Strategies to Engage the Social Customer and Build Lasting Value

Praise for MANAGING THE NEW CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP

?Gordon delivers an impressive synthesis of the newest
methods for engaging customers in relationships that last. No
organization today can succeed without the mastery of customer
relationship management strategy fundamentals. But to win in the
decades ahead, you must also understand and capitalize on the
rapidly evolving social computing, mobility and customer analytics
technologies described in this book. Checklists, self-assessments
and graphical frameworks deliver pragmatic value for the practicing
manager.?

? William Band, Vice-President, Principal Analyst,
Forrester Research Inc., Cambridge, MA

?A very comprehensive and practical book on managing
relationships with existing customers in the age of social media! I
particularly enjoyed reading chapters on teaching customers new
behaviors, which were illustrated by excellent case
studies.?

? Jagdish N. Sheth, Ph.D. , Charles H. Kellstadt Professor
of Marketing, Emory University, Atlanta, GA

?The strategic breadth and depth of this book is
impressive as Gordon explores the new customer and how to plan and
manage the new customer relationship. I found his review of
strategies, techniques and technologies for social, mobile, mass
customization and customer analytics to be particularly insightful.
Gordon urges marketers to live and breathe one-through-one
marketing and to master social engagement techniques. The
checklists, cases and examples make the content grounded and
actionable. This is an important, current and detailed book to
which every organization should pay close attention to improve
customer relationships and create shareholder value.?

? Marcus Ruebsam, Vice-President, Line-of-Business
Marketing Solutions, SAP AG, Walldorf, Germany

?There are many books on CRM, but I recommend this one
because Gordon?s book does what others do not. He considers
CRM strategy and evolves it to recognize a new customer, one who is
always connected, socially available and influential. The book
doesn?t just discuss many point solutions for specific
marketing challenges; it integrates technology with strategy,
people, process and customer analytics to develop relationships
continuously. This book is a broad and deep exploration of CRM,
providing practical, fact-based perspectives that every company can
use to validate and rethink their customer and stakeholder
relationships.?

? Helmuth Cepeda, Small, Medium and Distribution Director,
Microsoft Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico

Marketing has changed fundamentally in the last few years and
has become an entirely new discipline, one that focuses on a new
customer and a new relationship, framed by new principles,
strategies, processes, roles and tactics. Individual customers are
economically targeted and served, and treated as segments of one
rather than members of a target market. Word of mouth and
recommendations are vital as customers influence one another more
than a company can do within its own advertising or customer
dialogs. Today?s customer is always online, accessible and
connected. Now marketing is not only direct and customer-specific
but a continuous process by which companies seek to engage
customers and be progressively more relevant, attractive and
valuable. This is the era of a new customer relationship?an
individual relationship that is social, mobile and local,
influenced by peers and shaped by cognitive, behavioural and social
psychological principles. New techniques, processes and
technologies transform what it means to implement marketing
strategy and achieve improved business results.

The new customer relationship requires that even those companies
that have embraced customer relationship management ought to
reassess their customer management. Now every marketing decision,
whether online or in the physical world, whether of a technological
nature, whether it affects customer experience, communications,
dialogs, teaching or organizational memory, every decision
should be seen through a single lens focused on the individual
customers who matter most. Managing the New Customer
Relationship provides a strategic and practical guide to help
companies attract, develop, sustain and build more valuable
relationships by:

• Expanding upon existing customer relationship management
  theories, concepts and methods to make these considerations more
  useful, strategic and contemporary


• Recognizing the profound importance of social media and how to
  plan customer engagement in the social context of each
  customer


• Exploring new technologies that offer new opportunities for
  engaging customers, including mobile, local, the cloud and customer
  analytics


• Demonstrating how to develop customer-specific understanding,
  predict what customers will want next, and how to manage each
  individual customer, and


• Offering perspectives to help the organization endure by
  focusing a chain of relationships on the end customer and creating
  meaning for stakeholders that can make relationships more intense
  and robust.

Managing the New Customer Relationship is for
organizations of all sizes in all industries, for private- and
public-sector organizations and not-for-profits. In short, every
organization can apply the new principles, strategies, techniques
and technologies discussed here to recognize important marketplace
changes, plan to improve relationship and financial results and
capture new shareholder value from new customer relationships.