Re-defining the C in CRM: community relationship management

Interesting presentation by Andrew McAfee on Enterprise 2.0

2009-08-06T07:21:00.000-07:00

The Evolving Web In 2009: Web Squared Emerges To Refine Web 2.0 [Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 Blog]

2009-07-01T07:50:00.000-07:00

The Evolving Web In 2009: Web Squared Emerges To Refine Web 2.0 [Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 Blog]

I'm starring in one of our solution movies (dutch)

2009-06-29T06:54:00.000-07:00

Taking the leap: Social Business Design : Enterprise 2.0 Insights and Strategy | Socialwrite.com

2009-06-26T03:54:00.000-07:00

Taking the leap: Social Business Design : Enterprise 2.0 Insights and Strategy Socialwrite.com

The Social Web and Global Account Management

2009-06-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

Last Friday I attended the inaugural address of Prof. dr. George S. Yip on ‘Managing Global Customers’. Prior to the inaugural representatives of Shell, KLM Air France, TNT Express and Unilever presented their approaches to global account management. It was a very interesting afternoon.

What is Global Account Management (GAM)?

In essence, these are programs designed to serve global accounts. According to Yip ‘multinational companies need to manage their relationships with multinational customers in a globally integrated approach’ (p.5) During the event various perspectives and theories were discussed.

During the event it became clear that one of the key dilemmas for multinationals is balancing between local autonomy and global integration. For example, how much autonomy do local sales organizations have to negotiate pricing and delivery conditions? During his address Yip gave an interesting example of a local subsidiary in Australia that, eager to close a deal with a customer, made a significant discount to a multinational customer. Of course, HQ was not involved in this local deal, but the implications were enormous. The main responsible for purchasing at this customer then made a call to the corporate account manager saying thank you for the significant savings. The account manager, having no information on this local deal, acted surprised. The customer explained to him that under the current agreement the local price was applicable worldwide. This meant that an individual local deal resulted in that the local pricing agreement, i.e. the discount, was globally applicable. In this example, local autonomy resulted in globally reducing priced prices. According to Yip, this was one of the key drivers for this multinational to initiate a global account management program.

During this day various approaches to GAM programs were introduced. The approaches different in the extent to which power and autonomy is transferred from local to global. The form which has the most power locally is the ‘coordination GAM’ - ‘the national sales organizations retain a great deal of power’. On the other hand the form which provides most power globally is the ‘separate GAM’ – ‘In this approach a supplier creates a separate business unit with total responsibility for global accounts’ (Yip & Bink, 2007, Harvard Business Review, September 2007, p. 110)

Diamond and bowtie relationship models

‘Customers love global account management programmes. The key is to get your organization aligned behind them.’ (Bart Logghe, Senior director of the international retail board, Royal Philips Electronics)

The above quote was taken from the book written by George S. Yip and Audrey J. M. Bink ( Managing Global Customers: An Integrated Approach‎, 2007, p. 68) It addresses the need to align the organization with the GAM approach chosen. During his inaugural Yip addressed two approaches, namely the bow-tie and the diamond model:

‘In a traditional sales-purchasing situation, the structure of the relationship between the two companies resembles a ‘bow-tie’ with all the activity within one company leading to one person who has contact with the other company (account manager at the supplier and purchasing officer at the customer). The integrated approach advocates a more integrated relationship structure that resembles a web or diamond shape in which employees from many different departments and functions have a direct relationship with each other and relevant people within the other company, as illustrated in the figure below’ (Yip, 2009, ERIM p. 27)

Key challenges of the diamond relationship model

This diamond relationship model is quite interesting. It not only addresses a communication and collaboration challenge, but also a compliance and control challenge:

How to facilitate better communication by giving all local and global stakeholders real-time access to relevant customer information based on a single source of truth? In many organizations customer information is scattered in many different systems.

How to improve the way employees from local autonomous subsidiaries are working together with their coworkers in global account management roles? For example, how do local and global roles work together in responding to a tender.
How to promote compliance with internal (global / local) policies and external regulations? You want to avoid cases such as the Australian subsidiary above.
How to establish more control over GAM processes and related key indicators? (growth of margins, turnover, quality of relationship, payment behaviors, etc.)
During the day TNT Express discussed that they were using electronic workflow systems to unify everyone involved in for example a tender or a proposal. It shows that new technologies can facilitate GAM coordination models.

