Advisory Council

Bob Thompson is CEO of CustomerThink Corp., an independent research and publishing firm focused on customer-centric business strategy, and founder of CustomerThink.com. Thompson is a popular keynote speaker at conferences worldwide and has written numerous articles and reports, including Customer Experience Management: A Winning Business Strategy for a Flat World.

Vandana Ahuja is a visiting faculty member at India's Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida, an educational initiative of the USD 750 M Jaypee Group of Companies. Prior to that she had worked as a Business Manager with NIIT which she joined after a stint with Elbee Express.

Akin Arikan, the author of Multichannel Marketing: Metrics and Methods for On and Offline Success, is a senior manager for Internet marketing at Unica Corp. with responsibility for ensuring customer satisfaction with Unica's web analytics and Internet marketing solutions. Akin has been working with web analytics practitioners since 1999.

Jim Barnes is a consultant, speaker and author on customer relationship strategy and metrics, and on the creation of value for the customer. Barnes operates Barnes Marketing Associates, Inc. from his base in Canada. His latest book is Build Your Customer Strategy (John Wiley & Sons).

Jeanne Bliss, author of Chief Customer Officer: Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action, has spent 25 years reporting to CEOs and leading the customer experience for Lands' End, Coldwell Banker, Allstate, Mazda and Microsoft. Go to her company, CustomerBLISS, to get a Reality Check Audit.

Olga Botero de Duque, the chief information officer of Grupo Bancolombia, has been involved in customer experience, customer relationships, marketing and strategy in the ICT sector in Latin America for more than 20 years. Based in Medellí­n, Colombia, Botero previously was at Orbitel, one of Colombia's leading telecommunications companies.

Silvana Buljan, founder of Smartworxx, has been working in CRM and eCRM Projects since 1997 as project manager and consultant for blue-chip clients. Her expertise is in the automotive, air transport and professional services sectors, focusing on CRM strategy, processes and organizational alignment, as well as CRM corporate training.

Francis Buttle is managing director of Francis Buttle & Associates P/L and adjunct professor of management (Marketing and CRM) at Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Sydney. He is author of the book Customer Relationship Management: Concepts and Technologies, now in its second edition.

Daryl Choy has worked with companies of various sizes, from multinational corporations to small and medium enterprises in a wide variety of industries. His responsibilities have ranged from sales and marketing to system development and human resources.

Mei Lin Fung works with Oklahoma State University's Spears Business School to offer certificate and performance management programs in business-customer relations. She recently assisted communications firm Avaya in developing an innovative public and private customer relations partnership, honored with the American Society of Competitiveness' Phillip B. Crosby Golden Medallion. Blog: Professionals Earn Customer Trust

Bob Furniss, president of Touchpoint Associates, works with organizations to increase productivity and profits by bringing out the best in their people. Furniss, a featured conference speaker and member of the National Speaker Association, provides keynotes, workshops and consulting services to help companies redefine success.

Jill Griffin leads Texas-based Griffin Group and is an internationally published business author and speaker, corporate board director of a NYSE company and author of the upcoming Taming the Search-and-Switch Customer: Earning Customer Loyalty in a Compulsion-to-Compare World (Wiley/Jossey-Bass). Sign up for her monthly loyalty tip at www.loyaltysolutions.com.

Bob E. Hayes, Ph.D., is the president and founder of Business Over Broadway, providing consultation and direction to help companies become customer-centric through in-depth satisfaction and loyalty research. He is a recognized expert in customer satisfaction and loyalty measurement, and author of the book, Measuring Customer Satisfaction.

Graham Hill is an associate at customer value management consultancy CACI Customer Solutions Group. He has more than 20 years of experience in customer-driven change programs with companies of all shapes and sizes. He can be contacted at graham [dot] hill [at] web [dot] de. [Blog: Customer Insider]

In co-authoring CustomerCentric Selling® (McGraw-Hill, 2003) and cofounding the company of the same name in 2002, John Holland leveraged more than 20 years' experience in sales, sales management and consulting. Holland began his career in high-technology with IBM's General Systems Division.

Bob Kaden is the author of Guerrilla Marketing Research and president of The Kaden Company, a marketing research consultancy that works with clients in planning and applying research to make more money. He is a frequent lecturer and trainer in the areas of creativity and marketing research processes.

Consultant, author and educator Dick Lee, a pioneer in the CRM/CEM movement, is founder and principal of St. Paul, Minnesota-based High-Yield Methods, which helps clients align strategies with customers, process with strategies and technology with process. For free white papers on HYM's process and planning tools, visit www.h-ym.com.

Sampson Lee, the founder of G-CEM, created the Branded Customer Experience Management Method, the Customer Experience Research Method and the Purchase Experience Assessment and Optimization Method (U.S. patent-pending). Lee and his international partner team conduct their CEM Professional Certificate Program in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney and San Francisco. Latest white paper: Moments Of Buying.

