Product Description

The book-length customer research study, titled “Customers Tell Companies What They Don’t Want to Hear,” throws a bucket of ice water in the face of some core business management tenets—plus a number of keystone principles of the marketing, advertising and customer relationship management (CRM) industries. Freed from the editing and selective hearing business often invokes to avoid hearing unpleasant truths, customers dish out an earful to companies about what they want, what they don’t want and what they ignore—and how they really make purchase decisions. The new study is co-authored by long-time research partners Dr. David J. Mangen of Mangen Research Associates and Richard A. Lee of High-Yield Methods. Commenting on the findings, Paul Greenberg, author of the industry best-seller “CRM at the Speed of Light: Customer Strategies for the 21st Century” says, “Lee and Mangen have verified and amplified with hard data the growing perception that the new breed of customer is here to stay and businesses need to react—or risk their very existence. Moreover, there are lessons in this study for customers, marketers, advertising agencies and CRM practitioners as well.” Continuing, Greenberg adds, “’Customers Say What Companies Don’t Want To Hear’ proves a mission-critical strategic point. Businesses need to rethink their logic and develop new operating models based on customer centric behaviors and valuations.” Among the study’s key findings are: -The presence of a growing gap between customer expectations and company behavior, which creates opportunity for some companies and increasing risk to others. -After 50 years of sellers markets, buyers are taking widespread control of buyer-seller relationships, and many companies don’t know how to respond. -At a high level, a company’s degree of customer focus was the most important purchase decision factor for customers, and by a very wide margin. -In terms of specific company behaviors—delivering customer-relevant quality product, as expected, was the most desired factor; very closely and unexpectedly followed by companies empowering their employees. -Despite the billions of dollars spent on brand advertising, customers rate brand-strength as a weak influence at best on their purchase decisions. -Despite its increasing use by companies, customers rate online customer service as even less of a positive influence than brand. -Research data along with empirical evidence point to customers developing “group think” and a “group mentality” capable of damaging or in extreme cases potentially eliminating out-of-favor companies such as Ford, GM and Northwest Airlines. -Customers globally rate Amazon.com the most customer-centric behaving company—and Wal-mart the least. Asked to describe the potential impact of the study in real world terms, Lee notes: “If Wal-mart’s senior managers grasped the implications of what customers say in the study, they’d stop their initiative to add more upscale merchandise dead in its tracks. Without doing major repair work in relations with upscale customers before making such a move, Wal-mart is going to stub more than its toe.” Customers Tell Companies What They Don’t Want to Hear is a 151 page report including over 70 data charts and tables plus extensive commentary.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4298659 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-24
• Binding: Library Binding
• 176 pages

Review
A new study throws fire at a number of business management values and calls the CRM industry into question. -- destinationCRM.com, May 2, 2006

About the Author
Statistical researcher David J. Mangen, Ph.d. is a highly credentialed customer expert and author of eight books—plus an innovator in developing and refining cutting edge research techniques. Interpreter/commentator Richard A. (Dick) Lee is an internationally-respected consultant and author in the customer-centricity field with a reputation for “calling a spade a spade” and a track record for accurately anticipating market changes, particularly in corporate/customer relationships.

Customer Reviews

Compelling Research
This is a fantastic book dealing with customer behaviors and how we, as sellers, must change our mindset to be able to capture these evolving buyer segments. I am in the home building industry where the marketplace and customer expectations are constantly changing. The concepts outlined in this book are essential in helping us understand our customers so we can stay competitive in the marketplace. I highly recommend this book to any organization that has customers and that wants to become a leader in their marketplace.

Don't want to hear... but do need to know
This study sheds important light on many of the factors that effect customer buying decisions. It goes a step further in the constantly evolving process of understanding the customer from the customer's viewpoint. Many of the approaches that companies have taken to date are found to be less important or less-than-effective - the value of brand identify, for example, or efforts to cross-sell products and services. I would highly recommend it for sales, marketing and all customer-facing professionals.

Message cross-cuts industries
The health care field has, surprisingly, only recently discovered successful management strategies from other fields. Equally surpising is how this essential human service industry is also just awakening to customers, rather than providers, as the central focus that should be driving planning and evaluation. This work highlights so well how these lessons from customers do cross-cut industries. I will be reccommending it to my colleagues in health care administration.