GAM from a customer intimacy point of view.

In addition to the presentation of Yip’s empirical work on GAM programs, the day offered a lot of views from the field. TNT Express, for example, presented their GAM approach and its evolution in the last years. Currently, TNT Express identified about 130 global accounts served by a dedicated group of 130 individuals in sales and sales support jobs. It fits the profile of a ‘coordination GAM’. Hugo Koppelaars, director of Solutions & Commercial at TNT Express addressed the fact that a GAM is all about people. Having the right people to execute a GAM program is key.

Earlier I defined customer intimacy as people collaborating in a structured and customer centric way to create customer value and achieve results. This definition can surely be applied to a GAM, to quote from the Shell presentation: ‘It is about making the pie bigger, not about slicing or dividing the pie’. In essence, a GAM should deliver both customer value and achieve results for the supplier.

One of the distinguishing elements in my definition is that customer intimacy is about people, and not necessarily about organizations. It is ultimately about people who build bonds and relationships with each other. The diamond model seeks to facilitate relationship building between various people from a supplier and customer. However, it seems that there is little information on how to evolve from a bow-tie relationship to a diamond relationship model.

Towards a social GAM perspective?

Social networks such as Facebook, Hyves, Twitter and Linkedin provide new ways for people to stay in touch with each. One of the key strengths of these social networks that they enable people to stay in touch with a level of regularity and intimacy that previously was not possible (see also earlier post).

Applied to GAM: Given that the success of the GAM depends on how people work together and form relationships, a GAM that leverages social networks outperforms GAMs that do not leverage social networks. In other words, a GAM that is built on a social network is more likely to be successful.

Social networks also facilitate innovation. A nice view is that of McAffee: 'Weak ties are sources of innovation, they are ways for you to get introduced to people who you would not know otherwise'. (see also earlier post on the strength of weak ties)

Applied to GAM: A social diamond model in which people can form both strong and weak ties among each other outperforms a relationship model in which people have only strong ties among each other.

Social networks have the potential to resolve problems in communication and collaboration. These are just two example of how social networks can potentially add value.

What about the compliance and control challenge? In order to execute a GAM program a supplier designs processes and assigns the right people to deliver on these processes. The supplier also makes choices in how to approach this GAM program (high local autonomy vs. high global integration) GAM processes also must have a degree of uniformity and measurability to maintain control over the process. In today’s connected world a large variety of solutions exist to get internationally distributed teams organized quickly. These can be customer relationship management tools or solutions focusing on business process automation.

The examples listed in this paragraph hopefully provide food for thought on how social networks can ‘make the pie bigger’ for both the customer and the supplier.

Video: Highlevel of the Five Eras of the Future of the Social Web

2009-05-08T00:10:00.000-07:00

Executive Social Marketing Bootcamp

2009-05-07T05:24:00.001-07:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Executive Social Marketing Bootcamp

View more presentations from David Alston.

Social Media the five-year forecast

2009-05-05T01:42:00.000-07:00

An interesting article on DestinationCRM.com titled "Social Media: The five-year forecast" I especially liked the following section:

"CRM solution providers such as SAP and Salesforce.com are quickly adapting to the demand for social relevance, the report says, by partnering with social-networking vendors and integrating application programming interfaces (APIs) that tap into public social data, such as Twitter feeds and Facebook profiles. Wherever possible, Owyang observes, vendors are working to establish "connective tissues" with communities. The networks themselves have the potential to transform into CRM systems. "They have the relationships -- people connecting to each other -- even sales and brands," Owyang says. "The piece missing is management. That's what's going to come next." Should Twitter, for example, offer tools for analytics and lead generation, the microblogging service could very well solve its quest for monetization, Owyang says"

Read the article here: http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/CRM-News/Daily-News/Social-Media-The-Five-Year-Forecast-53635.aspx

Customer service in the cloud: the Orange Service Community by salesforce.com

2009-03-23T01:32:00.000-07:00

'Real wisdom lives in the cloud. Web communities. Twitter. Facebook. Forums. Blogs. Google. The cloud is where customers are turning for service' Salesforce.com helps companies to be part of those customer service web communities. Have a look at their video: http://www.salesforce.com/servicecloud/tour/

Twitter in breaking news situations

2009-03-10T06:22:00.000-07:00

A newsitem on Dutch television on the usage of twitter in breaking news situations. It is related to the coverage of the flight crash at Schiphol. (unfortunately no subtitles)

Bezig met laden van deze DIK.nl widget.

