Turning shoppers into advocates: The customer focused retail enterprise

Every, well almost every, organization that I know of has a stated goal of "putting the customer at the center of the enterprise." Unfortunately, their decisions are not in line with this objective. Some think that making this promise and broadcasting it using slick commercials is going to do the trick. Well, this "my customer is stupid" strategy does not work over the long term. The simple ground rule of marketing is: customer acquisition costs are exponentially higher than customer retention costs. The more complex understanding among marketers is that our customers are sometimes our best sales force. In its extreme form, this adage takes the form of "viral marketing" as in the customer forwarding information about you to their friends circle who in turn do the same and so on. Customer service is a very simple concept that can produce dividend far in excess of the investment. Read the study>>