Creating Customer Value
Tata McGraw-Hill: Creating Customer Value
The Synergy between After-Sales Service and Maintenance
© Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited.
ISBN 0-07-463145-4
Hard Cover, Pages 400
Ms Anu Aga, Chairperson, Thermax Ltd,
releases the book Creating Customer Value at a function held on Monday, June 23, 1997
About Creating Customer Value: Synergy between After-Sales Service and Maintenance
For long, the service managers and the maintenance managers have worked as adversaries, very often looking at a seller and buyer interaction as an area of potential conflict of interest. This is a seriously flawed approach and has to quickly give way to look at this relationship as one of mutuality of interest. The present day business scenario demands that the maintenance manager must optimise plant effectiveness rather than only plant availability. The manufacturer’s service manager has a great opportunity to enter customer value chain with new performance improvement products and services. In working towards making a maintenance manager successful the service manager paves the way for success his own company in delivering superior customer service. It is this phenomenon that I have called “mutuality” of interest.
This book explores the opportunities for creating perceptible customer value. It also highlights the competitive edge this synergy can bring about and urges the companies to raise maintenance function and good customer service to the level of considered business strategy.
Jetwings, October 1997
Book Reviews
“All the chapters in the book are thought provoking and reveal originality of thinking arising out of the author’s rich and long experience in the field. The author has given relevant examples and cases in each chapter and the chapter on communications gives apt reference to the way communication can make or break relationships. Our management education requires such books of good quality. I shall strongly recommend to the University authorities authorities that this book should be prescribed as a reference book for the students of marketing management.”
Dr. P. C. Shejwalkar, Director, Institute Of Management Education, Pune.
****************************
“The book extensively deals with the case histories of Indian companies which have created a distinct edge over competitors by offering superior after-sales service to customers. “ We have been able to get business on a higher price purely due to the fact that our service has been acknowledged as the best available in the field”, says the marketing manager of one of these companies.
Business Line, Chennai “I find it (the book) an amazing consolidation of thoughts the author has amassed from his own experience extensive readings and interviews. Possessing this book will be a valuable resource for my consultancy.”
M. N. Bagai, Consultancy and Operational Assignments, New Delhi.
****************************
“Throughout, the author keeps emphasising that customers have specific needs and loyalties. While customer satisfaction serves as an initial focus for pursuing a quality initiative, customer retention represents a more cost-effective, profitable and quality centred activities. The why and how to keep the customer with your business is sought to be spelled out here.
The book provides for an interesting reading and could be helpful to the students, teachers and practitioners of marketing.”
Rakesh Singh, Faculty in Economics & Business Environment,
NarseeMonjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai.
****************************
“It is heartening that Gopal K. Gureja, former director of Thermax Ltd., should be writing Creating Customer Value. He emphasizes a principle that may seem revolutionary to most Indian manufacturers: it’s CARE or Customers are Really Everything. A good idea and one we hope will catch on now that Indian companies are being forced to compete on level playing grounds.”
BEST READS, Times Of India
****************************
The case studies of four Indian companies viz Escorts engaged in tractors, K.G.Khosla in the field of compressors, Kaushico Machine Tools in shearing machines and Thermax in boilers have been elaborated very well in detail. In these cases, the companies before and after the introduction of a pushing after-sales service has been studied very well. It has been pointed out that these companies over the years have created a distinct edge over the competitors confirming the potential of superior after-sales service in gaining customer loyalty.
Ms. L.F. Poonawalla, CEO, Tetrapak India Ltd., Pune