Where will your organization's survival and success begin? With differential service for your most valuable customers. But how do you get there? Where do you start? How do you identify your most valuable customers? And once you know who they are, how do you determine the service you'd like to give them-- service that keeps them with you for the long haul?

The answers lie in "Strategic Customer Care," a proven approach to recognize and build value into your relationship with your most important customers. Strategic customer care is the key to achieving sustainable and profitable growth in your business.

The good news is that most organizations recognize the importance of improving customer care-- the need to go beyond traditional customer service and to truly manage customers as assets. But the bad news is that only about 60f organizations truly understand the essence of customer care or apply its principles effectively.

"Strategic Customer Care "explains the three stages in the evolution of customer care and provides a proven methodology that any company can use to achieve Stage III customer care-- the most evolved and fully-integrated stage. Part 1 explains the three stages in the evolution of customer care-- what's involved in the process and what factors come into play at each stage. Part 2 provides you with the tools and steps you will need to implement the cutting-edge customer care initiatives that will bring you into Stage III of the evolution. Based not on mere theory, but rather on the best practices of today's successful organizations. Shows how to identify where your own company stands in the customer care evolutionary process, and keeps you moving forward towhere you want to be. Helps companies to determine the skills and technology they need to develop in order to become fully-evolved customer-focused organizations. Draws on extensive research collected from three primary sources: IDEAS '97, the seventh in a series of annual surveys designed to discover the best practices in customer care; the PricewaterhouseCoopers Customer Care Best Practices Database; and day-to-day client experiences. "Strategic Customer Care "focuses on helping you and your organization survive the ever-changing corporate and commercial environment, equipping you with tools of customer care that will bring you into the 21st century, feet set firmly along the path of evolution.

How to successfully apply the principles of customer care in any company

Most organizations today recognize the importance of improving customer care--the need to go beyond traditional customer service and truly manage customers as assets--but only about 6% apply its principles effectively. This book fully explains the three stages in the evolution of customer care. Readers will be guided through the process of acquiring customers, retaining them through segmentation and management of the relationship, and targeting their most significant marketing efforts to the most profitable segments. Shows companies how to identify where they are in their own evolutionary process Outlines successes and failures of companies, including Sears, CIBC, AT&T/Matrixx, Kodak, FedEx, and more