to maximize support to Customers to get their jobs done. From the unpredictable Customer’s decision journey through each stage of the life-cycle. And make money as a result of it.
Company’s that stick to the mantra have no problem.. [but]
2011 Is lurking around the corner. Time to reflect on how well you did (or are expected to do) in 2010 and prepare your strategies for next years. If you are in marketing and/or Customer Relationship Management you will probably be looking at how to balance multi-channel (or cross channel) approaches in combination with the rise of online social networks and new technologies to seek new (Customer) relationships and mine both data and Customer feedback. You may even be thinking about how to design Customer experiences that drive word-of-mouth through these social networks.
Whilst all of these approaches may make sense I like to share with you some of my thoughts on the above and provide you with 5 notions I believe you should embrace in your 2011 Marketing Strategy to start driving for real change and get ahead of the ball-game.
Just a note to let my loyal readers know MyCustomer.com published my 1st of a 3 part series on the logic of service for marketing I wrote exclusively for them. Click the logo to read it.
February 7, 2011
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