Informal Learning Flow is a content hub started by Jay Cross that collects and organizes the best information on the web around informal learning. We hope this will help you find good stuff, learn and stay current.

223 Articles match "customers","Harvard"

The Latest from Informal Learning Flow MORE
Integrating Ethics Into The Core Of Your Startups: Why And How
Harvard Business School professor Michael Beer researched the difference between companies that perform at high levels for extended periods and those that implode when they reach a certain size. Companies like Charles Schwab and US Bancorp were able to avoid the fallout by having a laser-like focus on customer service and on honesty and transparency. The company’s per-employee When I came to the U.S. in 1980, I was young and naïve.
TechCrunch - Saturday, March 20, 2010
READ MORE
Where Will Your Next Profits Come From?
Granted, changing fixed costs, overhead, or the way in which customers pay you is hard for incumbents. Dell Computer, for example, became extraordinarily profitable not just because it found a lower-cost way to make personal computers than its competitors, but because it found a way to get its customers to pay for the computers before Dell had to make them — thus assuring that it made only the computers that would be sold. Johnson is chairman of Innosight , a strategic How does your company make its money? I'll wager it's not in the way that you think.
HarvardBusiness.org - Friday, March 12, 2010
READ MORE
Toyota's Problems Start at the Top
They also knew that selling a second car to a customer was more important than the first. He is a former Editor of the Harvard Business Review and consults to organizations around the world. ...Tags: When I was a young consultant, my first (and at the time, only) client was a fledgling Toyota, which had only recently entered the American market in a big way. Back in the mid-1970's, in the wake of the first oil shocks , Toyota was an inspiring company battling for long-term growth and market share in a country that still viewed Japanese products
HarvardBusiness.org - Thursday, March 11, 2010
READ MORE
  • The Best from Informal Learning Flow MORE
  • The Real Secret of Thoroughly Excellent Companies
    am a customer for life. So he kept asking questions to different employee groups until he discovered that one of the dryers was broken and waiting for a custom part. That's twice as competitive as Harvard. Tags: Customers Leadership Organizational cultur At a well-known five-star hotel, I asked if I could extend my checkout time by two hours. I was told no; the hotel was full.
    HarvardBusiness.org - Wednesday, March 18, 2009
    READ MORE
  • What to Say to Customers (When You Don't Know What to Say)
    These days, with millions of jobs lost worldwide , and trillions of dollars of personal and business wealth vanished, it is easy to have the same reaction when communicating with customers. We have observed that good marketing conversations --those created through customer "touch points" such as advertising, sales people and call centers--are defined in many instances by the same attributes that make for good conversations in any setting. We've all had the experience. We see someone going through a difficult time and we just don't know what to say.
    HarvardBusiness.org - Thursday, February 19, 2009
    READ MORE
  • What Facebook's Stumble Can Teach Your Company
    See David Reed's site , or this business-focused article by my firm , or the Harvard Business Review article on the topic .) From the customer's standpoint, this means "Trust Us." A Mark Zuckerberg blog post seems to also say "trust us ." But the firms don't "trust" their user base. The user agreements we don't read, but do acknowledge, claim many rights to content, rights to remove content, limits on liability, binding arbitration, and unilateral ability to change the user agreement at their will - just to name a few typical clauses. Given my upbringing as a rapacious capitalist,
    HarvardBusiness.org - Thursday, February 19, 2009
    READ MORE
  • Pricing Strategies for the Downturn
    For example, there is often a segment of loyal customers who do not expect or need to be persuaded with a discount to purchase. And although there's no end of grumbling, customers can be surprisingly tolerant of across-the-board price hikes that they understand are related directly to increases in raw input costs such as fuel for airlines or milk for ice cream. This customer mindset makes it hard to raise prices later when times are better. I used to love the television game show " The Price is Right ." Beyond the insane level of excitement of the show was the oddly
    HarvardBusiness.org - Tuesday, March 3, 2009
    READ MORE
  • Did Mark Zuckerberg's Inspiration for Facebook Come Before Harvard?
    Interestingly, the stories we hear these days about Zuckerberg in popular media tend to follow a common sensationalist pattern: "super-smart kid invents a tech phenomenon from his Harvard dorm room, drops out, and changes the world." What's most intriguing about the Zuckerberg story we all know, however, isn't that he dropped out of Harvard and became a billionaire at 23. By now, we are all familiar with Mark Zuckerberg's success story. The explosive international growth of Facebook to over 200 million users continues to land the young founder and CEO in top news stories worldwide.
    ReadWriteWeb - Sunday, May 10, 2009
    READ MORE
  • In Simplicity We Trust
    In this program, the Zurich managers looked at every aspect of their business from the perspective of how to make it easier for the customer to understand, purchase, and renew life insurance. The results: In the first year, in the participating countries, sales increased by 7%, re-investment rates (buying new products when old ones mature) went up by 24%, and far fewer customers cancelled policies (all astounding numbers in a low-growth, mature business). Have you ever filled out an application form that was so long and complicated as to be almost unintelligible? Or one that
    HarvardBusiness.org - Thursday, August 27, 2009
    READ MORE
  • Solving the 'More with Less' Problem
    Last week's post described my negative experiences with companies that appeared to be cutting down on customer service. This means any cost-cutting effort must start with a deep understanding of the customer, the job they are trying to get done, and the metrics by which they measure performance. For example, a recent Harvard Business Review article described how a cement company separated customers seeking strong concrete for support columns from I empathize with these companies. They face the tough challenge of figuring out what to cut as demand dwindles.
    HarvardBusiness.org - Wednesday, February 4, 2009
    READ MORE
  • What Were the Credit Card Companies Thinking?
    Is it just me, or is there something fundamentally weird about the idea that it takes an act of Congress to make credit card issuers spell out their terms in plain English and treat customers fairly? In case you missed it, President Obama just called on Congress to stop card companies from abusing customers. In his weekly radio address he said , "[customers] have a right You think? The The only way we could have gotten to this point is if industry executives reasoned that the smartest strategy was to confuse and bleed their customers.
    HarvardBusiness.org - Wednesday, May 20, 2009
    READ MORE
  • 5 Ways to Keep Your Website Civil
    from Harvard University. Tags: Customers Internet Social medi I was expecting a little more discussion of the slap between Fiona and Micheal...We We all know that he wasn't doing it to hurt Fiona, but to keep people from dying...Though Though again, I would have
    HarvardBusiness.org - Friday, August 21, 2009
    READ MORE
  • Apple Tablet Insights From Harvard Business School Faculty
    Four Harvard Business School professors offer their thoughts on this long-awaited and buzz-filled debut. Apple's staff had clearly thought through the vagaries of dealing with phone companies and alleviated this problem for customers. This singular focus on owning the customer experience, end-to-end, has separated Apple from its rivals, first in computers and now in consumer electronics. Excitement mounts as Apple CEO Steve Jobs prepares to unveil the company's newest product - its version of the tablet. Bhaskar Chakravorti Senior
    HarvardBusiness.org - Wednesday, January 27, 2010
    READ MORE