| Customers.Com: How to Create a Profitable Business Strategy for the Internet and Beyond | 
 enlarge | Creators: Patricia Seybold, Ronni T. Marshak
Publisher: Random House Audio
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
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You Save: $24.89 (100%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (127 reviews)
Sales Rank: 1844808
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Media: Audio Cassette
Edition: Abridged
Number Of Items: 3
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 4.5 x 1.4
ISBN: 0375410406
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.81202854678
EAN: 9780375410406
ASIN: 0375410406
Publication Date: November 23, 1999
Release Date: November 23, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Lots of books have been written about how to do business on the Internet, but few can match the understanding and passion for making e-commerce work of Patricia Seybold's Customers.com. Drawing on case studies of companies and organizations as diverse as Boeing, Babson College, National Semiconductor, Hertz, PhotoDisc, and Wells Fargo, Seybold identifies what makes e-commerce work successfully. She argues that any e-commerce initiative has to begin with the customer. She writes: In the electronic commerce world, knowing who your customers are and making sure you have the products and services they want becomes even more imperative than it is in the "real" world.... The corner grocery needs only to approximate what customers really want because the convenience factor brings in the business. But when you eliminate this advantage--when customers can go anywhere to get what they want--you'd better know what they're looking for. The first section of the book outlines five steps aimed at any organization grappling with the challenge of doing e-commerce right. The final section offers a technology roadmap and suggestions for getting e-commerce initiatives off the ground. But the heart of the book is the 16 case studies of companies that have successfully embraced e-business and e-commerce. Each is well researched, and includes an executive summary and "take-aways" about what each firm did right. If you're looking to develop your business online, this book belongs on your desk, not your bookshelf. Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards
Product Description
Read by the Author
Three Cassettes, 5 hours
Patricia Seybold has advised major companies not only on the technical requirements for a successful electronic commerce strategy, but also on the management, marketing, sales, and customer support systems necessary to create an infrastructure that seamlessly blends a company?s e-commerce initiative with overall business.
It all starts with customers.For the past several years, Seybold has been working with electronic commerce pioneers who have made life easier for their customers by figuring out what they want and designing their Internet strategy accordingly.Seybold?s guide is packed with insights on how both Fortune 500 giants and smaller companies have created e-commerce initiatives that place them well ahead of their competitors.
With additional in-depth examples from American Airlines, Amazon.com, Babson College, Bell Atlantic, Dell Computer, PhotoDisc, General Motors, and Cisco Systems, Customers.com is an exceptionally rich source of ideas and information; the one audiobook you need to stay in business in the rapidly changing era of electronic commerce.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 122 more reviews...
A good read January 27, 2006
The authors of this book ask the question, "Are you doing business on the Web? Or are you just on the Web?" According to the author, technology consultant Patricia Seybold, most companies have web sites that give some information about their company and their products. Today, customers are demanding much more from websites, they expect to be able to purchase on line, interact electronically, and be part of a community in cyberspace.
The main point of the book is to show companies that if they meet these expectations, they will grow. In order to achieve this growth, companies need to evaluate their customers. Specifically, they need to start with the basic question of who exactly are their end customers. What to these end customers want? What do these end customers expect from the company?
Once these questions are answered, it is important to develop the electronic structure that will serve the needs of the customers. Create a web site that not only has the basic information on the company and the product, but allows the customer to shop, order, purchase, and track delivery. Companies need to capture personal information by ensuring customers fill out an on-line profile. By collecting these profiles, it will help answer the previous questions and allow the company to better anticipate the needs of its customers.
The author also argues for designing or redesigning business processes from the outside in, specifically organized around your end customers, not around the products and services. The inside-out model, the one designed around products and services, will not work in today's e-commerce, according to the author.
Further advice includes making it easy for consumers to do business with the company, and they will help themselves to want they need. This will empower customers to make choices, thus they will have reasons to keep coming back. The author uses numerous examples to demonstrate how this is more difficult than it sounds. By reading about these companies' experiences combined with the solid advice offered, the reader will be taking the first steps to developing an effective e-business strategy.
 Self Helped, jobs done excellent, decreased time waste November 12, 2004
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
Target the Right Customers
1. Focus your electronic commerce efforts on your most profitable customers.
2. In deciding what information to put out start with the most requested information your call centers put out.
3. Think about marketing offers you can make electronically that are not practically to do any other way.
Own the customer's total experience
1. Identify each step or business event where the customer is most likely to interact with your firm and streamline each of those steps.
2. Reassure the customer at each step
3. Capture the customers profile and off them the oportunity to change their profiles at any time and to select a set of profile defaults.
4. Give customers access to their entire transaction history.
5. Let the customer specify if they want proactive notification.
6. Recruit thousands of business partners who can represent your firm to customers
7. Make it easy for your suppliers to deal with you.
8. Focus on excellence in the customer experience.
Streamline business processes that impact the customer
1. Use online forums to overcome internal organizational barriers to success.
2. Use streamline electronic forms that are visible to all legitimate parties involved.
3. Make the right bets on technology
Provide a 360 degree view
1. Layout the groundwork
2. Start by focusing on the convenience of the customer
3. Target your most profitable customers
4. Use middleware to pull customer information together
5. Make sure the answers and information that your customer receives are identical
6. Don't let technology limit your vision
7. Begin by offerring information then transactions
Let Customers help themselves
1. Cooperation is the name of the game on the internet
2. Provide information on the web that helps the customer make a decision or answer a question
3. The best combination is where the person can access the information they want but get a person on the phone if needed.
4. Customers design their own products
Help the customer do his job
1. Make it your goal not to waste the customers time
2. The best website offer at least three different types of search engines
3. Keep track of what the customer looks for and does not find
4. Use electronic mail for targeted marketing
5. Listen to the customer tell you what they need to appear on their bills.
6. Make it easy as possible to help the customer help their customer use your product.
Deliver personalized service
Foster Community
 Good book but needs updating now. March 12, 2004
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
With so much changes in the internet business, this is a good reading to understand how should you start, but new technologies are available now. This book was written in 98, so Patricia Seybold should rewrite.
An education in itself... December 20, 2002
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Being a college student, I was at first reluctant to read Seybold's book as a class assignment. In hindsight, it's one of the best decisions I could've made. This book presents dynamic ideas that are being overlooked at universities today. Rather than focusing on the "how to's" Customers.com gives you the "why's" of the customer market. Talk about making me think! Not only did this book provide an excellent point of reference for class discussions, I found myself unconsciously transferring the knowledge into my job. One thing to take note of: THIS IS MORE THAN A TECHIES BOOK! Anyone in business will undoubtedly benefit from reading it. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!
Remains solid October 13, 2001
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Got this when it came out and gave it a read. Three years have passed and I just referred to it to support writing a paper on technology. The details are good and the higher level dialogue do a nice job of getting the message across without belaboring anything. If you are about the web and doing business, this is worth the bucks and time.
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