This thesis addresses the issue of customer complaints in the context of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). After a comprehensive survey of the current literature on CRM, the thesis describes the development of a new intelligent CRM (I-CRM) framework, which integrates text analytics, type mapping, SPSS, structural equation modeling, and linear and fuzzy approaches. This new methodology, in contrast to previous ones, is able to handle customer complaints with respect to different variables, thus allowing organizations to find their key customers and key complaints, and to address and provide solution to the major complaints of the key customers, hence promoting business development. The thesis also describes the successful application of the method to a real-world case, represented by the immeasurable truck drivers complaints at the Fremantle port in Western Australia.

This volume presents concepts, policies and cost models for various long-term warranty and maintenance contracts. It offers several numerical examples for estimating costs to both the manufacturer and consumer. Long-term warranties and maintenance contracts are becoming increasingly popular, as these types of aftersales services provide assurance to consumers that they can enjoy long, reliable service, and protect them from defects and the potentially high costs of repairs. Studying long-term warranty and service contracts is important to manufacturers and consumers alike, as offering long-term warranty and maintenance contracts produce additional costs for manufacturers / service providers over the product's service life. These costs must be factored into the price, or the manufacturer / dealer will incur losses instead of making a profit. On the other hand, the buyer / consumer needs to weigh the cost of maintaining it over its service life and to decide whether or not these policies are worth purchasing. There are a number of complexities involved in developing failure and cost models for these policies due to uncertainties concerning the service life, usage pattern, maintenance work and long-term costs of rectifications. Mathematical models for predicting failures and expected costs for various one-dimensional long-term warranty policies are developed at the system level and analyzed by taking into account the uncertainties in connection with longer coverage periods and the rectification costs over the warranty period. Failures and costs are modeled using stochastic techniques and illustrated by means of numerical examples for estimating costs to the manufacturer and consumer. Various rectification policies are proposed and analyzed. The models developed here can be used to aid in managerial decisions on purchasing products with long-term warranty policies and maintenance contracts or outsourcing maintenance.

This practice- and research-based book caters to the needs of executive managers who see customer satisfaction as their primary goal. The authors identify the need for an effective complaint management strategy that prevents the loss of dissatisfied customers. Dissatisfied customers are at risk of migrating; accordingly, neglecting professional complaint management poses a considerable threat to customer relationships, sales and profits. The book offers a comprehensive management concept, which emphasizes direct contact with the complainant by employing complaint stimulation, acceptance, processing and reaction. Further, it discusses the relevant 'backstage' tasks involved in using complaint information to achieve quality improvements and cost reductions through complaint analysis, controlling and reporting.

In "The Relationship Marketer", Soren Hougaard and Mogens Bjerre explain how the concept of the dyad (i.e., mutuality, or "you and me") is quickly becoming a fundamental principle in marketing. The authors suggest that understanding customer relationships, value co-creation, and customised business models in which effectiveness is evaluated on an individualised basis leads to outstanding business performance. Based on these principles the authors present a concrete and practically manageable framework for implementation. Readers will find surprising, useful, and applicable marketing models, typologies and tools, as well as guides to the systematic generation of strategic opportunities. "The Relationship Marketer" will be valuable reading for students and professionals in sales and marketing, as well as anyone seeking insights into dyadic market forces, which are moving industry beyond the outdated perspective of treating all customers equally.

Social Customer Service is new. Social Media is the biggest thing happening to the customer service industry since the mid 1960s when modern day call centres were born. It is taking customers and organisations into untested ways of relating: transparently, collaboratively, instantly. The consequences of great and poor service are forever changed. Customer appetite has promoted this form of interaction to the very front of a race to understand. How do digital brands and empowered customers actually behave? Social Customer Service has become Marketing s R&D lab and a listening hub for the rest of the organisation. It is now where corporate reputations are most likely to be won and lost. Delivering Effective Social Customer Service is a complete reference for achieving excellence in this new discipline. It caters to both novice and expert. It is perfect source material for service leaders and digital marketers to read together. Every CXO will recognise in the book a blueprint from which to build their next generation organisation. Even ambitious team leaders should snag a copy for instant subject matter expertise kudos! The centre of the book offers an in depth self-assessment of the competencies that matter. The book is jammed full of strategic insight, action lists, best practice tips and interviews. All the resources anyone needs to build a solid strategy and roadmap. Early adopter workshops based on the book have already taken place and will continue to be offered as another way of engaging with the book s key lessons. An online resource of the reference material is also provided. Options for an online community are under consideration. This book is the first of its kind. A distillation of what has so far been collectively discovered. Then filtered and expanded through the collective experience of two leading authorities on customer service: Carolyn Blunt and Martin Hill-Wilson.

This book investigates customer perceptions and expectations of complaint channels. In addition to the conventional channels, the adequacy of online social networks as new complaint channel is analysed. The managerial recommendations to improve customer satisfaction are based on a survey and reveal critical determinants of customer channel choice and their expectation and perception of each complaint channel.

