The Connected Company

The best way to acquire new customers is to engage existing customers.

Service networks thrive by making a set of complementary services more easily available to customers.

Service quality is the difference between that purpose (what customers expect) and your performance (what they get).

This works for McDonald’s because they have narrowed customer expectations to match a factory-like service.

Products aren’t just things. They are servants.

Walmart dominates retail by relentlessly focusing on price-sensitive customers. Everything in Walmart’s culture is focused on squeezing one more penny of cost out of their operations, and sharing those cost savings with customers. Much smaller retailer Nordstrom has only 2% of Walmart’s revenue, but generates higher profits by focusing on customers

Good profits come from creating value for customers. Bad profits come at the expense of happy customers and long-term sustainable growth. Bad profits come from customers who are locked in, who feel trapped or abused. Bad profits come from nuisance fees, like airlines charging extra for checked baggage, car rental companies charging $10 per day for

A company can’t create value on its own: value is only created through exchange. The customer must participate in defining and determining that value.

What the market requires is not incremental improvement, but order-of-magnitude increases in performance. Are you ready to respond to these rising expectations?

But while accidents can create a lot of opportunities, you will learn more, and have more happy accidents, if you are pursuing a goal.