Enterprise 2.0 and the strength of weak ties

2009-03-05T05:48:00.000-08:00

Andrew McAfee from Harvard Business School about Enterprise 2.0 and its impact on business and startups - at the talk the future conference in Krems, Austria.

One of the topics addressed is his view on the importance of weak ties, a subject on which he published earlier. I liked the following quote from this video: 'Weak ties are sources of innovation, they are ways for you to get introduced to people who you would not know otherwise'. It show that new technologies can indeed strengthen relationships between people in ways that previously was not possible.

Ambient customer intimacy

2009-03-03T02:23:00.000-08:00

Today I was watching a video on ideasproject.com. The video starred the social media innovator Laura Fitton and she raised the term ‘ambient intimacy’. The term, apparently raised by Leisa Reichelt, describes how new technologies, such as Twitter, strengthen ties between people in a way that previousely was not possible:

‘Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because of time and space conspire to make it impossible’ (http://www.slideshare.net/leisa/ambient-intimacy)

Yesterday I was impressed by the way Skittles.com embraced Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Youtube and Wikipedia. It is a strong example of how a brand puts social media at the forefront! I would like to call this ‘ambient customer intimacy’. It opens up new possibilities of companies to be more intimate with their stakeholders. Especially in the B2C domain social media tools open up new ways of keeping in touch with your customers.

Ambient customer intimacy refers to the ability to leverage social media in such a way that customer intimacy emerges bottom-up. Skittles, for example, just created the platform, or unified various social media surrounding their brand. By unifying these media under the skittles.com umbrella they are strengthening the relationship with their stakeholders. The large number of twitter feeds mentioning skittles is already an indicator that they strengthen the ties between people associating themselves with the skittles brand.

Ambient customer intimacy furthermore provides food for thought of re-examining the customer intimacy definition of ‘people collaborating in a structured and customer centric way to create customer value and achieve results’. Especially, the structured part: ‘Every decision or every contact moment should be governed by processes that are designed with a customer focus. These processes structure the way people work together and prevent that customer related decisions are out of sync with each other.’ This definition implies top-down governance and imposed ways of handling customer related activities. Ambient customer intimacy refers to a new dimension where structure is not governed top-down but is facilitated by the community.

Any other examples of companies with an ambient customer intimacy?

Ted talk: Evan Williams: How Twitter's spectacular growth is being driven by unexpected uses

2009-03-02T00:29:00.000-08:00

The cornerstones of the recession proof enterprise

2009-02-26T07:21:00.000-08:00

Recession proof enterprises focus on Customers, Cash and Cost
The other day I heard the CEO of Akzo talk about the 3c’s that mattered most in challenging times: Customers, Cash and Cost. One of the key questions, however, how to execute and re-align your organizational processes to these 3C’s? In practice a large number of organizations are organized in silos that prevent effective collaboration and thus reaching cost efficiencies or customer centric actions. Recently, a book was published that provides a good read on this topic. It was written by David Aaker (2008) titled ‘spanning silos’.

Recession proof enterprises talk to customers
‘If you’re in management, you need to leave your office right now, put down all the reports and slides, and go talk to your customers. If you’re in B2B, talk to your customers’ customers. Get out from inside the battle and see the conflict from a different perspective.’ (http://www.chrisbrogan.com/how-to-win-in-a-recession-like-a-ninja/) This quote was taken from a recent blogpost on how to win in a recession like a ninja.

Recession proof enterprises focus on customer intimacy
In an earlier post I addressed customer intimacy as an effective recession proof strategy. I defined customer intimacy as people collaborating in a structured and customer centric way to create customer value and achieve results.

Recession proof enterprises focus on Communication, Collaboration, Compliance and Control.
A few years ago I wrote a paper on the arrival of new technologies that have a promise of improving the way people work together and structure their processes. These new technologies were enabling new ways of working and structuring processes in way that was previously not possible.

