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"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 its 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."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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Provide a 360-Degree View of the Customer Relationship In order to be successful in electronic commerce, everyone who touches the customer needs to be able to see the total picture-a 360-degree view-of that customer's relationship with your firm. Many organizations are currently embarked on relationship management initiatives. Yet when you examine these efforts closely, you usually find that they are addressing only one or two aspects of the customer's relationship with the organization. For example, companies typically streamline and automate the sales process. Or they focus on help desk processes. Occasionally, an insightful organization might combine the two processes and their underlying systems and data. In that case, a salesperson can be made aware of an outstanding service issue with the customer he's wooing, or a service rep would know just how valuable this particular customer is to the firm. But even this doesn't go far enough. There are still any number of customer interactions not addressed by salespeople or help desks. For example, exactly who does a customer call with questions about a bill, when a delivery hasn't taken place, or when he has an idea for a new product or feature he could use? Here's an example: I mentioned the evolution of Microsoft's customer database strategy earlier. Now let's look at how Microsoft is instilling this 360-degree approach for everyone who works with its enterprise accounts. Today, Microsoft provides each of its very large "enterprise" customers with its own set of Web pages. This is where Microsoft consolidates everything it knows about the account, not only in terms of software and systems installed and on order, but also regarding competitive situations (where the customer might be considering solutions from another vendor), possible strategic or tactical initiatives that the customer is considering implementing, and the customer's up-to-the-minute service records. While the customer's account manager "owns" this customer Web site, key executives, such as Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, will consult this database before they interact with any accounts. Key consulting partners may be offered access to this information in exchange for entering their client engagement notes on the site (providing rewards on both sides for sharing the information). The benefit to customers is that they feel they are being served by "one Microsoft," even though there may be hundreds of different interactions with the company each month. The enterprise customer and her team of professionals also have access to their own view of this customized Web site. They can view and modify their own contact profiles as well as update the records on their information systems infrastructure, and they can ask for assistance. This account-centric Web site is where key members of the customer's team can go to check on the delivery status of products ordered, request technical support, check on the status of a service call, or ask for background information on new products. It's the customers' window into their relationship with Microsoft. What should you be thinking about in planning your own "customer-surround" strategy? To truly provide a complete 360-degree view of your relationship with your customers, you'll want to: Provide one-stop shopping for the customer. "Remember" everything your company knows about the customer. Ensure that everyone in the company has access to the complete customer picture. Put an underlying technical infrastructure into place to provide a 360-degree view. Excerpted from Customers. Com: How to Create a Profitable Business Strategy for the Internet and Beyond by Patricia B. Seybold, R. T. Marshak All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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Publishers Weekly Review

Aiming her debut at both executives and the technologists who carry out their dictums, consultant Seybold consolidates a wealth of information on how to link businesses to the Internet and other electronic tools. Her "five steps to success" in electronic commerce‘"Make it easy for customers to do business with you" and "Redesign your customer-facing business processes from the end customer's point of view," to name two‘are confirmed by a compilation of 16 case studies illustrating "eight critical success factors," including knowing the target market, giving customers room to browse and making service more personalized. Tales from the Webbing of American Airlines, National Semiconductor, Hertz, Amazon.com and Bell Atlantic, among others, make the book's basic messages seem inescapable, though at a cost of much built-in redundancy, as they crop up in a myriad of contexts. Going beyond screen-based issues, Seybold shows how billing for electronic commerce or the integration of third-party business can tip the scales toward on-line profitability. The final "handbook" outlines general prescriptions for planning and implementation. While much of the detail about particular Web sites will be outdated before long, of more lasting value are the lessons regarding insightful marketing, innovations and just good business sense‘regardless of medium. Illustrations not seen by PW. Author tour. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

Marketing on the Internet has become a hot topic and is becoming a big business, but Seybold goes beyond the idea of using the Internet as a marketing tool. She is founder and CEO of a "strategic-technology" consulting group that conducted more than 300 seminars and workshops last year. She is also the editor and coauthor of McGraw-Hill's Seybold Series on Professional Computing, which now includes five titles. Seybold argues that Internet commerce must be part of a broader strategy that "embraces all the ways you let customers do business with you electronically" and that business processes throughout the organization must be redesigned. She identifies five steps to success in electronic commerce, and using 16 case studies and summarizing current best practices, she examines eight critical success factors. Seybold also provides a handbook for implementing her strategy, which includes an executive's guide and "organizational road map" for making necessary changes, a "technology road map," and a workshop outline for introducing the concept to employees. --David Rouse