Publications

Find at Harvard

08 Oct 2015
Research & Ideas

Four Questions Fundraisers Must be Prepared to Answer

say no and turn down the opportunity to make a gift, said Stevenson, who also highlighted the rewards of philanthropy—namely, the satisfaction of “partnering with others to accomplish things that have a positive impact on the world around... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

27 Feb 2017
Working Paper Summaries

Seeking to Belong: How the Words of Internal and External Beneficiaries Influence Performance

Keywords: by Paul Green, Francesca Gino, and Bradley R. Staats

September 24, 2024
Article

4 Steps That Can Optimize Your Sales Process

By: Frank V. Cespedes, Scott Peterson and Daniel Weinfurter

Sales is a performance art where outcomes matter, so most advice here focuses on closing the sale. But a close is the result of actions and choices that occur earlier in the process: how much time and effort to spend on customer discovery (understanding what and to... View Details

Keywords: Sales; Customer Satisfaction; Growth and Development Strategy; Competitive Advantage

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Article

How Much Is a Reduction of Your Customers' Wait Worth? An Empirical Study of the Fast-Food Drive-Thru Industry Based on Structural Estimation Methods

In many service industries, companies compete with each other on the basis of the waiting time their customers experience, along with other strategic instruments such as the price they charge for their service. The objective of this paper is to conduct an empirical... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Price; Service Delivery; Mathematical Methods; Competition; Food and Beverage Industry; Service Industry

Find at Harvard

October 2010
Case

The Cleveland Clinic: Improving the Patient Experience (Abridged)

By: Ananth Raman, Anita L. Tucker and Rachel Gordon

Healthcare has traditionally focused on medical outcomes and financial performance. The big question is always, "How much is it going to cost?" What would happen though if healthcare also considered question of "How does the patient feel?" This case looks at the... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Ethics; Health Care and Treatment; Six Sigma; Performance Improvement; Safety; Value Creation

07 Mar 2000
Research & Ideas

Putting Health Care Consumers in the Driver’s Seat

While 93 percent of senior executives surveyed indicated satisfaction with the health-care insurance options they offer their employees, 46 percent said they would be receptive to a defined contribution system—often because they saw an... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Health

February 2021
Case

Drizly: Managing Supply and Demand through Disruption

By: Kris Ferreira

It was April 6th, 2020, and the management team at Drizly—an online alcohol marketplace where consumers could browse and purchase alcohol from local liquor retail stores via Drizly’s app for immediate home delivery—were thrilled to see record-breaking sales from the... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Demand and Consumers; Growth and Development; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Value and Value Chain; Customer Satisfaction; Goals and Objectives; Supply Chain Management

January 2008 (Revised May 2008)
Case

Comcast New England: A Journey of Organizational Transformation

By: Michael Beer and Anita Arun

This case describes how Kevin Casey, Comcast's New England Region general manager, transformed a low commitment and performance organization. When he took charge of this Comcast region he inherited an organization that was bureaucratic, had low customer satisfaction,... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Interpersonal Communication; Customer Satisfaction; Employee Relationship Management; Management Teams; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Performance Improvement; Telecommunications Industry; New England

August 2000 (Revised September 2005)
Case

Omnitel Pronto Italia

By: Rajiv Lal, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Suma Raju

Describes the situation faced by Omnitel soon after launching its mobile telecommunication services in Italy in December 1995. Competing against the Italian monopoly, TIM, Omnitel had positioned its services to be better on the quality dimension. However, sales were... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Marketing Channels; Marketing Strategy; Product Positioning; Market Entry and Exit; Product Development; Sales; Competition; Segmentation; Value Creation; Telecommunications Industry; Italy

September 1999 (Revised February 2004)
Case

Juice Guys (B)

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, Sharon Lee Fox and Cynthia Rushmore Kuechle

The case explores who the customers are for a new beverage product, their desires as customers for this product, and their desires when ordering this product from a local specialty store location. View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Commercialization; Customer Satisfaction; Food and Beverage Industry

26 May 2015
Research & Ideas

Corporate Field Researchers Share Tricks of the Trade

Forming A Research Partnership Teresa Amabile discussed a comprehensive field study in which her research team collected confidential, personal work diaries from 238 white-collar employees at seven disparate companies. The key finding: When it comes to igniting... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

08 Apr 2014
First Look

First Look: April 8

August 2013 MIT Sloan Management Review The High Price of Customer Satisfaction By: Keiningham, Timothy, Sunil Gupta, Lerzan Aksoy, and Alexander Buoye Abstract—Managers often assume that improving customer View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

08 Dec 2008
Research & Ideas

Thinking Twice About Supply-Chain Layoffs

inventory to distribution centers. "I call these people supply-chain foot soldiers." Having items in storage areas but not on the selling floor didn't count at all in their evaluations, but it counts a lot in customer satisfaction and... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

September 1999 (Revised September 1999)
Case

Convergys Corporation

By: Stephen P. Bradley and Kelley Porter

Focuses on the important issue of capturing the synergies between the two sides of the business, Information Management Group (IMG) and Customer Management Group (CMG). In addition, the case also addresses strategic issues from each of the individual businesses. For... View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Practices and Processes; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Information Industry; Service Industry

06 Jun 2012
What Do You Think?

Is Something Wrong with the Way We Work?

change, team members succeeded in freeing up one night per week from their devices and their work. By the time the process had been implemented in more than 900 BCG teams globally Perlow could present evidence that it had enhanced such things as excitement about their... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Consulting

13 Jan 2014
Research & Ideas

How Government Can Restore the Faith of Citizens

research , Buell and Norton had experimented with customer satisfaction in travel and dating websites. They found that when these sites visually showed the effort being exerted by the site during searches or transactions, customers were... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

January 2010 (Revised April 2010)
Case

Credit Suisse Group: Managing Equity Research as a Business

By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and Sarah Abbott

In 2003, in the midst of industry turmoil and company-specific challenges, Stefano Natella was named Global Head of Equity Research at Credit Suisse. Over a six-year period, Natella implemented and refined a new methodology for valuing equity research analysts, both... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Change Management; Customer Satisfaction; Compensation and Benefits; Selection and Staffing; Balanced Scorecard; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Financial Services Industry