Creating Customer Value

This is a false dichotomy. My previous blogs on service-dominant logic tried to make this point in a broad, theoretical way. This post will try to give a concrete illustration of those arguments.

Let's consider two identical products created by two brand-new companies. One company launches the product with a technical sales staff and a prevasive marketing campaign highlighting the core features and functionality of the product.

The second company hires a sales staff focused on value-based selling and conducts a targeted marketing campaign focused on how the product meets the core needs of target customer.

Which company's product is more likely to have long-term success in the market? The second company.

Why? Because customers buy more than the product when they are buying a product. Customers buy value, and that value is NOT inherent in the product. It comes through the customer-centric service, sales and marketing around the product.

The second company realized that their product could only have value when it solved a customer need, so they targeted those customers and proposed the value to them. Customers can then accept the value propostion by acquiring the product. That is customer-centricity, and that is the ONLY way products succeed in the marketplace. There is no way to separate the two.
 

While Channel Partners are customers too, unlike the traditional customer, partners are able to provide a unique perspective. When it comes to Voice of Partner versus Voice of Customer survey research, consider these four differences:

1 - Many Channel Partners sell competing products and services giving them a unique perspective on what drives customer purchase decisions. Their input can help companies understand what causes a customer to purchase one product over another competing product.

2 - In a similar manner, OEMs can use partner input to understand what drives a partner to recommend one product over another.

3 - Many partners are combining an OEM's products with other products to deliver a complete solution. Having a better understanding of solution offerings, can be valuable input for the product group.

4 - Customers who purchase from a channel partner often go to the partner for support. Partners can provide a unique perspective on what is needed to support the indirect customer. This input can also be leveraged for serving the direct customer.

Corporate business strategy can benefit from insights provided by the channel. The partner perspective can be used to grow market share, enhance the product roadmap, and deliver an experience that both direct and indirect customers value.

If you are working to create a customer focused leadership position, consider including the perspective from all customer types.

Photo credit: stevendepolo

There is a saying (the only attribution I can find is that it comes from a fortune cookie!) that goes, “Though we cannot change the direction of the wind, we can adjust our sails.” With the uncertainty being thrown at us over the last few years, we have all had to make a lot of adjustments in our sails.

But, what adjustments do we make? What direction is the wind blowing? What direction will it blow?

There is no better compass for businesses than their customers. While simply asking them where you should go clearly sends the wrong message (a message of weakness), asking the right questions will help you find your way.

1.      Ask your customers where their business is headed. Who better to travel with than your customers? Find out what they think is happening in their markets and work together to address those markets.

2.      Ask your customers what challenges they are encountering. As the line from Jerry Maguire goes, “Help me, help you.” You don’t have to be quite that dramatic about it, but you get the idea. Nothing will endear you to your customers more than helping them solve their problems.

3.      Ask your customers what challenges their customers are encountering. Not only is this a good indication of pressures in the market, it will also allow you to add more value for your customer by helping them help their customers to succeed.

4.      Ask your customers where they are spending their innovation dollars. Are there any areas where co-creation might make sense? Working together in a successful initiative can create an unbreakable bond.

The real key is open communication with your customers about topics that will enable you both to adjust your sails and take advantage of the power created by the wind. Working together with your customers for the benefit of their businesses will have a dramatic and positive impact on yours.

We are all cutting costs. Have to. There is simply no choice for most companies because most companies are facing greater competition for lesser total demand.

One problem this can create is a set of competing motives in the area of change management. On one hand, austerity programs create the need for more change, change that creates efficiencies and, therefore, reduces overall costs. At the same time, many of these change programs require some resources to execute. And those resources can be difficult to find.

A simple example is in the area of customer support. We all know that not solving the customer’s problem on the first call is expensive. It results in follow-on calls, potentially other type of warranty work or, in the worst case, a lost customer. While additional, higher level contact center representatives may dramatically improve “first call resolution,” the cost of adding the additional resources can be a challenge sale.

I found this graphic in my “Strategic Planning—Keep” file. The copy I have is attributed to the American Productivity and Quality Center. It is a simple graphic that puts forth the theory that you need 5 ingredients for successful change and shows the impact of missing ingredients.

A shortage of resources will lead to frustration as your people try to accomplish tasks without the right tools. Pretty intuitive. In tough times, this barrier moves way up the list. This is the barrier that I hear about most right now as companies are trying to do more with less.

