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Operational Excellence, Meet Customer Intimacy

Harvard Business Review

Most organizations continuously strive to achieve operational excellence, but they spend less effort understanding customer needs — and few marry these two sources of customer value effectively. In 1996 Tesco adopted Toyota Production System approaches to take its supply chain operations to an even higher level.

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Understanding Customers Is Everyone's Job

Harvard Business Review

Creating products and services for market segments of one (" mass customization ") isn''t easy. The only way it can happen: marketing, IT, operations, and human resources functions must collaborate in unprecedented ways. They''re using tailored suggestions to drive customer loyalty. Collaboration Marketing Operations'

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What Apple, Lending Club, and AirBnB Know About Collaborating with Customers

Harvard Business Review

Creating models based on co-creation requires identifying the subset of customers with the right kind of brand affinity. These four types of customers represent different levels of brand affinity: 1. Transactors : These customers have no loyalty to your brand. Operate your new co-creative digital business.

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Standard Operating Procedures Can Make You More Flexible

Harvard Business Review

Most people think standard operating procedures are a strait jacket that limits their flexibility. They can actually make it easier to tailor customer experiences at low cost. The Cleveland Clinic cleverly uses standards to deliver operational consistency, reliability, and low cost. Customers Health Operations'

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How Location Analytics Will Transform Retail

Harvard Business Review

By capturing data on 15,000 visitors passing through the festival entrances and comparing it to customers who visited their restaurants two months prior to the festival and two weeks after, they concluded the festival resulted in 1,300 net new customer visits. Operations. We are in the Age of the Customer.

Retail 9