You can’t buy customer loyalty. Companies large and small are realizing that if they want to steal market share, they must cater to their customer base like never before.
This means motivating and training staff, and attaching incentives to making it happen.
In November, the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management will launch a new executive program whose focus will be on customer relationship management, or CRM. The goal is to build a globally recognized hub for CRM thought leadership, research and executive education.
One emphasis of the Centre for CRM Excellence will be social CRM, a strategy that combines the power of online communities with traditional CRM systems. The goal is to engage customers in a collaborative conversation.
“The centre will help executives sharpen their CRM skills and help companies transform their customer strategies,” says Dilip Soman, a professor of marketing at the Rotman school and the centre’s academic director.
Dr. Soman joined us earlier to take your questions about creating a powerful customer experience.
Dr. Soman, the author of Managing Customer Value, is a sought-after executive trainer and consultant. Among the clients he has worked with are the Bank of China (HK), Bell Canada, Corus Entertainment, FedEX, Hewlett Packard, HSBC, IBM, Merck, Microsoft, Procter and Gamble and Sanofi-Aventis.
Dr. Soman earned his bachelor’s at the University of Bombay, his MBA at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and his master’s at the University of Chicago. He has previously taught at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is a visiting professor at HKUST, the National University of Singapore and the Indian School of Business.
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