Publications

2005
Class Lecture

Managing Markets, Segments, and Customers

By: Das Narayandas

Keywords: Markets; Segmentation; Customers

October 2014 (Revised November 2016)
Technical Note

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) vs. Customer Lifetime Return on Investment (CLROI)

By: Elie Ofek

This note presents two related measures for assessing the financial value of a customer to the firm. The first is the well-known measure of Customer Lifetime Value, or CLV for short. The second, which has received much less attention, treats the acquisition of a... View Details

Keywords: Customer Lifetime Value; Return On Investment; Segmentation; Social Networks; Customer Relationship Management; Marketing Strategy; Investment Return; Social and Collaborative Networks; Social Media

April 1997
Background Note

Using ABC to Manage Customer Mix and Relationships

By: Robert S. Kaplan

Describes applying activity-based costing to manage customer relationships. Links cost-to-serve to net margins earned with individual customers. View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Activity Based Costing and Management

April 2006 (Revised April 2008)
Course Overview Note

Managing Service Operations: Understanding the Customer Operating Role

By: Frances X. Frei

Describes Managing Service Operations: Understanding the Customer Operating Role, a second-year MBA course that consists of three modules. The first module, Conceptualizing the Customer Operating, explores the operational challenges and opportunites of managing... View Details

Keywords: Service Operations

May 2005
Class Lecture

Managing Markets, Segments, and Customers

By: Das Narayandas

March 2009
Article

Customer Experience Creation: Determinants, Dynamics and Management Strategies

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger, Peter C. Verhoef, Katherine N. Lemon, A. Parasuraman, Anne Roggeveen and Michael Tsiros

Retailers, such as Starbucks and Victoria's Secret, aim to provide customers a great experience across channels. In this paper we provide an overview of the existing literature on customer experience and expand on it to examine the creation of a customer experience... View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Business Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Retail Industry

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April 2006
Background Note

Informing Service Management with Customer Data

By: Frances X. Frei and Dennis Campbell

Taught as the third module in a Harvard Business School course on Managing Service Operations. Explores the role of data analysis in ongoing service management. Describes how to realize the maximum amount of value from analyses and use this information in... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Design; Analytics and Data Science; Service Operations; Mathematical Methods; Value

06 Jul 2020
News

The Right Way to Manage Churn for Maximum Profit

November 2004
Article

Linking Customer Management Effort to Customer Profitability in Industrial Markets

By: Douglas Bowman and Das Narayandas

Keywords: Customers; Management; Profit; Markets

March 2017
Exercise

Designing Transformational Customer Experiences

By: Stefan Thomke

Anyone who has recently travelled, gone shopping, or tried to have a problem solved may have little recollection of the experience. Worse yet, some are frustrated by the lack of responsiveness or empathy that they encountered. The reality is that most customer... View Details

Keywords: Customer Experience; Exercise; Learning By Doing; LEGO; Storytelling; Customer Satisfaction; Design; Innovation and Management; Transformation; Service Delivery

March 2003
Background Note

Managing a Customer Relationship Over Time

By: Das Narayandas

Describes the different ways in which vendors can sell a portfolio of products to industrial customers. View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Management; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Networks; Sales; Manufacturing Industry

August 2002 (Revised February 2018)
Teaching Note

Customer Profitability and Customer Relationship Management at RBC Financial Group

By: V.G. Narayanan

Teaching Note for 102-043 and 102-072. View Details

Keywords: Financial Services Industry; Banking Industry; Canada

August 2002
Article

Seven Barriers to Customer Equity Management

By: D. Bell, J. Deighton, W. J. Reinartz, R. T. Rust and G. Swartz

Keywords: Equity; Management

March 13, 2023
Article

Sales Teams Need to Stop Focusing on the Customer Funnel

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Understanding where customers are, how they navigate streams in your market, and how to interact with them in a given stream is now central to crafting a good customer experience, and that has implications. Among other things, companies need to shift from thinking... View Details

Keywords: Customer Experience; Customer Value and Value Chain; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior

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Article

How B2B Companies Can Win Back Customers They've Lost

By: Frank V. Cespedes and León Poblete

Most research and training in sales focus on acquiring new customers. But winning back previous customers is increasingly important: mergers, choice in supply chains, and uncertainty about trade wars mean that B2B customers are constantly re-evaluating relationships... View Details

Keywords: B2B; Customer Reacquisition; Customer Relationship Management

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March 2018
Article

In Pursuit of Enhanced Customer Retention Management: Review, Key Issues, and Future Directions

By: Eva Ascarza, Scott A. Neslin, Oded Netzer, Zachery Anderson, Peter S. Fader, Sunil Gupta, Bruce Hardie, Aurelie Lemmens, Barak Libai, David T. Neal, Foster Provost and Rom Schrift

In today’s turbulent business environment, customer retention presents a significant challenge for many service companies. Academics have generated a large body of research that addresses part of that challenge—with a particular focus on predicting customer churn.... View Details

Keywords: Customer Retention; Churn; Customer Relationship Management; Measurement and Metrics