Publications

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

June 2023
Article

National Customer Orientation: An Empirical Test across 112 Countries

By: Ofer Mintz, Imran S. Currim and Rohit Deshpandé

Customer orientation is a central tenet of marketing. However, less is known about how customer orientation varies across countries and time. Mintz, Currim, and Deshpandé (Eur. J. Mark., 56: 1014–1041, 2022) propose a country-level construct, national customer... View Details

Keywords: Global Range; Customer Focus and Relationships

08 Aug 2005
Research & Ideas

A Balanced Scorecard Approach To Measure Customer Profitability

financial performance. Many companies have experienced profitless revenue growth. Scorecard measures of the incidence of unprofitable customers and the magnitude of losses from unprofitable View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan

July 2021 (Revised October 2021)
Case

Allianz Customer Centricity: Is Simplicity the Way Forward?

By: Eva Ascarza and Emilie Billaud

This case explores the tradeoffs between product personalization and simplicity as companies grow. The case presents an opportunity to understand whether and how each of these approaches enables and/or limits companies’ abilities to provide customer satisfaction while... View Details

Keywords: Simplicity; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customization and Personalization; Customer Satisfaction; Performance Efficiency; Strategy; Insurance Industry; Europe; Germany

Educators

25 Jul 2005
Research & Ideas

An Organization Your Customers Understand

payers. For example, an office assistant may order office products to be used by fifty people in a department and paid for by a central accounts payable facility. All these entities are customers. The advice to managers: "Look at all... View Details

Keywords: by Robert Simons

The Magic That Makes Customer Experiences Stick

The field of customer experience (CX) design — which aims to ensure that customers have positive touch points with companies while buying and consuming their products and services — has grown quickly in recent years. Research has shown that memorable experiences,... View Details

February 1982
Case

MCI Telecommunications Corp. (B): Customer Service Strategy and Organization

By: John F. Cady and Frank V. Cespedes

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Customer Focus and Relationships; Strategy; Telecommunications Industry

July 2003 (Revised April 2011)
Case

Singapore Airlines: Customer Service Innovation

By: Rohit Deshpande and Hal Hogan

The members of Singapore Airlines' (SIA) management committee needs to decide whether to cancel the implementation of the new lie-flat seats in business class after the effects of the global recession on the travel industry in September 2001. SIA was considered the... View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Management Teams; Brands and Branding; Air Transportation Industry; Travel Industry; Singapore

Educators

20 Dec 2017
Lessons from the Classroom

How to Design a Better Customer Experience

being ordinary, mediocre, and forgettable. That’s because many organizations tackle customer experience by relying on haphazard efforts, Thomke says, like brainstorming, trial View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Health; Entertainment & Recreation

July 2005 (Revised January 2011)
Case

Understanding Customer Profitability at Charles Schwab

By: Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez

Charles Schwab is transforming into a customer-centric organization. Central to this cultural and organizational change is the utilization of customer profitability at different decision-making levels. Examines several technical aspects of the ABC cost system, as well... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Motivation and Incentives; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Activity Based Costing and Management; Decision Making; Organizational Culture; Profit; Performance Evaluation; Budgets and Budgeting

Educators

November 2011
Teaching Note

Comfort Class Transport: Does Customer Service Need an Overhaul? (Brief Case)

By: Michael J. Roberts and Paul E. Morrison

Teaching Note for Product #4377. View Details

Keywords: Capacity Utilization; Supply ＆ Demand; Operations Management; Customer Service; Management; Demand and Consumers; Operations; Customer Focus and Relationships; Supply and Industry; Capital

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

13 Jul 2016
HBS Case

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

who have rides to offer. (Same idea as Airbnb, which connects people needing rooms with home-owners.) So to launch as a platform service, these companies need to find users on both the supply and demand sides. “Poaching View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Retail; Service; Transportation

February 2018
Article

Retention Futility: Targeting High-Risk Customers Might Be Ineffective.

By: Eva Ascarza

Companies in a variety of sectors are increasingly managing customer churn proactively, generally by detecting customers at the highest risk of churning and targeting retention efforts towards them. While there is a vast literature on developing churn prediction models... View Details

Keywords: Retention/churn; Proactive Churn Management; Field Experiments; Heterogeneous Treatment Effect; Machine Learning; Customer Relationship Management; Risk Management

01 Jun 1997
News

HBS Cyberposium Brings Online Future into Focus

Future of Retailing." Participants reported success in leveraging advanced technology to reach more customers and provide better service. Tuck Rickards (MBA '91), CEO of Virtual Emporium, an online shopping... View Details

Keywords: Meg Gardner

January 2024 (Revised February 2024)
Course Overview Note

Managing Customers for Growth: Course Overview for Students

By: Eva Ascarza

Managing Customers for Growth (MCG) is a 14-session elective course for second-year MBA students at Harvard Business School. It is designed for business professionals engaged in roles centered on customer-driven growth activities. The course explores the dynamics of... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Decision Making; Analytics and Data Science; Growth Management; Telecommunications Industry; Technology Industry; Financial Services Industry; Education Industry; Travel Industry

2016
Working Paper

More Effective Sports Sponsorship—Combining and Integrating Key Resources and Capabilities of International Sports Events and Their Major Sponsors

By: Ragnar Lund and Stephen A. Greyser

Organizations in the field of sports are becoming increasingly dependent on sponsors for their value creation and growth. Studies suggest that sports organizations (rights-holders) often fail to exploit the full potential of such sponsorship partnerships. The aim of... View Details

Keywords: Sponsorship; ＂Sports Organizations,; Case Study; Europe; Business Relationships; Collaborative Marketing; Value Co-creation; Relationship Portfolio Management; Value Creation; Cases; Marketing; Sports; Sports Industry; Europe

May 2011
Article

Think Customers Hate Waiting? Not So Fast...

By: Ryan W. Buell and Michael I. Norton

Managers typically look for ways to reduce wait time to increase customer satisfaction. New research suggests there's a better approach: showing customers a representation of the effort, whether literal or not, being expended on their behalf while they wait. (The... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Service Delivery; Consumer Behavior; Performance Effectiveness; Customer Satisfaction