One of the key ideas behind this paper was to step aside from functional silos but to provide cornerstones to get organized around processes. In order to align people and achieve results one must take the following into account: communication, collaboration, compliance and control:

Facilitating better communication by giving all stakeholders real-time access to relevant information based on a single source of truth.
Improving collaboration by integrating business processes throughout the value chain
Promoting compliance with internal policies and external regulations via highly standardized and transparent systems
Establishing more control by providing real-time access to key performance indicators at the push of a button

Communication, collaboration, compliance and control

2009-02-26T05:44:00.000-08:00

Organizing the Enterprise 2007

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Business Research project security

Long Tail Business Models

2009-02-10T04:28:00.001-08:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Long Tail Business Models

View more presentations from Alexander Osterwalder. (tags: innovation design)

How to gain and retain customers effectively in challenging times

2009-01-15T10:32:00.000-08:00

Customer intimacy as recession proof strategy

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: e-mail marketing)

E-mail marketing as a key instrument for gaining and retaining customers

2008-12-22T03:59:00.000-08:00

Two key benefits of e-marketing

According to Jim Sterne e-mail marketing has two great benefits in the domain of cross-channel marketing. The first is measurability. E-mail marketing tools give insight in the type of actions recipients make, for example whether e-mails were opened or not or the number, whether the e-mails were forwarded, or resulted in a click-through to a particular landing page. The key strength is that every action or type of behavior is measurable.

The second major benefit of e-mail marketing, he argues, is testability. In his view e-mail becomes the major testing ground to test ideas and messages broadcasted to various different segments. By sending different messages to different audiences and then measuring the responses one learns which messages are more appealing and effective. The measured responses can then used as a basis of decision-making what messages to deliver to which audiences. E-mail marketing thus can help to make informed decisions which channels to allocate marketing budgets.

New business and customer retention

What is the value of a single e-mail address? What is the value of someone to opt-in? According to Jim Sterne e -mail marketing is not about generating traffic to a particular landing page. It should focus on answering the question what happens after target audiences visited the landing page: do they become loyal customers? In his view e-mail marketing should play a role in increasing customer loyalty and thus in growing Customer Lifetime Value. Key objective is to get valuable customers opting in your e-mail marketing campaigns. Testing and measurement are two key benefits that enable companies to get insight in how to allocate marketing budgets.

See video below:

The impact of social-networking tools on CRM processes.

2008-12-18T07:33:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I had a chat with a colleague on the exposure of brands via twitter. I referred to him that tweets can be shared and can be made transparent to anyone interested in your company. For example, check out http://tinyurl.com/4qedjj It is very interesting to get a reality check on customer experiences.

One of the key challenges for companies is to channel customer feedback posted in the various communities back into their organization. Employees should be exposed to signals and be active participants in the various channels.

The challenge was also mentioned in a recent Gartner report covering the impact of social computing on CRM processes; ‘As we approach 2009, social networking has begun adding another dimension to the customer experience. To a greater extent than ever, customers are forming opinions, seeking information, sharing experiences and creating content on social-networking sites that are outside the enterprise's control. The customer experience is entwined tightly with the organization and its employees, but the sharing of these experiences is largely, and for some enterprises entirely, outside of their control.’[1] Gartner.

[1] The Business Impact of Social Computing on CRM Processes – Gartner – 11 September 2008 – ID number: G00161100

Customer intimacy as a recession proof strategy

2008-12-17T02:43:00.000-08:00

‘Doing business is to differentiate yourself’. This quote was posted on our company blog[1] by an entrepreneur. One way of doing this[2] is to adopt a customer intimacy strategy. Companies adopting such a strategy ‘build bonds with their customers; they know the people they sell to and the products and services it needs’[3].

In this post it is argued that if businesses successfully execute a customer intimacy strategy they are more likely to survive the current economic downturn. The rationale behind this argument is that in challenging times companies need to focus on customer retention and satisfaction. Many companies, however, are unable to align their internal communication and collaboration processes with such a focus. In this article we provide food for thought on how to successfully execute a customer intimacy strategy in a business-to-business market space. Successful execution, it is argued, depends on the degree by which all people interacting directly or indirectly with a customer are able to work together effectively.

A customer intimacy strategy will furthermore provide companies with a more cost effective way to improve margins. In general, new business marketing campaigns see lower conversion ratios than campaigns targeted at existing customers. It is not strange therefore that in challenging times deep sell and cross sell strategies are becoming more popular.
In the next sections we adopt our own view on customer intimacy and elaborate further on this topic from a sales manager’s point of view.