The best way out of this jam is to prioritize your resource needs and focus on the changes that will be the most visible to your customers. Internal tasks or resources spent on internal non-value-added initiatives might be able to take a back seat to your customers during these times. This chart is an oldie, but it is a good reminder of the necessary ingredients and what we should expect when we fail to include them all.

Customer strategists must anticipate all the twists and turns and ups and downs that can derail their customer strategy. This was the topic of my last blog, which encouraged customer strategists not only to create effective plans, but to anticipate the things that can derail them. Following up on that, here are three tools that can help keep you on track:

1. Have a good ROI statement. Nothing is more powerful than being able to show the value of your program with a succinct description of the return on investment. If a new executive arrives,  there is a reorganization, or budget cuts are looming, justifying your program in financial terms will be the most effective way to ensure you sustain momentum.

2. Show that customer information is being used. One of the sharpest arguments for inadequate customer strategies is that nobody takes action on customer insights. Smart customer strategists will make sure they track the way people in their company use customer insights. They build an infrastructure to show that people not only receive reports, but there is accountability and action that pays off.

3. Have great stories. The first two items appeal to the rational side of the brain. But there is an emotional side of the brain as well that can be much more powerful. People love to hear a good story about how an employee used customer insights to make an important decision that paid off. It could be an account manager who turned a strategic account around. It could be an engineer who implemented a cost-saving process change. Or, it could be an executive who shifted strategy to provide a competitive edge. Great stories stick with people.

As a customer strategist, if you experience these common items that frequently derail programs, be armed – have a good ROI story, show that people put customer insights to use, and have compelling stories that will showcase how the use of customer insights makes a difference in your company.

Patrick Gibbons
Principal, SVP

Are we or aren’t we headed for a double-dip recession? Hard to say, especially since most of us feel like we never left the first recession. So how about this premise: It doesn’t matter. For most businesses right now, demand is soft, business could be better. Forget what the economists think about the macro-situation; let’s all worry about our own businesses and get them headed in the right direction.

What can we do to deal with the current environment that is, at best, apathetic and at worst, slowing from lethargic to near dead?

1.      Be confident. I’m not crazy and asking you to be confident in leadership or government. I am suggesting we all be confident in ourselves and in the value we each offer to our customers. That confidence is contagious and we could use a heavy dose of viral growth in the feel-good arena.

2.      Focus on success. Focusing on avoiding failure is much like trying not to lose—it almost certainly assures that you will. Look for ways to take advantage of the current market. Focus on positives and find the growth opportunities where you can.

3.      Celebrate wins. Don’t worry about the size of the wins, if you see some wins, call them out. Celebrate them. Get in the habit of winning. Constantly losing or underperforming tends to breed a culture or build a habit, even an expectation. Build an expectation of performance.

4.      Help your customers. First realize if your demand is not great, chances are your customers are hurting a little too. Can you help them solve some of their problems? That is what customer-focused companies do well.

5.      Co-create. Find ways to work together with your customers to identify the best way out of this bramble. There is no better time to innovate than now and no better partners than those you will be helping with your innovations.

6.      Partner with your best customers. Your best customers, those where the mutual value is the highest, are terrific sources of opportunity. If you are looking to grow your market share (after all, if the market is not growing you will have to take market share to grow), look first to grow your share of wallet within your best customers (those that view you as a partner.)

Double dip or not, there are ways for us to succeed in this soft economy. And guess what happens as one-by-one companies start to succeed? We dig ourselves out of this mess. Double dip? Maybe, maybe not. Long-term recession? It’s up to us.

When we are faced with uncertain times, the most important decisions we must make are centered around resource allocation. It usually boils down to answering this 2-part question: Where should we continue to spend (maybe even increase spending) and where should we cut back?

Different companies take different approaches, some going as far as cutting programs and resources that they admit are necessary to grow and succeed once we emerge from the economic funk we are in.

Let me propose a customer-focused approach to making these decisions. A quick clarification first: customer-focused does not mean do whatever the customer wants for whatever they want to pay. We still have to balance the needs of our business and our shareholders with that of our customers. But an approach that considers the customer and recognizes that the best way to succeed is to help customers succeed is a customer-focused approach. Your customer listening programs should give you incredible help in these decisions.

