| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : JULY 26, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| BUSINESS WEEK E.BIZ -- COVER STORY
Gurus' Guide to Knowing Your Customer How do you harness the hurricane of information on the Net and elsewhere to get ahead of your rivals? Ask the gurus. Others sure are. From separate offices in Stamford, Conn., and Bowling Green, Ohio, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers are shepherding Net upstarts, as well as traditional companies, into a brave new world of E-commerce. They've written a series of hot-selling books--The One to One Future, Enterprise One to One, and this year's The One to One Fieldbook--with a simple message: The big winners will be those companies, like American Airlines Inc. and Dell Computer Corp., that best use the data they collect on constantly shifting customer tastes. ''It's a learning relationship that involves interacting with the customer, customizing, and then doing it all over again,'' says Peppers. That message is striking a chord: The pair do more than 400 annual seminars, workshops, and speaking engagements in places as far-flung as Turkey. Peppers and Rogers pinpoint two key advantages to cozying up to customers. First, by tailoring products and services to a buyer's every fancy, clients will become loyal, shunning the competition. Even better, as customers tell the company more about themselves, sellers can create new products that have built-in buyers. ''It's not just using the information I know about a customer to figure out better-targeted harassment,'' says Rogers. ''It's about figuring out what this customer needs next from us, when, in what form, at what price, and how.'' Now that's not just getting ahead of rivals, but customers, too. Click here for an online-only Q&A with Rogers and Peppers _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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