INTERFACE ADVANTAGE
Your monthly window into the front office revolution!
Friday, April 15, 2005
In this edition: - WHO KNOWS THE CUSTOMER BEST? BY JEFFREY RAYPORT
- Personalization Plus, Internet Retailer
- E-Commerce Gets Smarter, TechnologyReview.com
- Crowned at Last, The Economist
- Choice And Consequence, Bank Technology News
- The Digital Hospital, Business Week
- The Starbucks of Pharmacies? Fast Company
- Change Is in the Air, The Economist
WHO KNOWS THE CUSTOMER BEST? BY JEFFREY F. RAYPORT
Optimize, March 2005
Think of all the ways you touch your customers, offline and online. Those interfaces, as we call them, provide a moment of truth for your company every time a customer interacts with them. But the quality of the experience at the interface has implications beyond the immediate effect upon that particular customer -- whether they become loyal repeat purchasers or dissatisfied critics. As margins disappear, as competition rises, and as products and services face increased commoditization, that customer experience could be your competitive edge or it could be your worst nightmare. Companies that learn to manage their interfaces with their customers to put their best face forward find themselves with an advantage not easily overcome in today's marketplace. In modern companies, who takes responsibility for these disparate interfaces and touch points? Who ultimately ensures that the elements of complex corporate systems -- technology, marketing, processes, and R&D -- create desirable experiences for customers? - Read the whole story...
PERSONALIZATION PLUS
Internet Retailer, March 2005
As personalization evolves as a multi-channel technique, retailers are once again raising their expectations. Rather than lost in a trash bin, experts say, personalization has been lingering in a recycle bin, now re-emerging as a tool that will not only improve retail e-commerce, but change the face of retailing itself. - Read the whole story...
E-COMMERCE GETS SMARTER
TechnologyReview.com, April 2005
New technologies and ideas are allowing retailers to remove the wall between online shopping and in-store shopping, and to make the gathering of customer data both easier and more valuable. Advanced data-mining and Web analytics techniques now examine not just what you bought online but what you viewed, helping retailers design promotions that will entice you to shop online and in stores. These enticements will themselves arrive over multiple channels -- through magazines, regular mail, e-mail, the Web, and wireless transmissions to your car or shopping cart. - Read the whole story...
CROWNED AT LAST
The Economist, March 31, 2005
The claim that "the customer is king" has always rung hollow. But now the digital marketplace has made it come true. As this survey will show, the ability to get information about whatever you want, whenever you want, has given shoppers unprecedented strength. In markets with highly transparent prices, they are kings. The implications for business are enormous: threatening for some, welcome for others. - Read the whole story... (requires subscription)
CHOICE AND CONSEQUENCE
Bank Technology News, March 2005
The Internet and call center are the branch's remote and, at times, impersonal second cousins, but make them second fiddle at your peril. A customer's descent into automation hell can be the difference between a better relationship and a lost one. - Read the whole story...
THE DIGITAL HOSPITAL
Business Week, March 28, 2005
Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack, N.J., is one of the nation's most technologically advanced hospitals. Administrators have spent $72 million over several years building a sophisticated network that allows doctors and nurses to order prescriptions via computer, chart patients' progress electronically, and more. Thanks to dozens of different technologies that are layered onto the system, Hackensack is saving lives: Patient mortality has dropped 16% since 2001. - Read the whole story...
THE STARBUCKS OF PHARMACIES?
Fast Company, April 2005
Sadie Christianson graduated from pharmacy school in 2001, but her first job hardly felt like the 21st century. The regional pharmacy chain she joined hadn't implemented any technology to automate procedures, and Christianson spent much of her day counting out pills and double-checking her assistants' work for accuracy. A year ago, she took a job with PrairieStone Pharmacy, a Minneapolis-area startup. Now she works with automated devices that dispense the most often-prescribed drugs for her, and a rigid system of bar-code scanning helps assure her that her technicians' work is accurate. "I have at least a 100% increase in my interactions with customers," she says. - Read the whole story...
CHANGE IS IN THE AIR
The Economist, March 10, 2005
Get ready to change the way you travel. That is the message from Giovanni Bisignani, the head of the International Air Transport Association. He still wants you to travel by plane, of course, as 1.8 billion passengers did in 2004, and 1.9 billion will do this year. But with commercial aviation in a sorry state as a result of terrorist attacks, an economic slowdown, SARS, the Iraq war and high oil prices, he believes the best treatment for the industry is a strong dose of technology that could both reduce costs for airlines and make travel simpler and smoother for passengers. - Read the whole story... (requires subscription)
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