Customer intimacy defined

In our view customer intimacy is about people collaborating in a structured and customer centric way to create customer value and achieve results. In the next sections we seek to motivate our definition.

It’s about people and communities
A distinguishing element in our definition is that customer intimacy is about people, and not necessarily about organizations. It is ultimately about people who build bonds and relationships with each other.

One can argue that organizations are also relevant. So why not adapt an organization perspective? In order to answer this question we build upon a simple assumption. Larger organizations are typically structured in silos[4]. These can be for example functional silos (e.g. marketing, sales, customer service, production, finance, HR) or geographic silos (e.g. subsidiaries in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Sweden). Members of these organizational silos interact with the customer. However, in many organizations these silos prevent effective customer centric behavior. One of the reasons is that the tools used by these departments to capture customer insight are also siloed. In other words, customer information captured by sales using as sales force automation tool are only visible by sales, complaints expressed by a French customer are only visible to customer service in France and accounts receivable information is only visible to F&A.

How to align people in a customer centric way? A community perspective could be useful to answer this question. Online communities essentially provide a way for people to organize themselves around a particular subject. Customer-centric communities therefore provide a way for people to organize themselves around customer related issues. Members of customer centric communities can consist of anyone who’s in touch with the customer. Insight is achieved because the interactions, the decisions made and the information produced are captured centrally and are shared collectively. Any member can not only re-use the knowledge captured in the past but can also leverage the social network around this customer to tackle specific issues.

It’s about collaborating in a structured and customer centric way
Another key element of our definition is that people work together in a structured and customer-centric way. Every decision or every contact moment should be governed by processes that are designed with a customer focus. These processes structure the way people work together and prevent that customer related decisions are out of sync with each other. Keeping people and processes in sync with each other ensure that every individual decision or activity contributes towards creating value for the customer.

It’s about creating customer value and achieving results
The last element addresses the common objective of creating customer value and achieving results. The goal of value creation for customers seeks to improve customer retention and loyalty. However, one should also take the contribution of your customer in the company’s profitability into account. There are costs involved in acquiring prospects or retaining customers. It is essential to understand how much customers are worth to you[5]. Customer value, for example, can be calculated as follows: ‘customer Lifetime Value = (Customer Acquisition cost + Contribution to your Profit - Customer Retention cost)’[6]

Executing a customer intimacy strategy: a sales manager’s perspective
Let’s suppose you are a sales manager. How will such a strategy affect your day to day activities? As a sales manager you are under constant pressure to bring in business. In positive economic times this is already a challenging task with sales professionals scattered over various locations. Your accountability for sales performance (budget) of a number of locations (territory) and product/service lines requires you to complete all required sales reports and detailed documentation by weekly deadlines. Many calls and e-mails are required to gain insight in the quality of the sales pipeline. This is a huge effort for many organizations because sales forecasts are primarily constructed in many Excel sheets. However, in challenging times the pipeline is under pressure and you cannot afford to wait for weeks to gain insight in the quality of your pipeline.

One of the key questions therefore is: In challenging times, what type of actions can you take as a sales manager to meet your sales targets? The first three steps address potential quick wins by creating structure in the sales department. Steps four to eight address potential areas of improvement in aligning non-sales processes and improving the ways sales collaborates with other departments. And finally, the last step addresses the objective to leverage teamwork and customer-centric social networks to strengthening the relationship with the customer.

Step 1 Capture customer related information: Just ask yourself the following question: To what extent are customers suffering the consequences from sales and other professionals leaving the organization? When valuable knowhow leaves the organization customers may perceive a radical deterioration of the service levels of the organization. Simply because all customer history is stored in the head of the employee that left the organization. In any organization people will leave and new people will join. Key therefore is to make sure that all customer know-how remains the property of the organization and that processes are in place to empower successors to have a full insight in customer history. HR processes can contribute as well. By having optimally aligned HR processes with your customer intimacy strategy you empower sales management with finding and retaining the right sales professionals for the right territory.

Step 2: Control your destiny: Make sure that you can rely upon the fact that sales processes are executed uniformly. Prevent that your sales professionals act as lone wolves. Uniformly executed processes give you control of your destiny. Not only because you facilitate a more efficient working style, but also because you have a real-time insight in the quality of your pipeline. Furthermore, you can trust the sales related key performance indicators (KPIs) such as actual versus budget and forecasted revenue because they are the result of a uniform and transparent sales process. Examples include standard ways of working for managing opportunities, approvals of quotations send to customers, etc.

