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Bang Nguyen, Lyndon Simkin and Ana Isabel Canhoto Routledge, London, 2015; paperback; £31.49; xx pp;
ISBN: 978-1138803329
A few weeks before writing this review, I chaired the FC Business Intelligence Insurance conference, Insurance Europe, focused on insurance analytics. Part of the conference was split into two: one group focusing on the bright side -- customer value; and the other group on the dark side -- fraud. The conference was wowed by a presentation from a former fraudster turned consultant, now specializing in advising insurance companies on how to prevent and combat fraud. He made very clear the unending nature of the technological and managerial battle between fraudsters and financial services companies.
A common complaint of those responsible for managing the dark side of customers was that those responsible for managing the bright side did not adequately take into account the customer dark side, which the speaker had described so well, when designing customer management strategies, products, processes and systems. One reason for this was that bright side managers were simply not aware of the vulnerabilities they were creating. This led to a tendency to treat all those with problems (complaints, claims etc) as if they might be from the dark side, in turn creating a dark side to the company's own behaviour. This made customers regard companies as 'fair game' because customers remembered or had heard of examples of this dark-side company behaviour.
One solution to this problem is for managers to be much more aware of dark-side behaviour by both companies and customers and factor its prevention into their work. They will be helped by this book that provides, for both management students and practitioners, a comprehensive collection of thinking and studies on the dark side, going beyond the normal anecdotal input cited in essays and dissertations and in the trade press. (Although, as someone who preaches the value of storytelling in customer insight management, I would never belittle the value of such stories.)
The book consists of 11 chapters by academic and practitioner experts in this aspect of CRM, topped and tailed by a well-crafted introduction and summary chapters by the authors. I...