The areas in which we should continue to invest and perhaps even increase resource levels during tough times are those areas that are valuable both internally and to customers. Innovation is one of these areas…our customers are looking for new solutions and we need new solutions to grow. Innovation benefits us both and should probably continue to get resources. Initiatives that help us to deliver more value to our customers and therefore continue to realize reliable revenue streams are mutually valuable and need continued investment.

By contrast, some areas are important or valuable to neither our customers nor our businesses. You cannot cut fast enough in these areas. (Blogger note to self: any example you give here is going to hack off someone because you will be calling their efforts low value. Be smart for once and don’t go there. Better yet, create some crazy example that no one would believe. Nah, don’t be lazy, think up a real life example that is a good one…). John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems didn’t just cut in a low value area, he turned a low-value resource eater into a mutually valuable one. Chambers dumped private plane travel (no value for the customer, very little if any value for the company, high convenience value for the traveler) in favor of more frequent communication via Cisco Telepresence, putting Cisco’s product line in plain view of strategic customers. Kudos to Chambers for true Customer Focused Leadership.

Spending that is high value to the customer but low value to the company should be maintained unless it is actually detrimental to the company. In other words, low value might be acceptable if it is important enough to customers, but no or negative value is not. Same goes for spending that is of high internal value but not that valuable for our customers; maintain these areas unless they are of negative value to your customers (there are many items of no value to our customers—quality control, forecasting, accounting, bureaucracy—but necessary for our business. These are ok to maintain as long as they don’t hamper customer success. ). (Blogger note to self: Yep, you just had to go there.) These areas are important. But from our customers’ point of view, they are not value-added. Take quality control. We must deliver quality products or services and need quality checking to make sure that happens. But, customers expect it done or produced right, there is no value to them in terms of how you get there.

This model only addresses resource allocation and not individual performance. We still must deal with performance issues and look to increase the competence of our teams. After all, those teams deliver the value to our customers.

Before you cut, consider how many degrees away from customer success you are cutting. Lowering the value you deliver will start a cycle that has only a bad ending. Focus on your customer, think about your business. Find the areas that neither of you need and redeploy those resources into areas that neither of you can do without.

Most companies work very hard to identify new prospects and convert them into new customers, and that is necessary to continue to grow. But it is far from the only way to grow and often times it is not the easiest way to grow. It may not even be the way to find the best opportunities.

It reminds me of a story Mark Twain told about a man who stumbled out of a bar and lost his keys. He was on his knees under a streetlamp when a policeman approached and asked what he was doing. He replied, “Looking for my keys.” The policeman asked where he had lost them and pointing he said, “Over there in that alley.” When the officer asked why he was looking for them here, he replied, “Because this is where the light is.”

Many of our best opportunities exist within our customer base. Consider these challenges…

1.      Do you treat each customer like they are your only customer? While all customers are not created equally, all customers that you want to keep should be receiving your best stuff. If they are not, there exists opportunities to provide them more value and grow your revenue.

2.      Are you providing your customers with solutions to meet their needs, or are you focused on selling them what you have to sell? This is one of the biggest mistakes we can make. If you think you can “trick” customers into buying what you want to sell them, it’s going to be a long haul. On the other hand, helping your customers to succeed is a value proposition that sells.

3.      Are you listening to your customers to find opportunities? When we get into the mode of “I know what they want,” your relationship is destined to be short-lived. A partnering relationship is based more on the “How can I help you with that?” mode. If you have a customer listening or voice of the customer program in place, it should be designed to help you identify opportunities as well as issues.

Especially in these challenging economic times, focusing on your existing customers is a terrific way to grow your business and build lasting relationships.

Once again, Willow Creek Association put on a tremendous Global Leadership Summit last week. As soon as Len Schlesinger started his presentation, I knew I was in for a whirlwind of new ideas and different ways of thinking. As President of Babson College (ranked #1 business school for entrepreneurship by U.S. News & World Report); former Harvard Professor; and noted author, he is an entrepreneurial genius. 

In the 1990’s, he and his co-authors helped us better understand how to build profitability in a service business via The Service Profit Chain (1997). Per Harvard Business Review, the service-profit chain established relationships between profitability, customer loyalty, and employee satisfaction, loyalty, and productivity.

More recently, Len Schlesinger has been focused on using entrepreneurship in all kinds of settings to create economic and social value. His book Action Trumps Everything (2010) makes the case that conventional approaches to problem-solving don’t work as well in an uncertain world.