Step 3: set a KPI for customer contact frequencies: When sales professionals have to manage a large number of prospects and customers the risk is that some of these accounts are not receiving any attention. Wouldn’t it be great to have processes in place that trigger sales to have at least a visit or phone call every month?

Step 4: Control customer retention costs In challenging times the customer retention cost is also influenced by the risks a customer will or will not meet its obligations to pay his or her bills. Companies should always keep an eye on how costs related to customer retention affect customer value and the contribution a customer makes to a company’s profitability.

Step 5: Leverage complaint handling processes as an effective marketing tool: The following quotes emphasize the importance of complaint management: ‘Every company strives for increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty. But, without effective complaint management, it's only a matter of time before the seemingly sweet company-client relationship may turn sour.’ … ‘Complaints are at the core of customer relationships and retention. Businesses that develop an active complaint management program as an integral part of their Customer Relationship Management system will learn to thrive amid change. If customers are the lifeblood of a company, their complaints offer concrete opportunities to build a strong, loyal audience and to refine products and services. ‘ [7]

Step 6: Empower your sales professionals with tools that enable them to respond to customer facing issues and requests more quickly. How much effort is required to send a product sample or brochure to a customer? How many calls are required to initiate such an activity? Key is to provide sales the tools that can trigger such processes with a minimum of effort. Furthermore, sales should be triggered once the requested samples or brochures are received by the customer! Why invest in expensive marketing materials and product samples without any process in place to make sure that every request is acted upon by sales? One way therefore to improve the quality of the pipeline is to ensure that expensive marketing activities are followed upon by sales.

Step 7: Improve profitability by solving friction points in how sales and marketing can work together. According to Gartner companies can improve profitability by solving friction points in how departments and subsidiaries work together Companies that have vertically automated marketing, sales, customer service, finance and operations lose opportunities to improve profitability. Simply because these departments cannot collaborate effectively!

It is not strange therefore that a large number of leads and prospects generated by marketing are not acted upon by sales! Organizations needs to make sure that processes between sales and marketing are optimally aligned. Leads should be distributed to sales quickly and without any hassles. Sales should have continues insight in marketing campaigns or available marketing materials or product sheets to make compelling arguments to their customers.

Step 8: Build a community of involved people around your customer: Key is not only to get sales working together with other department. It is absolutely critical to gives sales full insight in any contact moment regardless which department. Can you imagine how many people interact with your customer? In order to answer this question I had a look at how many people interacted with a particular international customer. We served this client from multiple locations in the world. It was found that during a period of 5 years at least 300 people from various departments (sales, marketing, support, consultancy, finance, R&D, etc.) had some kind of direct or indirect relationship with this customer! Of course, only 20 percent of these people had more intensive contact than the other 80 percent that were mainly involved in particular issues, such as sending out an invoice. Key in executing a customer intimacy strategy is to make the relationships of the many people involved with this customer transparent to all others. By doing this people can easily find each other and address customer issues collectively.

[1] http://www.exact.nl/blog/mkb-voor-mkb/ ‘Ondernemen is jezelf onderscheiden’, R.E. Muntinga van Muntinga Koek
[2] The Discipline of Market Leaders, Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema; 1997: In this book three three different business strategies that successful companies can adopt to command leadership in their markets: these are operational excellence, product leadership or customer intimacy.
[3] The Strategy-focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment,By Robert S. Kaplan, David P. Norton, 2001, p. 87)
[4] ‘A silo is a tall, selfcontained, usually sealed cylinderthat often contains commodities’ … ‘A silo is also a metaphor for organizational units that contain their own management team and talent and lack the motivation or desirre to work with or even communicate with other organizational units’; Spanning silos, David Aaker, 2008, p. 2
[5] http://www.bnet.com/2410-13240_23-57055.html -‘ Customer lifetime value [CLV] is a way of measuring how much your customers are worth to you, over the length of time that they remain your customers.’
[6] http://www.curema.be/content/view/34/30/lang,en/
[7] Complaint Management: The Heart of CRM, Bernd Stauss, Wolfgang Seidel, 2005