Wired and Dangerous
How Your Customers Have Changed and What to Do About it
By: Chip R. Bell, John R. Patterson
Published: June 6, 2011
Format: Paperback, 224 pages
ISBN-10: 1605099759
ISBN-13: 978-1605099750
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
"Whether or not you accept the hyperbole of an emerging revolution, there is no doubt customers today are significantly different than those of just a few years ago", write senior partner with the Chip Bell Group, Chip R. Bell; and founder and president of Progressive Insights, John R. Patterson, in their insightful and and idea filled book Wired and Dangerous: How Your Customers Have Changed and What to Do About it. The authors describe how today's customer has changed from customers of the past, how and why that change took place, and offer solutions for companies to create a partnership with their customers.
Chip Bell (photo left) and John Patterson recognize the dramatic changes that have taken place both within customer thinking and with their overall behavior. Today's customers are more empowered than ever before, and as the authors demonstrate, those customers are not afraid to use their new found power to its fullest extent. The authors present a complete picture of today's new normal customer that offers both a challenge and an opportunity for companies. The authors point out that any businesses that fail to provide exceptional service, or don't deliver on their brand promises, will lose today's picky, fickle, vocal, and vain customers. In these turbulent times, customers will not only leave, but they will take their entire networks with them.
John Patterson (photo left) and Chip Bell understand that many business leaders either don't understand or are ignoring this new customer empowerment. Not only are customers who are active online and with mobile devices wired, but all customers are connected to other people through their various internet and offline social arrangements. Companies that provide bad service or an inferior product, to one customer, risk losing an entire circle of customers.
The authors make clear that for empowered customers, anything short of an exceptional service experience risks loss of an entire customer group. While this potential loss of customers, in an age of bad service, presents a challenge to many business leaders, the authors point out that there is an opportunity as well. For the authors, that opportunity is in form of an entirely new paradigm. The authors provide the tools for transforming customers into partners with the company and its brands. This empowering concept creates a winning solution for both the company and for today's edgy customers.
For me, the power of the book is how Chip Bell and John Patterson combine their insights and analysis of today's edgy customers, with practical and mutually beneficial strategies for establishing a partnership with those customers. The authors demonstrate clearly that attempting to maintain the older paradigms, of message control and of inferior customer service, will no longer work. In today's marketplace, businesses who fail to create partnership based relationships with customers risk becoming irrelevant and obsolete.
To create these critical partnerships, the authors share their real world proven strategies, backed by case studies of these partnership techniques in action. The book invites businesses to take the next step in relationships with customers, and present them with partnership status. The result is a positive outcome for both the company and its customer base.
I highly recommend the paradigm shifting and eye opening book Wired and Dangerous: How Your Customers Have Changed and What to Do About it by Chip R. Bell and John R.Patterson, to anyone seeking a fresh and empowering approach to building a new form of customer partnership. The book offers a step forward in customer relationships that satisfies even the edgiest of customers, and benefits even the most bottom line oriented companies.
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