A new book by Patricia Seybold and Ronni Marshak entitled "Customers.com" (Times Books, 1998) might become the bible for Internet business developers. There's no doubt that Seybold, founder and CEO of a worldwide strategic business and technology consulting firm, has the experience in publishing on and off the Web. She is equally at home discussing information technology (the "e" side) and the nitty-gritty of management, marketing, sales and customer support (the "business" side). Seybold teaches readers the essential strategy for profitable e-business — to identify what their customers really want and to make sure their electronic initiatives satisfy customer needs completely.

For company executives pondering the next steps in their e-commerce approach, this book provides a wake-up call: "Don't wait, the Web is the way." Waiting can indeed result in significant loss of business but, equally important is the image problem. As Seybold points out, the public relations benefits of on-line customer support and customer service can far outweigh the cost of entry. "Customers.com" begins by offering a strategic blueprint for "Five Steps to Success in Electronic Commerce":

1. Make it easy for customers to do business with you.
   
   
2. Focus on the end customer for your products and services.
   
   
3. Redesign your customer-facing business processes from the end customer's point of view.
   
   
4. Wire your company for profit with a comprehensive, evolving, electronic business architecture.
   
   
5. Foster customer loyalty, the key to profitability in electronic commerce.

Seybold then introduces "Eight Critical Success Factors" common among winning companies. She maps each factor to real-world case studies of organizations that have successfully created e-business initiatives. Reading these successful approaches might be worth the cost of the book.

• National Semiconductor — made huge improvements to its bottom line by targeting the right customers (not always the ones who make the final buying decision) on its Web site.
  
  
• Boeing — designed its Web site to help customers do their jobs more effectively.
  
  
• Tripod — grew from a start-up to a company with more than a million members by fostering a vibrant on-line community.

"Customers.com" is available at book-stores, on and off the Internet.

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