My colleagues here at CEB, Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson, have written extensively about commercial insight in a book that has taken the B2B sales and marketing community by storm: The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation.
Trott points out that Borders simply refers Web purchasers to Amazon, taking a small fee when the customer buys.
Some companies are taking the lead to provide true customer experience innovation.
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The next approach that you can consider taking is to identify specific performance goals that the customer will agree in advance and, once achieved, will accept some increase in prices.
That means the company is taking a piece of defected equipment already paid for by the customer and reselling those parts after they are repaired to other customers.
Cisco Systems was a pioneer in fabless electronic gear, taking advantage of the internet to connect customer orders directly to the shipping docks of its contract manufacturers.
"We want to make sure we have all the facts, but right now we're taking the company's assurances" that the issues with use of customer data didn't extend to trades or instant-message conversations, Mr. Nides added.
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The consumer can then red-flag his credit files and consult the Equifax fraud specialist about how to prevent the identity thief from opening up new accounts, taking out loans or making big-ticket purchases in the customer's name.
In addition to multiplying the potential customer base severalfold, the rollouts provide a good opportunity for taking stock of the progress NIM has made so far.
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Gift cards are burning holes in many a pocket and customer service counters are taking back the presents people just can't wait to return.
Taking an internal customer service approach is one of the best ways to build your personal brand and to fortify yourself to better handle politics in the future.
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The company is taking a loss on every console sold, but as long as any given customer also buys one game, the Japanese company is in the black.
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They didn't have the right size, either, so the Zappos rep passed along the phone number for the other companies' customer-service departments before taking time to chat about her own wedding and shoes.
Alex Gregg, a waiter at Paola's on the Upper East Side who's waited tables for more than 40 years, says he's morphed into a tech whiz manning the sophisticated POS system, taking reservations on OpenTable, checking customer preferences on databases, even Googling patrons when he can't match a name to a face.
Over the years, hundreds of people have identified their trolls, either through Internet detective work or by taking their anonymous harasser to court and getting tech companies to reveal the customer behind the IP addresses and account information disclosed to them.
In October went to work for the Mayfield Fund, a venture capital company, after taking public his online customer-loyalty firm, Netcentives.
But if the customer is always right, Simpson and her ilk may be taking the wrong approach--apparently you can get too much of a good thing.
After such an experience a customer might be forgiven for thinking that the jeweler would be doing him a favor taking money off his hands.
Yet the increasing number of economic losers our society is spewing out might well not have a choice about taking on the role of extras in soon-to-be hit YouTube videos of such store management induced customer scrums.
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