Instead, a very simple framework used by successful entrepreneurs can be more effective: Act. Learn. Repeat.

1)      Act: Take a small step forward.

2)      Learn: Pause to see what you have learned by doing so.

3)      Repeat: Incorporate that learning into what you do next.

At Walker, we know that taking action can be one of the biggest challenges faced by customer strategists. I suspect that is due in part to our tendency to set aggressive, stretch goals that may at times seem unachievable. This can lead to inaction. But, what if we didn’t try to solve world hunger from the onset? 

What if we make a decision to just do something that might have a small impact? 

1)      Act: Take a small step. 

2)      Learn: After taking that first step, see what customers think and say about it in your customer feedback program. 

3)      Repeat: Then, incorporate that learning into your action plan and take another step forward.

Do we make the idea of taking action more difficult than it needs to be? 

Kitty Radcliff
Vice President, Consulting Services 

The unthinkable has happened. The credit of the United States has been downgraded from the highest rating of AAA to AA+. This, of course, is not good, and it will put more pressure on all businesses as interest rates and general uncertainty rise. This also will likely create more government intervention, which generally tends to do more harm than good…our system operates based on natural balances that occur in a free market system. Government intervention, while always well intentioned and sometime theoretically sound, throws that balance off. And if this entry feels like déjà vu, you’re right…check out my blog entry a couple years ago titled, “Is the World Really Ending?”

So how does this crisis affect our customer relationships? Our relationships will be impacted in at least one way, two ways if we are customer focused.

First, our relationships with customers will be impacted by ways in which they act differently. Times like these make people more cautious, less likely to spend as freely, more likely to demand higher value and returns for the money they do spend. Procurement becomes more powerful which drives value out of proposed offerings. These dynamics put real pressure on customer relationships.

There is not much we can do to change their behavior. It is a natural reaction to uncertain times like these. However, there is much we can do about our own behavior and how we react to this new or exaggerated dynamic.

1.      Recognize that your customer is struggling and use your offerings to help them solve their problems. Not only is that the right thing to do, but it is also a clear demonstration of value. And when you can help them solve their problems, they will be much more likely to spend with you.

2.      Continue your efforts to really understand your customers so that you are in a position to add the value they are looking for. If you have a good customer experience effort underway, expand it. If you don’t, start one. It may seem counter to spend more, or there may be pressures to cut costs, but if there is one area that calls for more efforts during times like these, customer listening would be the area.

3.      Ramp up your efforts to build a real relationship…not a vendor/customer relationship, but a real partnership. Even if your customer is not currently in a position to purchase more from you, this effort will be time well spent. They will understand that you are in it for the long haul and not ignoring them while times are tough.

4.      Understand their situation and, if possible without harming your business, be responsive to it. Can you adjust your offering to address only their most pressing needs and reduce the price accordingly? Can you do that in a way that still allows you to be profitable and maintain a good relationship with them?

5.      Call on your good relationships to help you work with their procurement processes. With good relationships you have invested in over time, you may have built enough equity to get their assistance—chances are they are only slightly less annoyed with their procurement department than you are.

Yes, some of these may require resources during a time that companies want to cut costs and that might be tough. But your customers are worth fighting for. Customers are the only way out of this morass. Until customers are willing to spend more, growth will be somewhat elusive. We must invest in our customers and provide them the return they need to be successful. That, and only that, will drive your success too.

When we show customers and prospects The Walker Index, we generally get two questions:

1)      Can I invest in that index? The answer is no – the Index is a “virtual” fund made up of our publicly-traded clients. The purpose of the Index is to provide a tangible proof-point for why adopting a customer-oriented strategy makes good business sense. In this case, the focus creates the kind of financial outcomes that the market at large finds attractive, and therefore, demand for stock in these companies increases (which makes the price of the stock increase).[1]

2)      What explains the differential in the long-term value of the Walker Index vs. the broader market indices? Since its inception in 1994, the Walker Index has outperformed the broader market indices by anywhere from a factor of 6:1 to 8:1. What explains this? I believe the answer is that companies that have a true orientation toward their customers are attracted to working with Walker, which increases their likelihood of long-term success. 

