Product Description

You need loyal customers, not just satisfied ones. Managing the Customer Experience: Turn Customers Into Advocates shows you how to manage your customer experience and reap the rewards.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #50590 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

From the Back Cover

How much more profit could you make if you had customers who couldn't imagine doing business with anyone but you? In your dreams! Tell that to Virgin Atlantic or Harley Davidson.

How great would life be if 40% of your new business simply knocked on your door without you having spent a cent advertising for it? Impossible! Tell that to First Direct.

The companies in this book have managed to turn customers into advocates. Advocates who constantly refer their friends and colleagues to those businesses. Why? Because those companies have created a Branded Customer Experience. They have managed the relationship to the point where customers can't imagine wanting to do business with anyone else.

How can you gain this unbeatable competitive advantage? Managing the Customer Experience shows you how. It takes you through the step-by-step process of creating Loyalty by Design. It shows you how to re-think your business from the customer's point of view and then design and deliver a customer experience that drives loyalty and profitability.

Customer Satisfaction is no longer enough. 80% of customers who switch suppliers express satisfaction with their previous supplier. To lead the market companies need customers who are enthusiastic 'advocates', customers who are highly loyal and drive new business to the company. For example 38% of First Direct's business comes from customer referrals. Advocacy comes from creating a customer experience that becomes synonymous with the brand, what Forum calls a Branded Customer Experience.

Research for this book with organisations like Amazon.com, Virgin, Pret A Manger, Krispy Kreme, Harley-Davidson, Manchester United, and many others has identified the 'Uncommon Practices' that help these organisations create a Branded Customer Experience. Such an experience requires Marketing, Operations, and Human Resources to work together to deliver the brand creating a common strategic agenda within the organization.

About the Author

Shaun Smith, Senior Vice President, Customer Experience Practice, Forum Europe, an FT Knowledge Company

Shaun is one of the leading consultants in helping organizations differentiate through customer service and deliver their brand through their people. He is an inspirational presenter with a wealth of worldwide practical experience. He has been featured on the ¿Ask The Expert¿ program on CNBC a number of times and is the co-editor of the book Uncommon Practice: People who deliver a great brand experience. He is also the author of the Organizational Alignment Survey¿ used by companies worldwide to assess employee opinions and assess the need for change.

Shaun began his career in the airline industry becoming Head of Customer Service, Sales and Marketing Training world-wide for British Airways. He became Managing-Director of Cathay-Performa consulting specializing in advising airlines on customer service strategies. Shaun then ran his own company, Service Skills International, based in Hong Kong, for eleven years consulting to many leading international companies before joining Forum.

Joe Wheeler is based in Forum's Boston office and leads the firm's Customer Experience consulting practice. Over the years he has led many Branded Customer Experience® client engagements that have achieved significant business results. Organizations that Joe has worked with include Unilever, RBC Financial, Air Products, Fairmount Hotels, Nortel Networks, FleetBoston, AT&T, and Dow Corning.

A sought-after speaker, he has provided keynote addresses to business executives around the world, including presentations for The Conference Board and various industry associations.

Customer Reviews

Interesting and insightfull
This book is a good resource for managers trying to develop brands where experience accounts for and important portion of the value perceived by the customer.
It is well structured, goes beyond the obvious.

Helpful, great templates
I bought this and several other books on this topic of a project at work. This so far has been the most comprehensive and thoughtful book on the topic. There are plenty of templates and workflows to help a team frame their customer experience goals and is supplemented with substantial facts and figures that resonate with executives. This book will provide me with much of what i need to clearly articulate these ideas to my leadership (as i build yet another powerpoint deck to do so).

My only gripe is that while many of these themes transcend time, we need a good 2008 version of this thinking that incorporates the huge changes in the internet and pervasive connectivity. References to technology were very light, i'm assuming so as not to seem outdated in this fast moving world.

How to "experience the brand" and "brand the experience"

Actually, the title of this book is somewhat misleading because Smith and Wheeler have as much of value to say about how to create an appropriate customer experience as they do about how to manage it effectively. In fact, the two are not only connected, they are interdependent. The ultimate objective is to establish an ever-increassing critical mass of customers who are "advocates" or as Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba would characterize them, "evangelists."

Obviously, customer relationship management (CRM) is a multi-stage process which begins with obtaining sufficient and relevant information about the target customer (or customer segments), proceeds through the design and implementation phases, continues with refinement and modification based on rigorous evaluation of CRM initiatives and measurement of their impact. Effective marketing creates or increases demand for whatever is offered whereas effective CRM ensures that "customer satisfaction" becomes "customer loyalty" which, eventually, becomes and remains "customer advocacy."

At this point, it is worth noting that, in several dozen research studies on what customers consider to be most important, three attributes were almost always ranked among the top five: feeling appreciated, convenience (i.e. easy-to-do-business-with or ETDBW), and perceived value. Cost? Depending upon which research study is consulted, it was ranked 9-14 in importance. By the way, Warren Buffett once observed something to the effect, "Cost is what you charge but value is what they think it's worth." Marketers and service providers would be well-advised to keep that in mind.

Credit Smith and Wheeler with providing a remarkably thorough analysis of how to manage the development of relationships with customers which evolve from their satisfaction to loyalty to advocacy. As Bernd Schmitt correctly notes in the foreword, "Towards the beginning of this book, the authors distinguish two key routes toward a Branded Customer Exerience: `experiencing the brand' and `branding the experience.' Experiencing the brand...begins with the brand, turns it into a promise, and delivers on it. Branding the experience is about creating an innovative experience for customers and then branding it.."

Starbucks offers an excellent example. Under Howard Schultz's leadership , the international chain of gourmet coffee shops demonstrates how to combine "excperiencing the brand" and "branding the experience." The result is that Starbucks has become, as Schultz proudly notes, not a "trend" but a "lifestyle." Perhaps no other organization treats its part-time employees treats better (both compensation and benefits) and they reciprocate with a consistency high level of service (both competence and cordiality) and thus function as - yes - advocates. According to Schultz, "What we've done is said the most important component in our brand is the emplopyee. The people have created ther magic. The people have created the experience." Appropriately, Schultz entitled his autobiography Pour Your Heart Into It.

One final point. Most organizations which have problems retaining valued customers probably also have problems retaining valuable employees. Hence the even greater relevance and value of what Shaun Smith and Joe Wheeler share in this book. Peter Drucker once observed, "If you don't have a customer, you don't have a business." There corollary to that insight: "If you don't employees who are competent and cordial as well as committed to the enterprise, you won't have any cuistomers."

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out McConnell and Jackie Huba's Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force, Leonard L. Berry's Discovering the Soul of Service: The Nine Drivers of Sustainable Business Success and On Great Service: A Framework for Action as well as Theodore Levitt's The Marketing Imagination (which includes his classic HBR article, "Marketing Myopia"), Kenneth E. Clow and Donald Baack's Integrated Advertising, Promotion, and Marketing Communications (Second Edition), George E. Belch's Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective, P. R. Smith and Jonathan Taylor's Marketing Communications: An Integrated Approach, and Noel Capon and co-authors' Total Integrated Marketing: Breaking the Bounds of the Function.

Also, Irving Rein and co-authors' High Visibility: The Making and Marketing of Professionals into Celebrities, Kellogg on Marketing (edited by Dawn Iacobucci), Kellogg on Integrated Marketing (co-edited by Iacobucci and Bobby Calder), and finally, Harry Beckwith's What Clients Love: A Field Guide to Growing Your Business.