Product Description

Customer service is the single most pressing problem for business managers and people in any service or sales operation, especially at the retail level. In fact, many experts believe that you build a business from the customer up. In Customer Mania!, Ken Blanchard, one of America's biggest bestselling authors and inspiring business leaders, writes of the key to customer service -- creating a people-oriented, performance-driven, customer-first organization. Along with coauthors Jim Ballard and Fred Finch, Blanchard explains why the customer is the right starting place from which to build a successful business. By drawing on examples from the world's largest restaurant company, Yum! -- owner of KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver's, and A&W Restaurants -- the authors explain how any company, large or small, can develop a unified, people-first, customer-oriented culture. Packed with practical insights, Customer Mania! emphasizes four critical steps:

• Set Your Sights on the Right Target. The bottom line grows from taking care of customers and creating a motivating environment for your people.

• Treat Customers the Right Way. Determine the kind of experience you want your customers to have as they interact with every part of the company.

• Treat Employees the Right Way. Use strategies ranging from smart hiring to training and development to managing performance and creating a recognition culture.

• Build the Right Kind of Leadership. You can't do it all yourself, so let your people put their own brains to work and then support them all the way.

By relying on these concepts, businesses everywhere can cultivate passionate and engaged team members who contribute to the company's overall success. From CEO to middle manager to the person facing the consumer, Customer Mania! is a vital tool for enhancing their experience -- and their customer's.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #135268 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Self-described "Chief Spiritual Officer" Blanchard strikes a familiar note of ebullient optimism in this follow up to his bestsellers The One-Minute Manager, Whale Done and Raving Fans! This time the business populist chronicles the efforts of Yum! brands to build a customer-focused corporate culture. As the corporate parent of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, A&W and Long John Silver, Yum! operates in an industry where a 200% annual turnover rate is normal. So the company’s own 40% annual turnover rate is exceptional, and its creation of a positive employee culture is no mean feat. Thus, Yum!’s survival in the fast food business—which relies heavily on the public’s contact with its front line employees—provides useful lessons for any manager whose business depends upon customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, however, Blanchard’s book fails to step back and address its subject objectively. Instead, the narrative reads like a spiritual revival meeting, making it difficult to separate the practical advances from the author’s hype. Has all the feel-good hoopla created higher profits? Deflected competition? Raised share prices? Failures, negativity and cynicism don’t find their way into this book. They are swiftly eliminated, just like people with the wrong attitude at Yum!
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"Customer Mania is the finest distillation of Ken Blanchard's wisdom, convictions, and possibility thinking to date. What inspired me most was the journey from possibilities to reality and that he validated the fundamental truths - that it can happen and it is never too late to start!" Tami Heim, former president of Borders, Inc. "Anyone in a customer-focused business really MUST read this book! It is somehow simple, powerful, actionable, compelling and immensely readable all at once. I'll never provide - or receive - service the same way again. In fact, I'll carry a copy with me and give it to people whenever I experience underwhelming service." Patrick Lencioni, bestselling author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team "In the long history of management writing, no one has so clearly and memorably extracted, exposed, illustrated and explained the essentials of enlightened and profitable management as Ken Blanchard. Now he, with Jim Ballard and Fred Finch, offers us the ultimate customer service book, 'Customer Mania!' The title is a dead give away of the passionate and persuasive argument contained in these pages. Bravo!" Tom Peters "This book gets to the bottom line fast: If you don't take care of your customers, somebody else will. Do what I did, and order a copy of this book for every one of your employees and have them memorize the 4 critical steps to creating Customer Mania! This book shows you how to make your customers so happy that you'll be laughing all the way to the bank." Robert Allen, author of Nothing Down for the 2000s

About the Author
Jim Ballard has written a number of inspirational books, including Mind Like Water and What's the Rush? He has coauthored several popular books along with bestselling business guru Ken Blanchard. Teachings of the worldrenown author and yogi Paramahansa Yogananda inspired Jim to write this wave fable. Jim is a business consultant, hospice volunteer, and Big Brother. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. Please visit Jim's website at www.littlewave.org.

Customer Reviews

This should be called "The CEO's Bible"
I had worked for YUM! for 4 days when I went to my first Founder's Day celebration -the day that Ken Blanchard and David Novak (YUM! CEO) gave out these books. I didn't know what to think! The environment was SO different from what I was used to. Why were these people standing on chairs, hooting and yelling, cheering and clapping and having FUN at a biyearly meeting? How did they get so many people to volunteer to speak in front of a 3000+ crowd, when most meetings of under 20 you hardly ever get anyone to speak up?

I took the book home and read it cover to cover, trying to figure out what Customer Mania was and how do I become a Customer Maniac? I have worked in customer service for years, and the answer was simple: Do it right, and do it right the first time, because you WANT to. Things I had wanted to do under other bosses to help my customers get what they need and want, but was afraid to, because the Boss wouldn't understand or it would cost too much, or take too much time, or wasn't our department. At YUM! there is no such thing as "not my department". If that is a customer who needs your help, then that customer IS your department.

The book gives great anecdotes to illustrate his point in an easy to read, easy to understand manner. You feel as though Mr. Blanchard were sitting across from you talking to you in person. YUM! has a ways to go in really winning over its customer base, in assuring the customer that YUM! will be there no matter what to make sure they have a great experience in one of their restarants, but we are getting there.

And the marching band walking through the building to recognize outstanding employees? It's true.

Every CEO of every company should read this. The things that YUM! does to recognize its employees for a job well done on a daily basis doesn't add up to much in terms of time or money, but the return on that investment is phenomenal. Even as an entry level employee, I know that David Novak cares about the work I do and every day I give 210%, KNOWING that my leadership sees it and appreciates it.

Another good book from Blanchard
This is an easy to read book with leadership principles for people in all levels of leadership.

A page-turning read steeped in the senses of yesteryear.
Former college instructor and journalist R. D.. Snowcroft presents The Blanchard Brothers Film Company, a novel set at the beginning of the twentieth century - when motion pictures were just beginning to spread as a form of popular entertainment in the nickelodeons frequented by the lower classes, while the upper classes watched theater and the middle classes attended vaudeville. In these times fraught with potential, the hub of motion pictures in America was on the East Cost, not the West; The Blanchard Brothers Film Company is a tale of two brothers whose vibrant studio flourished and faded. One brother was destined for fame and greatness in Hollywood; the other would fall into obscurity. The dynamics of the dog-eat-dog world of popular cinema, even in its infancy, make for a page-turning read steeped in the senses of yesteryear.