Publications

September 2009
Teaching Note

HubSpot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0 (TN)

By: Thomas J. Steenburgh and Jill Avery

Teaching Note for 509-049. View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Technology Adoption; Internet and the Web; Blogs; Media; Markets; Segmentation; Price; Decision Choices and Conditions; Marketing Strategy; Information Technology Industry

14 Sep 2021
Blog Post

How to Support Your Employees’ Career Development

organization that teach strategy setting, leadership, and giving and receiving feedback. Key Takeaways Career development is an important factor in employee satisfaction and retention as well as organizational success. To do it well takes... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

01 Feb 2000
News

Executives Convene to Discuss Consumer-Driven Health Care

employers. 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... View Details

14 Sep 2021
Blog Post

How to Support Your Employees' Career Development

setting, leadership, and giving and receiving feedback. Key Takeaways Career development is an important factor in employee satisfaction and retention as well as organizational success. To do it well takes attentive managers willing and... View Details

13 Jul 2016
News

From Money to Ministry

sorrows.” Retired since 2013, Quainton now serves as a mentor, helping new ministers find their vocation and calling. “That’s a major satisfaction for me,” he says. “They don’t have any private sector experience and can have trouble... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley

December 2017
Case

Clover Food Lab in 2016

By: Lena G. Goldberg, Sonia Smith and Sandra Bahous

Ayr Muir, founder and CEO of Clover Food Lab, has grown his restaurant chain from a single food truck to 11 thriving stores but he has no interest in running a regional chain. His ambition is to change the way America eats and his goal is national expansion. As he... View Details

Keywords: Restaurant Industry; Food; Growth Management; Strategic Planning; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Innovation and Management; Customer Satisfaction; Small Business; Expansion; Decision Choices and Conditions; Food and Beverage Industry

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

04 Sep 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, September 4, 2018

report different levels of satisfaction or enjoyment of their interactions (Study 3). Finally, in Study 4 we document that individuals’ lay beliefs are in direct opposition to our findings: participants believe that authors of warmly... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

January 2025
Case

Netflix: Takedown Troubles

By: Clayton S. Rose, Tom Quinn and Maxim Pike Harrell

In October 2021, Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos sent an all-staff email addressing backlash to comedian Dave Chappelle’s new stand-up special, The Closer. Released on October 5, the comedian’s depiction of the transgender community and other LGBTQ+ groups prompted... View Details

19 Jul 2004
Research & Ideas

Your Customers: Use Them or Lose Them

her course for Harvard MBA students, Managing Service Operations, which explores interactions between firms and customers. Defy Conventional Wisdom Commerce Bank entered a mature industry where the overall level of customer satisfaction... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

04 Mar 2002
Research & Ideas

Don’t Lose Money With Customers

customer. "Sometimes it makes sense to have a conversation with customers to find out how satisfied they are, and there are other times when the vendor might be better off drawing inferences from observations of actual customer behavior," Narayandas says.... View Details

Keywords: by Peter K. Jacobs

01 Apr 1997
News

HBS Conferences Explore Range of Issues

managed to achieve success and satisfaction in both realms. She related how in June 1983, six months pregnant with her first child, she became the Times' highest-ranking woman when the paper named her deputy metropolitan editor. She took... View Details

10 Mar 2021
News

Next Normal

arise. Although she does her best to support and empathize, she also keeps in mind a key lesson that she says took years of perspective to learn: not everyone will be happy all of the time. In other words, don’t fret that there will never be 100 percent View Details

03 Mar 2020
News

Can This Man Change the American Diet?

something that I feel is really important and needs to be done. And there’s just a really deep satisfaction and pride in that.And I think that it spreads, it’s not just feeling proud about what I’m doing, but I end up feeling so proud... View Details

Keywords: Agriculture

January 2010 (Revised March 2013)
Case

HubSpot: Lower Churn through Greater CHI

By: F. Asis Martinez Jerez, Thomas Steenburgh, Jill Avery and Lisa Brem

HubSpot, a web marketing startup is under pressure from VCs to rapidly acquire new customers and to maintain a low level of customer churn. In the case, students explore the drivers of customer churn and uncover opportunities to increase customer retention across the... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Satisfaction; Customer Value and Value Chain; Forecasting and Prediction; Consumer Behavior; Happiness; Consulting Industry

September 2010 (Revised January 2012)
Case

Emergia: Driving Profitability on Help Desk Contracts

Emergia wants to keep its customer happy with its contact center service, but the margins on the help desk contract are dangerously low. Can Miguel Neira, the COO, increase margins while preserving the customer relationship? View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Customer Satisfaction; Profit; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Service Operations; Performance Capacity; Performance Evaluation; Mathematical Methods; Service Industry

11 Oct 2004
Research & Ideas

Four Ways to Create Lasting Change

generations of a customer-satisfaction program at a large American retailer, dubbed "Alpha Corporation" for the sake of confidentiality. The first of Alpha's customer satisfaction programs, launched in the early 1990s, fell... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

2011
Article

Group Size and Incentives to Contribute: A Natural Experiment at Chinese Wikipedia

By: Michael Zhang and Feng Zhu

In this paper, we examine the causal relationship between group size and incentives to contribute in the setting of Chinese Wikipedia, the Chinese language version of an online encyclopedia that relies entirely on voluntary contributions. The group at Chinese Wikipedia... View Details

Keywords: Rights; Motivation and Incentives; Internet and the Web; Valuation; Groups and Teams; Knowledge Sharing; Behavior; Satisfaction; Size; Government and Politics; Economics; Information Technology Industry; Hong Kong; Taiwan; Singapore