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Navan Chamber would like to thank Joseph Daly and the team at Fidentia-Norwalk for providing these book reviews. Fidentia-Norwalk can be contacted via their website, www.fidentia-norwalk.ie
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Book
Title: Angel Customers & Demon Customers
Author: Larry Selden and Geoffrey Colvin)
Publisher: Penguin Books, 2003
Review Date: 02/22/2006
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About
the Book:
consistently creating the most profit and which are losing them money.
The oldest myth in business is that every customer is a valuable customer. Even in the age of high-tech data collection, many businesses don't realize that some of their customers are deeply unprofitable and that every euro of business they do with them is costing them money. For many firms it is typical that the top 20 percent of customers are generating almost all the profit while the bottom 20 percent are actually sucking a large proportion of the profits out of the business. Managers are missing tremendous opportunities if they are not aware which of their customers are truly profitable and which are not. Company profits and ultimately, the market value of the business can be allocated back to individual customers and customer groups.
Review:
Conventional wisdom holds that the customer is always king (or queen), but not all customers are created equal, write authors Selden (a consultant) and Colvin (a Fortune editor-at-large); in fact, some may be hurting your business (e.g., people who phone customer service lines thousands of times in a single year). So, they argue, it's smart strategy to figure out which customers are most valuable to you, and to lavish your attentions on them. The authors point out a number of companies that are reorganizing how they operate, like Best Buy and Toronto-based Royal Bank. The tone is exceedingly businesslike; sans colourful narratives or rhetorical flourishes, the authors march stiffly through the points they want to make. It's unclear sometimes how behavior should be altered by this philosophy: should you, for example, refuse to do business altogether with unprofitable customers? But the book's central thesis manages that rare mix of being both surprising and eminently reasonable.
According to Larry Selden and Geoff Colvin, there is a way to fix this problem: manage your business not as a collection of products and services but as a customer portfolio. Selden and Colvin show readers how to analyze customer data to understand how you can get the most out of your most critical customer segments. The authors reveal how some companies (such as Best Buy and Fidelity Investments) have already moved in this direction, and what customer-centric strategies are likely to become widespread in the coming years.
From Publishers Weekly.
About the Authors:
Larry Selden is professor emeritus of finance and economics at Columbia University Graduate School of Business, a prominent consultant, and a tax adviser to senior executives in many industries.
Geoffrey Colvin Fortune Magazine’s senior editor at large, is co-anchor of Wall Street Week with Fortune on PBS, the most widely viewed business programme on American television.
Fidentia-Norwalk Opinion:
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