Publications

07 Apr 2020
Research & Ideas

What Customers Need to Hear from You During the COVID Crisis

acknowledge the impact it was having on people’s lives. Consumers also warned against brands taking advantage of the crisis. Consumers’ survey responses indicated that brand storytelling should focus on providing real solutions to the... View Details

Keywords: by Jill Avery and Richard Edelman

1 Nov 1993
Conference Presentation

Information Technology's Role in Transforming Customer Service

By: Jim I. Cash Jr.

Keywords: Information Technology; Customer Focus and Relationships

October 2016
Case

Turkasset: Bringing Customer-Centricity to Debt Collection

By: Dennis Campbell and Gamze Yucaoglu

In December 2014, in preparation for the year-end board presentation, Hilmi Guvenal (PMD 1993), shareholder and CEO of Turkasset, and Ilker Yoney, COO, sat down to discuss Turkasset’s five- and ten-year strategic plans. Since taking leadership of the company in 2009,... View Details

2009
Book

Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Organization

By: Ranjay Gulati

In an era of raging commoditization and eroding profit margins, survival depends on resilience: staying one step ahead of your customers. Sure, most companies say they're "customer focused," but they don't deliver solutions to customers' thorniest problems. Why?... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Customer Focus and Relationships; Profit; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Cooperation

10 Jul 2017
Op-Ed

Op-Ed: It’s a Bad Idea to Ban Customers From Recording Videos

Consumers delight in using smartphones to record their experiences and surroundings, but for businesses, such devices present tricky challenges. Suppose a customer encounters a hair in her food, a spill in an aisle, or a rude clerk.... View Details

Keywords: by Benjamin G. Edelman; Food & Beverage; Air Transportation; Retail; Service

01 Apr 2024
In Practice

Navigating the Mood of Customers Weary of Price Hikes

businesses need to know in 2024. Alexander MacKay: Focus on finding balance Since 2021, as companies faced supply shocks and changes to demand in an inflationary period, executives have increasingly focused on consumer price elasticities.... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Retail; Consumer Products

Forthcoming
Article

Engaging Customers with AI in Online Chats: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment

By: Shunyuan Zhang and Das Narayandas

We examine how artificial intelligence (AI) affected the productivity of customer service agents and customer sentiment in online interactions. Collaborating with a meal delivery company, we conducted a randomized field experiment that exploited exogenous variation in... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Customer Focus and Relationships; Performance Efficiency

13 Jul 2016
HBS Case

How Uber, Airbnb, and Etsy Attracted Their First 1,000 Customers

find first—the customer chicken or the service egg? “As a small company you cannot afford to focus on both with the same amount of effort. You may need to prioritize one side.” Preparing to teach a new... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Retail; Service; Transportation

2006
Chapter

Linking Customer Management Efforts to Growth and Profitability

By: Das Narayandas and Douglas Bowman

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Profit; Business Growth and Maturation

January–February 2020
Article

Are You Undervaluing Your Customers?: It’s Time to Start Measuring and Managing Their Worth

By: Rob Markey

Leaders recognize that they should manage their businesses to maximize the value of the customer base. But too often, earnings pressures result in cost-cutting measures that hurt customers.

Loyalty-leading companies operate differently. They create systems for... View Details

Keywords: Customer Experience; Customer Value; Customer Centric Initiative; Customer Focused Organization; Customer Lifetime Value; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Value and Value Chain; Operations; Business Strategy

26 Mar 2019
Working Paper Summaries

Mitigating the Negative Effects of Customer Anxiety Through Access to Human Contact

Keywords: by Michelle A. Shell and Ryan W. Buell; Health

September 2018 (Revised March 2019)
Case

National Australia Bank: Looking Out for the Customer

By: Mark R. Kramer and Hugh Foley

After learning that most defaults were due to health, job or marital problems, National Australia Bank revised its debt collection department to shift from penalizing people in default to assisting them in developing a work-out plan, enabling more than 90% to meet... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Borrowing and Debt; Customer Focus and Relationships; Success; Australia

May–June 2023
Article

Need for Speed: The Impact of In-Process Delays on Customer Behavior in Online Retail

By: Santiago Gallino, Nil Karacaoglu and Antonio Moreno

The impact of delays has been widely studied in various offline services. The focus of this study is online services, and we explore the impact of in-process delays—measured by website speed—on customer behavior. We leverage novel retail and website speed data to... View Details

Keywords: Online Retail; Quasi-experiments; Abandonment; Synthetic Control; E-commerce; Internet and the Web; Consumer Behavior; Policy; Retail Industry

Article

The Business of Business Schools: Restoring a Focus on Competing to Win

By: Robert Simons

As business leaders worry about the decline of American competitiveness, business schools are responding by changing their curriculums. But are the topics and approaches taught in today's business schools part of the solution or part of the problem? In this paper, I... View Details

Keywords: Business Schools; Purpose Of Business Schools; Management Education; Business School Curriculum; Strategy Execution; U.S. Competitiveness; Capitalism; Management Profession; Innovation; Competing To Win; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Trends; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decision Making; Design; Business Education; Curriculum and Courses; Innovation and Management

Read Now

1997
Simulation

Managing Customers For Profits - Interactive CD-ROM Simulation

By: N. Narayandas and Steve Peterson

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Profit

22 Feb 2021
Book

Reaching Today's Omnichannel Customer Takes a New Sales Strategy

because sales tasks are determined by a firm’s business strategy and its choices about which customers to focus on. In turn, selling behaviors are affected by your control systems and culture as well as whom... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

Forthcoming
Article

Mitigating the Negative Effects of Customer Anxiety Through Access to Human Contact

By: Michelle A. Kinch and Ryan W. Buell

Prior research in social psychology has shown that when people feel anxious, they seek advice from others. However, companies that operate in high-anxiety settings (like financial services, health care, and education) are increasingly deploying self-service... View Details

Keywords: Anxiety; Self-service; Empirical Operations; Behavioral Operations; Communication Technology; Behavior; Customer Focus and Relationships; Trust; Satisfaction; Financial Services Industry

Article

How Direct-to-Consumer Brands Can Continue to Grow

By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Daniel Corsten, Matt Higgins and Leonard A. Schlesinger

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands such as Allbirds, Casper, Peloton, and Warby Parker have creatively found a weakness in the marketing citadel of incumbent brands. By using data gleaned from daily interactions with customers, these brands have been able to adapt how... View Details

Keywords: Direct-to-consumer; Customer Journey; Business Model; Customer Relationship Management; Growth and Development Strategy

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August 2009
Case

The TSMC Way: Meeting Customer Needs at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

By: Willy C. Shih, Chen-Fu Chien, Chintay Shih and Jack Chang

When L.C. Tu receives an emergency order, he is confronted with a range of production scheduling choices, each of which has unique costs and trade-offs. The case was designed to help students understand job-shop style production and the impact of disruptions and... View Details

Keywords: Disruption; Customer Relationship Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Cost; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Production; Semiconductor Industry; Taiwan