Ever gotten a pop-up notification—or an email—from Netflix, telling you what you should watch next? Told Alexa which song to play next? Felt the pulsing vibration from your Apple Watch, politely telling you that you’ve been sitting for too long?
These are all examples of how companies have turned sporadic interactions with customers into longer-lasting, connected relationships.
This connectivity is the focus of a new book from strategy and operations experts Nicolaj Siggelkow and Christian Terwiesch, Wharton School professors and co-directors of the Mack Institute for Innovation Management. Their book, Connected Strategy: Building Continuous Customer Relationships for Competitive Advantage, published today.
The promise of a connected strategy for firms, the authors write, is building those occasional interactions into long-term, continuous relationships—while dramatically upgrading operational efficiency. The authors argue that with this kind of strategy, companies don’t have to decide between a superior customer experience and lower costs.
Connected Strategy employs examples from companies in industries such as healthcare, financial services, mobility, retail, entertainment, nonprofit, and education. The book introduces four pathways firms can take to create competitive advantages—respond-to-desire, curated offering, coach behavior, and automatic execution.
The authors both joined the Wharton School faculty in 1998, and they have consulted for more than 100 organizations that range from startups to Fortune 500 companies. The inspiration for their book came through their work with executives in the classroom and the Mack Institute for Innovation Management
To learn more, visit Connected Strategy: Building Continuous Customer Relationships for Competitive Advantage.