Christian Grönroos, Hanken School of Economics Finland
Paul Viio, Hanken School of Economics Finland
A long-term selling approach requires a service approach. In order to avoid a price trap in sales negotiations, a value orientation can be taken. In this project adaptation of the sales process is developed such that it takes into account the customer’s level of buying readiness.
Lili Wenli Zou, University of Hong Kong
Chi Kin (Bennett) Yim, University of Hong Kong
Kimmy Wa Chan, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
It’s common knowledge that service is crucial to creating long-term relationships with your customers, but are there any special rules for business-to-business service providers? Do you treat all customers the same, or do they respond differently to services offerings based on individual perceptions and experience? Until now, research has paid little attention to service design in B2B relationships. But a new piece of research by Dr. Ruth N. Bolton, Vanderbilt University, Amy K.
Some companies responded to the cascade of threats and challenges of the past year by turning inward. The long game for those firms will be more exposure during future shocks because they learned little about their environment this time.
Edward Jones works with its clients to build portfolios that are based on client goals and timelines. Building personal relationships one at a time is at the core of the work of its 19,000 financial advisors for more than 7 million clients throughout North America.
At a Center for Services Leadership conference a year ago, board member Jonathan Leighton M.D. commented that complex forces were pushing the healthcare industry away from a relational focus to a more transactional model. For the Mayo Clinic, where Dr. Leighton and his administrative colleague Thomas Welch led the Office of Mayo Clinic Experience, that would mean backing away from the patient-first credo that the clinic has embraced since its founding. Instead, Mayo was taking steps to resist the shift.
When he talks to business leaders about risk management, Atul Vashistha says, too often he sees their eyes glaze. “There’s another expense I have to add to operations,” they think. Twenty years ago, companies could get away with this vision of risk management as a cost. Not anymore, Vashistha says. In the global economy, wide-aperture risk management and continuous monitoring equals resilience. Today, resilient risk management goes beyond cost to become a competitive advantage.
Written by Elizabeth Farquhar for the Center for Services Leadership
In 2019, author and lecturer Stan Phelps logged 155,000 miles on Delta, doing as many as four presentations a week, all in different cities. But in early March, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down conventions and business meetings along with the rest of the world, and Phelps was grounded.
Communications play a critical role in maintaining brand trust every day. Brands do this with customers much in the same way humans do with each other – through honesty, transparency, empathy, and by matching behavior to those values. During a crisis, trust is more important than ever, especially if the company provides essential everyday services.
Months before the U.S. woke up to the threat of COVID-19, Ron Zielinski was hearing about a new kind of pneumonia in China. Zielinski, who leads Global Customer Services for Coherent Inc., heard from one of his managers in Singapore in late December that there were some 12 to 14 of these cases in Wuhan. They agreed to keep an eye on it, he says, and “since then I feel like I’ve had a front row seat to this pandemic unfolding.”