This answer, however, is not very actionable – so, with the help of my colleagues, we conducted an assessment of the companies in the Walker Index across the six areas of world-class customer listening in an effort to better understand what steps companies can take to emulate the success exhibited by our clients. Over the next several weeks, I will share some data from that assessment and will conclude with some additional insights that we have seen in the data that we have tracked over the last seventeen years.

The first area that we will examine is the notion of Relevance and Alignment. The idea is simple – for an organization to have an effective customer listening program, there has to be a firm connection to the company’s strategic initiatives. This effectively cements the notion of customer centricity with the key methods and indicators that management will use to assess the firm’s success. This critical first step is what keeps a customer-focused strategy from becoming the management “flavor of the day;” moreover, it creates the imperative to pursue the discipline of Validation. We will focus specifically on validation in a future blog.

Relevance and alignment are commonly thought of across two dimensions – business issues and financial outcomes. I tend to think of these in a cause-and-effect manner – we link to business issues so that we can connect the rationale of the customer strategy to the core issues facing the business; if we are successful in addressing these issues, then the financial outcome will be the outcome we achieve. Common business issues might include:

1)      How can we more effectively cross-sell our product/service portfolio across our existing client base?

2)      How do we make certain that our new product initiatives are aligned with the needs of our customers (and can we foresee those needs even before our customers – and our competitors – do)?

3)      How can we improve our revenue forecasting capability in an effort to minimize variance in our anticipated financial results?

4)      What firms would be an attractive acquisition candidate for us (and how do we maximize our probability for a successful integration of the two firms)?

The financial outcomes are generally the outcome from addressing the business issue; common examples include:

1)      The level of customer retention (and the corresponding impact to the top- and bottom lines);

2)      Share of wallet and growth within an account;

3)      Average customer spend and breadth of the product/service portfolio that a typical customer purchases;

4)      Adoption rates of new technologies or products among existing customers and the impact on firm revenue growth;

How do the firms in the Walker Index stack up? Over 90% of the Walker Index companies have clear connection to the core business issues, and nearly three out of five firms have strong alignment to financial outcomes and the trend appears to be showing signs of continual improvement.

This focus on relevance and alignment clearly creates a "stickiness" that is a hallmark of world-class customer listening, as it provides a foundation upon which customer-centricity can nurture and grow, which leads to superlative financial performance. 

In my next entry, I will focus on the importance of Team and Resources in the customer listening process and will share how the Walker Index companies perform on that dimension.

Mark A. Ratekin
Senior Vice President, Consulting Services

• Client interactions - Walker clients shared their journey and best practices for leveraging customer, partner, and employee insights to create world-class outcomes. We heard numerous stories about individuals who have used the customer or partner perspective to drive change within their organization and generate a return on the investment.
• Roundtable discussions - Walker clients and Walker associates facilitated roundtable discussions on the topics of 1) strengthening channel/partner relationships , 2) engaging account teams, 3) leveraging the customer perspective for a competitive advantage, and 4) increasing the value of customer comments through text analytics.
• Six working sessions  - Walker consultants facilitated discussions and activities related to each of the six essential elements for world-class listening (see diagram for the six elements). Each session included a description of world-class and steps for getting there.
• Social time - There were several opportunities to network and interact with all of the attendees and to enjoy the Palm Springs destination.

In my last blog, I shared some evidence that suggests that customer sentiment is on the decline, which I hypothesized was a function of the economy. The bottom line was that left unchecked, this will become a self-destructive cycle that can have severely negative impact on the company and its employees. So, what can we do about it?

Here are five strategies that companies can pursue to ensure that they come out of the recession as intact as possible (and, possibly, emerge as an even stronger organization):

1)      Understand where you provide value, and invest in it – Companies that do not understand where they provide value will be tempted to make flat, across-the-board cuts in their budgets in an effort to control costs. This is terribly short-sighted – rather, they should analyze how (and where) they provide value relative to the competition and – perhaps more importantly – where they are spending money that creates little or no value. Once these areas are identified, invest in value creators and eliminate the non-value-added activities. Understanding these dynamics will provide more opportunity to do more with less without having an adverse effect on the firm.

2)      Reinforce your value proposition externally – We have never seen a client that cannot benefit from more (and better) communication with customers; this is particularly critical during challenged economic periods when customers are more likely to be frustrated and – at the same time – will exert price pressure.