Michael Lowenstein, Ph.D., CMC, is vice president and senior consultant, customer loyalty management, Harris Interactive. His book, One Customer, Divisible: Linking Customer Insight to Loyalty and Advocacy Behavior, was published in August 2005. He is co-authoring The Advocating Customer. Lowenstein's MBA is from the University of Pittsburgh.

Jodie Monger, Ph.D. is the president of Customer Relationship Metrics and a pioneer in customer satisfaction research for the contact center industry. Before creating Metrics, she was the founding associate director of Purdue University's Center for Customer-Driven Quality. She can be reached at (703) 883-0009 or jmonger@metrics.net.

Jonathan Narducci, owner of CornerStone Cubed, uses his more than 30 years of experience in business, management and quality systems to help clients locate and implement customer focused advantages that helps differentiate their companies from the competition using his Creating Positive Change Process.

Laura Patterson is the author of Measure What Matters (Visionedge Marketing, Inc., 2004) and Gone Fishin' (Visionedge Marketing, Inc., 2001). She is president and cofounder of VisionEdge Marketing, Inc., a leading metrics-based strategic and product marketing firm located in Austin, Texas, specializing in consulting and learning services.

Denis Pombriant is a well-known thought leader in CRM and the founder and managing principal of the Beagle Research Group, LLC, a CRM market research firm and consultancy. He can be reached at denis@beagleresearch.com.

Bill Price, president and CEO and founder of Driva Solutions, LLC, is a CRM consultant, practitioner and instructor. He was Amazon.com's first global vice president of customer service. His new book, with co-author David Jaffe, is The Best Service Is No Service (Wiley & Sons, March 2008).

David Rance, CEO of Round, is a former customer care director for a national telco. Round is a leader in capability management models and software tools that enable organizations to align at their chosen level of customer centricity. He is an advisor for Greater China CRM. Call +44 20 7623 2300.

Liz Roche is a senior leader with HP's Consulting and Integration practice and cofounder of Stamford, Connecticut-based Customers Incorporated. An industry-recognized CRM expert, she has 20 years of IT and business experience. Roche received a bachelor of arts from the George Washington University and an MBA from the University of Missouri.

Andrew Rudin is the managing principal of Outside Technologies, Inc., specializing in sales strategy for technology companies. He holds a master of science in management information technology from the McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia. For recently published articles click here.

Scott Santucci has been working on the sales enablement problem for complex selling environments for the past 10 years. He runs the Sales Enablement Consulting Practice at Forrester Research, which leverages input from 2,000 buying organizations to help technology industry vendors develop customer-centric content to fuel their solution-selling engines.

Howard Schneider is cofounder of Metzner Schneider Associates, a customer engagement practice serving the needs of clients including 21st Century Insurance, Hewlett-Packard, Virgin America, Marriott International, Scholastic Publishing, Teleflora, AutoNation, Panda Express First Choice Power and Hilton Hotels. Read Schneider's blogs and features.

Colin Shaw founder of Beyond Philosophy, the leading experts in the customer experience, is an international author of three best-selling books on customer experience. Beyond Philosophy provides consultancy, training and customer insight research from its offices in London, England, and Atlanta, Georgia in the United States. Visit Shaw's blog at ExperienceClinic.com.

Alan See serves as an associate faculty member for the University of Phoenix's College of Business & Management. He holds a bachelor of arts in business and an MBA from Abilene Christian University.

A consultant and speaker, Jim Sterne focuses on measuring the value of the web to create and strengthen customer relationships. Sterne's five books include Web Metrics. Sterne produces the Emetrics Summit and is the founding president of the Web Analytics Association.

Since 1977, Chris Stiehl, president, StiehlWorks, has been assisting governments and businesses in product and service design. At General Motors, he was a member of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Cadillac team. He has advanced degrees from the University of Michigan and co-authored the best-selling book Pain Killer Marketing.

John I. Todor, Ph.D. is the managing partner of The Whetstone Edge, LLC, a customer-centric consulting firm that helps clients build customer equity by engaging customers online via social media and delivering compelling offline customer experiences. His latest book is Get With It! The Hands on Guide to Using Web 2.0 in Your Business.

Barry Trailer has consulted with companies with complex B2B sales for more than 20 years. Together with partner Jim Dickie, Trailer conducts primary research on sales effectiveness at CSO Insights. Trailer can be reached at www.csoinsights.com.

Alan J. Zell, Ambassador of Selling® at Attitudes For Selling since 1983, offers workshops, seminars and consulting on all business topics related to selling ideas, information, skills, services and products for individuals, management, businesses, organizations, education and government.