NorthBridge Partners Align with Customer Centricity, Inc.

Helps Integrate Customer Care into a Whole Product Offering 

Boston, Massachusetts, January 13, 2003: NorthBridge Partners today announced it has entered into a strategic alliance with Customer Centricity, Inc. of Hudson, New Hampshire. NorthBridge Partners, a marketing and business consulting firm, offers assessments and analysis to help companies improve the performance of their products and services. The new offerings made possible through its relationship with Customer Centricity will focus on more in-depth analysis and remediation of customer support models to better align these factors with the product strategy and customer need.

“During the course of our work, we often identify product issues related to disconnects between the intended customer experience and the actual experience customers have when using a product,” said Joel Whitman, a founding partner of NorthBridge Partners. “These problems are routinely due to the fact that the customer care model for the product or service was not thought about holistically during the product design. By aligning with Customer Centricity, Northbridge can extend our offerings by allowing companies to remedy this situation. We’ve found that companies which align their product and customer support strategies not only provide higher customer satisfaction, but also are able to develop additional revenue opportunities through the use of cross-selling and up-selling techniques. Once customer support is brought into the product loop, they are better able to represent what their products have to offer.”

Customer Centricity, which was born out of the need to improve customer support organizations, provides consulting and program implementation for customer care groups in high technology industries. The offerings range from customer care and customer relationship management (CRM) assessments to on-site skills training and organization development. The programs are tailored to a company’s specific needs and can be implemented in stages to provide the maximum benefit while minimizing the impact on the team’s resources.

“Partnering with NorthBridge Partners was a natural fit for us,” said Craig Bailey, President and founder of Customer Centricity, Inc. “As we talk with customer care groups and the people on the front-lines dealing with customers, we see the impact of incomplete product planning and execution. These people live with it every day. NorthBridge Partners’ offerings help address the issues by providing advice and guidance further upstream in the organization where it can be worked through organically, rather than dealing with it when problems show up in customer care.”

About Customer Centricity, Inc.

Customer Centricity, Inc., is a business consulting firm that works with companies to unlock the value of their customer relationships. We leverage our real-world experience to help our clients deal with their customers in more skillful and satisfying ways. Customer Centricity delivers on this promise by optimizing the interaction between people, process and systems within the organization to achieve higher levels of customer satisfaction and greater return on investment (ROI). We do this in 3 ways:

1. Skills Training to enable customer-facing personnel to deliver exceptional levels of customer service; 
2. Design and Implementation of business process techniques to serve the customer in efficient, effective and consistent manners; and 
3. Identification of the appropriate business processes to automate, enabling companies to get the most from their investments in technology.

Our approach is to work closely with our clients to help them capture the knowledge of their team so that they can leverage it to build more valuable, long-term relationships with their customers. To learn more about Customer Centricity, call 603/491-7948 or visit our web-site, www.customercentricity.biz

Note: “CRM Rx” and “Customer Service Rx” are service marks of Customer Centricity, Inc.

About NorthBridge Partners

NorthBridge Partners is a business consulting firm focused on helping high-technology companies bridge the gaps between their products and markets. They leverage real-world experience to help clients manage and adapt their marketing through the stages of a product’s lifecycle. NorthBridge Partners deliver value through their unique “Second Opinion MarketingSM methodology that examines a company’s situation from all angles and provide objective, honest feedback along, with an action plan for addressing any product marketing or positioning issues. This methodology has been time tested and proven to work in a variety of economic conditions. NorthBridge Partners’ approach involves a high level of interaction with their clients to provide them with guidance throughout the process, offering both short-tem tactical actions as well as longer term considerations for more comprehensive product planning. To learn more about NorthBridge Partners, visit their web-site at www.northbridgepartners.com.  

Note: The NorthBridge Partner bridge logo design is a registered service mark and “Second Opinion Marketing” and “The View From Beyond” are service marks of NorthBridge Partners.