by Sam Klaidman | Sep 1, 2014 | Customer Value Creation
Definition of Customer Value We define customer value as the tangible and experiential (emotional) net improvements (benefits minus costs) to customer outcomes resulting from using or owning the supplier’s products and services, compared to all alternatives. You must...
by Sam Klaidman | Aug 25, 2014 | Growth
Every business has competition and even when your company sells its products, you still have competition for your after-installation services. While you think that your company provides the best services for its products, sometimes the best service organization is...
by Sam Klaidman | Aug 11, 2014 | Growth
Does this sound familiar? One of your contract sellers comes to you and says “The XYZ contract expires tomorrow and I have been communicating with the customer for 3 months. Now he tells me that his boss is on vacation for 2 weeks and he has to sign the requisition....
by Sam Klaidman | Aug 4, 2014 | Growth
A brief history of when to perform preventative maintenance When I started in Customer Service and service contracts selling, we always planned to perform routine Preventative Maintenance (PMI) in months 9 or 10 of the 12-month contract period. The reason was that we...
by Sam Klaidman | Jul 28, 2014 | Customer Loyalty
In the world of Customer Service and Support, services marketing and customer experience (CX) are individually very valuable (just like peanut butter and jelly). However, when they are combined into one coordinated effort, with the amount of each based on your...
by Sam Klaidman | Jul 21, 2014 | Growth
Service contract selling compared to selling products Let’s start by agreeing that the price and volume of your product sales are always high relative to your service contract sales. This is because service contracts are only sold to product users. And annual...
by Sam Klaidman | Jul 14, 2014 | Growth
In my post last week, I said that the #1 reason that customer service contract revenue is declining if “Your value proposition no longer works for your customers.” Then I had a vigorous discussion with Ravi Deva in the LinkedIn Warranty Innovations Group. Here...
by Sam Klaidman | Jul 7, 2014 | Growth
In my experience, for B2B, high tech businesses that have been selling contracts for a number of years, the typical service contract renewal rate is about 90%. This means that every year, 10% of your contracts are not renewed. Think about what this 10% means to your...
by Sam Klaidman | Jun 23, 2014 | Customer Loyalty
In most B2B service organizations, the key performance indicators (KPIs) are based on reducing customer interaction time or making money. The thinking is that short interaction time means higher customer satisfaction and less cost, which is correct. But eliminating...
by Sam Klaidman | Jun 16, 2014 | Growth
Corporate culture describes and governs the ways a company’s employees think, feel, and act. Sometimes the culture makes the business customer-centric (e.g., Zappos and Disney), and sometimes it focuses on employee compensation (think AIG during the Great...