• strategy + business, Friday, March 21, 2008 12 PM

Railway organizations like Amtrak and Canadian National Railway are leading an industry-wide transformation by responding to the growing complexity of their markets and increasing demand for higher levels of service and reliability. In doing so, they are mapping out a path not only for other railroads but for any sector that needs to be more market-facing, responsive, and visionary.

In becoming more market-facing, these railroads have had to become customer savvy--a significant evolution for companies that did no marketing for most of their history. This has required substantial organizational shifts: Companies that thought of their basic business as one-size-fits-all utility offerings have to learn to build product and service offerings to meet specific customer needs.

If railroads embrace marketing as a science for helping them understand what customers want and then giving them what they need, they can escape low margins and low growth rates, achieve much higher performance, and build a more sustainable and loyal customer base than anyone might have imagined previously.

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