3)      Use the strained economy to launch a product versioning strategy – A challenged economy may be the best time to develop a product versioning strategy – in other words, develop variations on existing products and services that provide another (generally lower) purchase point for customers. Some will balk at this – after all, it means, to some extent, cannibalizing your own customers; however, if the alternative is that the customers do not buy (or bargain so hard that they eat the margin of top-tier products), this does not serve the company’s best interest.

4)      Look for synergies via a strategic acquisition – Loyalty leaders experience greater profitability, less volatility in stock price, and generally greater stock value appreciation over time. These benefits are essentially magnified during a challenged economy, as less customer-oriented firms will likely struggle more. This position of strength may provide the financial wherewithal to pursue a strategic acquisition; however, we would caution firms against the temptation to absorb a weaker competitor simply to gain market share. The reason comes back to customers – a weak competitor will likely have greater flight risk among its customer base, suggesting the asset you are buying may not be stable. Our guidance – make sure you know what you are buying.

5)      Adopt a “we are all in this together” attitude – with both customers and employees – This is more of a communication strategy that can be done in conjunction with the prior three strategies – showing your employees that you know where you create value with reinforce what is critical to the firm (and will provide a clear line-of-sight on where the greatest opportunities for success are). The product versioning strategy reinforces to customers that you recognize the economic realities (and value them as customers), but it also re-frames the expectations around features, service levels, etc.

Starting with an understanding of what customers value (and how you can invest and differentiate on this value) will help to ensure that you are focused on generating the greatest return and can serve to focus employees on what matters most.

Employees should be mindful of how they fit into the picture; in the final blog of this series, I will discuss some strategies that will serve employees well in any economy (but particularly in a challenged economy).

Mark A. Ratekin

Senior Vice President, Consulting Services

A maturing industry is one that is moving from rapid growth to significantly slower growth. An industry is said to be mature when nearly all potential customers are already users of the industry’s products; market demand thus consists mainly of replacement sales to existing customers, with growth hinging on the industry’s ability to attract new customers and convince existing customers to up their usage. Consumer goods industries that are mature typically grow at the rate of the economy as a whole – under 5 percent.

Michael Porter outlined several strategic moves companies can make as the new competitive character of a maturing industry begins to take shape:

-          Pruning marginal products and models

-          More emphasis on value chain innovation

-          A stronger focus on cost reduction

-          Increasing sales to present customers

-          Purchasing rival firms

-          Expanding internationally

-          Building new or more flexible capabilities

One necessary ingredient to insure the success of any of these strategic moves is a complete understanding of the customer. Let’s focus on cost reduction for a moment. Take cost out of a highly customer-valued and positively differentiated aspect of your business and you could negatively impact revenue in one quick move. Sounds logical, but how many times do business leaders simply require costs to be cut equally across all parts of the business because it seems to be fair for all involved? The answer: far too frequently.

Consider acquiring a competitor. An acquired firm’s customer base can provide expanded market coverage if you can retain the customers after the acquisition. To increase your chances of success you want to know how strong the acquired customer relationships are and what customers are loyal to (products, salespeople, brand, service, etc.). Deep knowledge of the customer can not only help you make the buy decision, but will also serve as the touchstone for your integration plan.

So, for all of you plotting your next strategic move in a maturing market – how well do you understand the customer?

Here's an example of the difference in viewpoints as described by Evert Gummerson in "Service Provision Calls for Partners Instead of Parties" in the Journal of Marketing (2004). The traditional view of exchange would see a physician providing expert advice to a patient who would receive it and (hopefully) get better. A service-dominant view sees this interaction a little differently: "The physician provides expertise in certain therapies, but patients are experts of their own experience of a disorder. To arrive at a superior solution, doctors need interactions with patients, and patients must not only consume the therapies but also produce them by taking medication, exercising, and altering their lifestyles."

Suddenly, what could be seen as a unilateral transaction where success is dependent primarily upon the expertise of one party becomes a partnership. And the success of the interaction now depends on the expertise of both doctor and patient and a network of partners supporting both sides - medical schools, pharma companies, families, insurance, access to nutrition, lifestyle coaching, fitness centers, etc.

I'm still not sure of the full impact of this view on how we function as customer advocates except that it makes our role even more critical to company success. In fact, if this view is correct, then the only real competitive advantage a company has is in the way it understands, interacts and partners with its customers and partners to create value.

Troy Powell, Ph.D.
Walker Information