Up Close and Personal
Author: Paul Gamble, Merlin Stone & Neil Woodcock
UK Publisher: Kogan Page
ISBN: 0749430877
This is the latest work from the prolific brain of Professor Merlin Stone and his associates. Up Close & Personal provides a guide to establishing long-term relationships with customers and a detailed primer to the practice of customer relationship marketing. It contains international examples and mini case studies of CRM in practice. Research for the book was sponsored by IBM.
The reason we listen to Merlin when he talks about CRM (and hence recommend his books) is clear from the opening lines of this book: “There is a danger that a new management idea can be oversold. Too much is promised too soon and the new approach is seen as a panacea that can be applied to every type of problem. Many of these applications are not appropriate and, in any case, the idea is not properly understood and implemented by some enterprises. After a while, some applications of the new idea fail and managers become disillusioned.”
That’s probably the best description of the CRM market we’ve read so far. The authors’ practical and realistic appraisal of what CRM can and can’t do for you is a refreshing antidote to the ‘bandwagon’ effect that pervades so much of the current writing about CRM.
The authors are a combination of academics and practitioners, which adds to the sense of real-world ‘grounding’ in the book. It’s structured in a way that allows time-pressured managers to gain value in a short space of time by ‘dipping’ (come on, we all do it!). For example, Chapter 4 has a quick and useful ‘Ten Guidelines for a Relationship Marketing Strategy’ which includes this beautiful observation at the start of point 10: “Just because you have a hammer, don’t imagine that everything is a nail. Not all marketing problems are relationship-based.” KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) and other useful checklists are detailed and explained thoroughly.
The main author of this book, Merlin Stone, will be starting his own column in our on-line magazine, eCustomerServiceWorld, from July, and is also one of the captive speakers in our eSpeakers Store. We find his one of the most refreshing and down-to-earth voices on CRM currently practicing. Though he helped found and define the discipline, Merlin has, as with other CRM voices we admire, like Adrian Payne and Robert Shaw, held out against the CRM hype-pack. So, we are pleased to help spread his good sense through recommending this book! buy UK() buy US($)
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