Where to Invest:
Customer Service or Service Quality?
In many cases we have seen suppliers with customer problems make the assumption that they need to have better, more empathetic customer service people and that will somehow fix the ongoing customer problem. Our experience has been that, only in rare cases will this investment-be it in training, hiring, whatever-- pay off.
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Managing Relationship Assets:
Survival in Shifting Markets Depends on Adaptability
By Brad Mitchell and Sallie Sherman, S4 Consulting
An unavoidable conclusion having advised American business over the last two decades: in a rapidly changing industry, firms need to keep a close eye on critical business relationships. The industries vary-manufacturing, financial services, health care and many others-but the shifting global economy creates similar challenges in all of them...
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The Termite Fable
A Relationship Management Fable
by Joe Sperry, S4 Consulting
In the remotest part of the African jungle, far beyond the cameras of National Geographic, there was a river valley clearing, within which lived a colony of termites. They were industrious insects, working twelve-hour days on their fifteen-foot-tall termite mounds, the architectural wonders of the jungle...