Customers are treated badly. Not all customers. Not always. But many are and often. Some customers are bad. They treat firms badly. Firms have to react. Employees and customers endure the consequences. Such bad behaviours, by firms and customers, have consequences for perceptions of trust and fairness, for endorsements and referrals, for repeat purchasing and loyalty, and ultimately for a firm's profitability and RoI. The management of customer relationships is core to the success and even survival of the firm. As The Dark Side of CRM explores, this is an area fraught with difficulties, duplicitous practice and undesirable behaviours. These need acknowledging, mitigating and controlling. This book is the first of its kind to define these dark sides, exploring also how firms and policy-makers might address such behaviours and manage them successfully. With contributions from many of the leading exponents globally of CRM and understanding customers, The Dark Side of CRM is essential reading for students, researchers and practitioners interested in managing customers, relationship marketing and CRM, as well as social media and marketing strategy.

Now, more than ever, customer experience plays a pivotal role in the success and longevity of a company. Based on rigorous scientific tools and global data, this book offers a simple but thorough guide on how to master the challenges of the market, and how to deliver superior performance through effective customer experience management.

CRM Systems in Industrial Companies contributes new knowledge on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in the field of industrial marketing. Based on an in-depth case study, this book highlights the complexity and challenges in the development, implementation and use of CRM, revealing how truly challenging it is to extract value from CRM systems.

Berry-AMA Book Prize FINALIST 2011! "The Right Sensory Mix" is one of the four best marketing books in 2011 according to the American Marketing Association Foundation. The Berry-AMA Book Prize is awarded annually be the Foundation (AMAF) and recognizes books whose innovative ideas have had significant impact on marketing and related fields. For additional information about the Berry-AMA Book Prize, visit Berry-AMA Book Prize. Why do some people drink black coffee and others stick to tea? Why do some people prefer competitors' products? Why do we sell less in this country? Many companies fail to acknowledge and analyze disparities observed among customers and simply put them down to culture or emotion. New neuroendocrinological research proves that consumers are rational: They just have a different biological perception of the same stimulus! Their preferences, behavior, and decisions are strongly influenced by the hundreds of millions of sensors monitoring their body and brain. People with more taste buds are for example sensitive to bitterness and are more likely to drink their coffee with sugar or milk, or to drink tea. After reading the book, managers will be able to: * Understand and predict consumers' behavior and preferences * Design the right sensory mix (color, shape, taste, smell, texture, and sound) for each product * Fine-tune their positioning and product range for every local market * Systematically increase their innovation hit rate

Companies who invest in successful Customer eXperience (CX) innovation stand out from the crowd. Markets tend to reward these companies because it is rare for firms to try something new, much less prove customer acceptance of their attempted innovations. Firms offering remarkable CX create loyal customers who happily pay more for their products and services, and then refer them to other customers for free. This book outlines innovative processes used to research, conceive and develop innovations in the CX space for both large and small companies. The challenge is not so much finding out what customers like, as it is remaining apart from the crowd of rivals and copycats. Written as a practical guide for managers with a background in line management, operations, marketing, finance or customer service, this book contains a simple framework with an extensive range of design thinking and creative problem solving tools. Starting with a validation for investing in improving your firm's CX, the book also provides a primer on competitive advantage, the most critical objective of strategic planning. Mastering the book's content creates the potential for any business manager or owner to find a hard-to-copy market advantage and drive their business' growth.

To stay competitive, firms need to build great products but they also need to lend these products to the uses and misuses of their customers and learn extensively from them. This is the first book to explore the idea that allowing customers to adapt features in online products or services to suit their needs is the key to viral growth.

Customer centricity is fundamental to business growth and ongoing success. Most executives appreciate the importance of it yet don't know how to execute it or sell the processes internally. This thoroughly revised edition of Breaking Through guides readers systematically through the ten breakthrough points of implementation, to explain how to execute a transformation to customer centricity, so that a company can engage continuously with its customers, making them allies and advocates with all the rewards that it brings. With updates on digital opportunities, social media, emerging markets (including Africa), and the social as well as financial impacts of customer centricity , this book successfully blends strategy with implementation and also features a range of innovative new and traditional business examples from across the globe. Easy to read, in-depth and full of practical advice, this is the essential step-by-step guide to implementing customer centricity to endure in the long-term.

Marketing has become the dominant connecting mode of expression between business and non-business organisations and customers and consumers. However, there are some misgivings about marketing in the 21st century. This volume addresses the positive and negative elements of marketing and questions 'Is marketing a leviathan in today's societies?'

How to effectively design and deliver virtual advisory services can be a mystery to many public and private organisations. This study examines the interesting phenomenon of providing virtual advisors to assist users in accomplishing their tasks in the digital world. Based on a thorough analysis of abundant typical applications in various business and government sectors, this book discusses the current status and future trends of virtual advisory services in digital environments. This book also reveals exactly what users expect from such services, and what they hate! It provides thought-provoking guidelines for best practice in the design and provision of virtual advisors on e-portals.

