Premier 100: Align IT and your customers, Seybold says

Computerworld - RANCHO MIRAGE, CALIF. -- The customer is calling the shots, fueled in large part by the Internet, and companies must respond to that in order to grow their revenues, business consultant Patricia Seybold yesterday told attendees at Computerworld's Premier 100 IT Leaders Conference here.

Seybold, CEO of Boston-based Patricia Seybold Group Inc. and author of The Customer Revolution, said defining a common customer experience across a company's systems "is where the rubber meets the road." And, she added, businesses are beginning to wake up to that reality as executives realize they need to be able to answer questions such as how much it costs to acquire a new customer and how well their companies retain the customers they already have.

What Seybold terms the "customer economy" came into focus for her on the day that America Online Inc. and Time Warner Inc. announced their planned merger in January 2000. While New York-based Time Warner had five times more revenue than Dulles, Va.-based AOL, she said, AOL's value per customer, based on the market capitalizations of both firms, was more than twice that of Time Warner's. Part of the reason: "AOL had a deep relationship with those customers," Seybold said.

By 2005, Seybold predicted, companies will need to publicly disclose data about their customer growth rates and relationships. The way to prepare for that, she said, is by using a strategy that blends all contact points, such as call centers, retail stores and sales agents, into a unified system that can help companies build closer ties to individual customers.

Seybold also advocated that companies appoint a high-level executive to take responsibility for their "total customer experience" across product lines, distribution channels and interaction touch points. Later, pressed on this point by a conference attendee, Seybold said such a position shouldn't be "dictatorial." But, she added, it can help if a company has someone to serve as a "focal point" and establish internal benchmarks for customer satisfaction.

During an earlier panel discussion on customer relationship management software and other customer-related issues, Evelyn Follit, CIO at RadioShack Corp. in Fort Worth, Texas, said the electronics retailer had discussed the establishment of a "chief customer officer" job. But RadioShack rejected that idea in favor of sending a message throughout the company that each employee "should be waking up every day thinking about the customer," Follit said.

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