With increasing liberalization and globalization, companies face the prospect of stiff competition in a market where products can no longer be differentiated on feature and price combinations. Customers treat products as commodities and low price rules. In such scenarios it becomes difficult to attract new customers and even more arduous to retain them profitably. To add to the woes of a company, a new entrant in the market is quickly able to create a niche for itself. In this market chaos, a company must be able to differentiate itself from the rest to survive and possibly emerge as a market leader. This differentiation, logically, cannot be product-basedfor the best product offer is merely a prerequisite to survivalbut it must be company-based yet focused on the customer. In this paper, an approach has been proposed to customerize a company to better address customers' needs and thus to stay ahead of competitors.

A prospect interested in product and price information makes a phone call to the company. She is told that somebody will get back to her soon if she left her name and contact phone number, which causes some discomfort to her. A response from a sales person after asking the region she is calling from is `If you can please hold the line for a moment I will quickly locate the sales representative servicing your area'. It is only some time later, or not at all, that the right sales person is located. A consumer who buys packaged consumer goods finds out later to her dismay that it has been tampered with, or is not of the expected quality. She finds it quite bothersome to write a letter or contact in some other manner the manufacturer or the marketing organization to express dissatisfaction. Rather, she decides to inform the retailer from whom she bought it and to not buy it the next time. She may even want to talk about it to her friends. Another scenario could be, when a customer calls to report a product complaint. She is asked that to obtain the service under warranty she should have registered with the company the product she bought by completing and mailing the detachable part of the warranty card. If the warranty is not applicable, she is asked to deliver the product to the service center and to call up after a few days to check if the product has been fixed. Or, a typical response given to a service requirement is that since the problem is not of urgent nature it will be attended to by the next day or the day after for sure.