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Patricia Seybold is one of the few people with the credentials
and experience to write the one book on electronic commerce everyone in business
must read. 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. Some examples:
- National Semiconductor made huge improvements to its bottom
line by targeting the right customers (not always the ones who make the final
buying decision) on its Web site.
- Hertz coordinated
its e-commerce strategy with its entire business so that it is now head and shoulders
above its competitors in owning the customer's total experience.
- The
National Science Foundation streamlined its customers' business processes by involving
all stakeholders in the development of its Web strategy.
- Wells
Fargo provides its customer sales and service representatives with a 360-degree
view of its customers, providing one-stop shopping via the Web and making its
on-line banking services the fastest-growing part of its company.
- iPrint
transformed a commodity business by using the Web to let customers help themselves
in designing the end product exactly as they want it.
- Boeing
designed its Web site to help customers do their jobs more effectively.
- Dow
Jones delivered personalized service with its electronic version of the Wall Street
Journal, showing that customers will pay for information of value on the Internet.
- Tripod
grew from a start-up company with over a million members by fostering a vibrant
on-line community.
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 book you need to
stay in business in the rapidly changing era of electronic commerce. Patricia
B. Seybold is the founder and CEO of the Boston-based Patricia Seybold Group,
a worldwide business and technology consulting firm. Its clients include Ameritech,
Arthur Anderson, Clorox, Hewlett Packard, the International Monetary Fund, Microsoft,
State Street Bank and Warburg Pincus.
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