Radical Action for Radical Times: Expert Advice for Creating Business Opportunity in Good or Bad Economic Times

Chapter 10. Customer value

During a recession, customers feel threatened. Their lives are more difficult, and more than at any other time they need to trust the organizations they do business with. In the last chapter, we outlined some strategies that could help build that trust.

Here, we step back a moment and examine the value of customers to the organization. More specifically, we question past assumptions and rules laid down within our organizations and, to some extent, business schools. Martha Rogers would contend that many of those assumptions and rules are outdated. We have been taking them for granted and, in the process, suboptimized our potential—the last thing an organization wants to hear when times are tough.

In Martha's book Rules ...