Editorial Review:
Author: C. K. Prahalad, Patrica B. Ramaswamy, Jon R. Katzenbach, Chris Lederer, Sam Hill.
This collection of cutting-edge articles will help organizations understand how to build customer loyalty through unique relationship-building strategies such as partnerships, branding, and superlative customer service.
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.812
EAN: 9781578516995
Edition: 1st
ISBN: 1578516994
Label: Harvard Business School Press
Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: January 15, 2002
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Studio: Harvard Business School Press
Readers Reviews (from Amazon.com)
Average Rating: 4 stars
Rating: 4 stars – Excellent presentation of perspectives
I bought this book along with the book “Managing customer Relationships” a strategic framework by Peppers and Rogers and read both.
This book is very concise, easy to read and a powerful capsule of valuable perspectives by different experts on the aspect of Relationship management. It delivers the concepts with a punch and presents those concepts and recommendations that are relevant to all organizations today. You will find that many of these concepts are not in vogue in most organizations today, i.e., the book is well ahead of its times and presents some good perspectives of where organizations should be in the years to come.
Worth a read. Does not talk much about traditional Relationship theory but more about practical approaches and perspectives to Relationship management.
Combined with a solid reference on Relationship theory by Peppers and Rogers, I have entered a whole new world of enlightenment on Relationship management, which incidentally happens to be my job, and in a company that is well ahead of 90% of organizations in its innovative business model that is already customer centric.
Rating: 5 stars – Short, strategic and wise
It is a very short book that touches the essentials of CRM from the most wise perspective I have seen. Shows that the success in CRM depends only on the concepts described in this book and not on any IT system.
Rating: 4 stars – Customer service, not CRM
This Harvard Business Review title is not about Customer Relationship Management, but about customer service. If you are interested in Customer Service I must say there are at least 3 articles very useful and interesting. If you are searching for CRM, this is not going to fulfill your expectations
Rating: 5 stars – Brilliant and Eloquent Delineation of Basics
This is one in a series of several dozen volumes which comprise the “Harvard Business Review Paperback Series.” Each offers direct, convenient, and inexpensive access to the best thinking on the given subject in articles originally published by the Harvard Business School Review. I strongly recommend all of the volumes in the series. The individual titles are listed at this Web site: www.hbsp.harvard.edu. The authors of various articles are among the world’s most highly regarded experts on the given subject. Each volume has been carefully edited. An Executive Summary introduces each selection. Supplementary commentaries are also provided in most of the volumes, as is an “About the Contributors” section which usually includes suggestions of other sources which some readers may wish to explore.
Some of the most valuable benefits in this volume are provided by comprehensive charts which, all by themselves, are worth far more than the cost of the book. Here are a few examples.
- The Evolution and Transformation of Customers (page 4) and The Shifting Locus of Core Competencies (page 7): both are provided by C.K. Prahalad and Venkatram Ramaswamy.
- Are Your Retail Pillars Solid — or Crumbling? (page 52): Leonard L. Berry identifies the major differences between inferior retailers from superior retailers.
- The Three Dimensions of Synchronization (page 90): Mohanbir Sawhney explains how any organization can present a single, unified face to the customer — one that can change as market conditions warrant — without imposing homogeneity on its people.
- One Destination, Five Roads (page 111) and Teams and Work Groups: It Pays to Know the Difference (page 123): Jon R. Katzenbach and Jason A. Santamaria explain how five practices followed by the U.S. Marine Corps enable it to outperform all other organizations in terms of “engaging the hearts and minds of the front line.”
These and other charts are especially helpful whenever a reader wishes to review the key points in any of the eight essays, each of which provides cutting edge thinking and eminently practical advice. Although no bibliography is provided, those who wish to consult other sources need only read the About the Contributors section which will direct them to those sources.
Rating: 2 stars – CRM or customer service?
I bought this book willing to find essentials about CRM as a Philosophy as a System not by pieces. I cannot qualify this as a coherent book about CRM but as a compilation of eight articles of eight valuable authors writing about Relations with Customers not CRM as an integrated system of Human Resources, Technology and Philosophy into an organization’s life. If you see this book as a group of articles gathered to give you different points of view about customers and service (not CRM) this is a good book, if you buy it considering the title “Customer Relationship Management” and “Harvard Business Review” it will not full your expectations.
Nevertheless I have to recommend the article written by Fournier, Dobscha and Mick about preventing the premature death of Relationship Marketing. Very interesting point of view.
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