Service Systems Implementation provides the latest applications and practices aimed at improving the key performance indicators of service systems, especially those related to service quality, service productivity, regulatory compliance, and sustainable service innovation. The book presents action-oriented, application-oriented, design science-oriented (artifacts building: constructs, models, methods and instantiations) and case study-oriented research with actionable results by illustrating techniques that can be employed in large scale, real world examples. The case studies will help visualize service systems along the four key dimensions of people, information, technology and value propositions which can help enable better integration between them towards higher value propositions. The chapters, written by leading experts in the field, examine a wide range of substantive issues and implementations related to service science in various industries. These contributions also showcase the application of an array of research methods, including surveys, experiments, design science, case studies and frameworks, providing the reader with insights and guidelines to assist in building their own service systems, and thus, moving toward a more favorable service customer and provider experience. Service Systems Implementation, along with its companion text, The Science of Service Systems, is designed to present multidisciplinary and multisectoral perspectives on the nature of service systems, on research and practice in service, and on the future directions to advance service science. These two volumes compose a collection of articles from those involved in the emerging area known as service science.

Understand the impact of a global ageing population on how products are bought, and the effect this has on how to market and advertise these products and services to the older generation of consumers. Contains models for companies to evaluate the success of their own strategies, with tools for improving their age-friendly marketing campaigns.

The internet has changed the way consumers interact with companies. Businesses must maintain good levels of customer service in a digital world where old strategies may no longer suffice. This book explores what the successful compliance-centred businesses are doing to manage and improve customer experience.

Explains how all institutions have to turn their relationship with stakeholders into a 'social' one, which involves designing new Trust and Engagement strategies. A specific indication on how to build and measure value out of these strategies is offered by the innovative 'Value for Engagement Model'.

In their efforts to become more customer-focused, companies everywhere find themselves entangled in outmoded systems, metrics, and strategies rooted in their product-centered view of the world. Now, to ease this shift to a customer focus, marketing strategy experts Roland T. Rust, Valarie A. Zeithaml, and Katherine N. Lemon have created a dynamic new model they call "Customer Equity," a strategic framework designed to maximize every firm's most important asset, the total lifetime value of its customer base.

The authors' Customer Equity Framework yields powerful insights that will help any business increase the value of its customer base. Rust, Zeithaml, and Lemon introduce the three drivers of customer equity -- Value Equity, Brand Equity, and Retention Equity -- and explain in clear, nontechnical language how managers can base their strategies on one or a combination of these drivers. The authors demonstrate in this breakthrough book how managers can build and employ competitive metrics that reveal their company's Customer Equity relative to their competitors. Based on these metrics, they show how managers can determine which drivers are most important in their industry, how they can make efficient strategic trade-offs between expenditures on these drivers, and how to project a financial return from these expenditures. The final section devotes two chapters to the Customer Pyramid, an approach that segments customers based on their long-term profitability, and an especially important chapter examines the Internet as the ultimate Customer Equity tool. Here the authors show how companies such as Intuit.com, Schwab.com, and Priceline.com have used more than one or all three drivers to increase Customer Equity.

In this age of one-to-one marketing, understanding how to drive Customer Equity is central to the success of any firm. In particular, Driving Customer Equity will be essential reading for any marketing manager and, for that matter, any manager concerned with growing the value of the firm's customer base.

Dennis Herhausen examines how managers can successfully probe latent needs and uncover future needs of customers, labeled as proactive customer orientation. Overall, a systematic change process is developed to guide managers that aim to increase their company's proactive customer orientation.

This book puts the commoditization phenomenon under the microscope, laying out an economic analysis, followed by solutions and strategic recommendations. Using concrete examples this book will help to change businesses approach by acting not only on the economic analysis presented, but also on the diagnosis of commoditization and the recommendations for creation of customer value. The common thread throughout this approach is the obsession with customer satisfaction, the search for a fair balance between the long and short term, and the will to reinvent business models by harnessing innovation.

In "Loyalty Myths"," " the authors have assembled 53 of the most common beliefs about customer loyalty - all of them wrong or misconceived! Each of the beliefs in this book is debunked with real-world examples. While other books speak in platitudes; this book is the only one to validate each proposition with real data.

Granted unprecedented access to customer records from a variety of multi-national corporations. Through these records, Ipsos Loyalty was able to precisely track the impact of this customer-centric construct on actual purchasing behavior. The authors' findings and conclusions will stun business leaders around the world. The lessons learned from these provide a true guide for the proper use of customer loyalty.

The fourth in Springer 's series on Stakeholder Management books, this volume looks back at the beginnings of Stakeholder Management and how it has developed into a fully-fledged system over the last 20 years. It also highlights the importance of a benchmarking database generated from several thousand case studies for comparing businesses. What 's more, international case studies look at the application of Stakeholder Management in a wide array of industries such as the automotive, public and hospitality sector as well as the consumer market. The reader benefits from a well-rounded account of articles that explain the entire process from data collection to the implementation of actions derived from result analysis.