Discover how to create exceptional customer service and a superior customer experience, learning from the greatest companies of our time.
When it comes to delivering great customer service and customer experience, many companies miss the mark. But there's no reason this should include you and your company. Ignore Your Customers (and They'll Go Away) spells out, step by step, how to craft a customer service culture and customer experience so powerful that they'll transform your organization and boost your company's bottom line.
You'll enjoy inspirational, often hilarious, tales from the trenches as author Micah Solomon, one of the world's best-known customer service consultants, relates hands-on adventures about assessing and improving customer service in various industries.
You'll spend time behind the scenes with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh and discover how the company delivers "wow" customer service. From Richard Branson, you'll learn how Virgin brands deliver authentic customer service (avoiding what Branson calls "Stepford Customer Service") and Branson's secrets for turning social media attackers into brand promoters.
Drawing on a wealth of stories personally assembled from today's most innovative and successful companies, including Amazon, Cleveland Clinic, Drybar, USAA Insurance, and The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, Solomon reveals what it takes to turn a ho-hum customer interaction into one that drives customer engagement and lifelong loyalty.
MICAH SOLOMON (Seattle, WA) has been named by the Financial Post as “a new guru of customer service excellence.” He is a top keynote speaker and consultant on customer service issues, the customer experience, and company culture. A successful entrepreneur, he coauthored the bestselling Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit. His expertise has been featured in FastCompany, Inc. Magazine, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Forbes.com, NBC and ABC television programming, and elsewhere.
Micah Solomon is such a breezy and engaging writer that I’ll often sit down with every intention of reading for just a few minutes only to suddenly realize I’m halfway through the book and I should really put it down to get to the rest of my work, but oh what the hell, I’m already halfway done, I might as well keep reading. And then I spend the next several days silently critiquing every customer interaction I have with … well, with everyone (sorry family). It’s like when I used to play Tetris for an hour or two and then emerge from the arcade and proceed to spend the next hour trying to figure out how I could twist cars, trees, and buildings so they would perfectly fit—such is the reality-distorting effect of reading Micah’s wonderful books. “Oh dear, that’s not how you should do that,” I’ll think at the grocery store. “Yikes, Micah would NOT approve,” I’ll silently mumble while trying to check into a hotel. Ignore Your Customers is Micah’s best book yet. Great tips, hilarious anecdotes, and insightful interviews abound, and each chapter ends with “cheatsheets” to help you internalize the info you’ve just learned, and “reading group guides” to assist groups figure out how to implement Micah’s tips to improve their own organization. Great stuff, as always, from Micah Solomon!
As a Certified Patient Experience Professional (CPXP), I'm always looking for new books to recommend to colleagues working to improve the patient, family, provider and employee experience in care settings. Micah is a thought leader in the customer experience (CX) space so I knew this would be a great read, and my expectations were exceeded by his attention to delivering practical tactics to use TODAY.
A few highlights I especially appreciated:
1. He spent a surprising amount of time discussing the importance of employee experience, and given the epidemic of caregiver burnout we're facing in healthcare, this guidance is particularly relevant. He believes you can't have EX without PX, and vice versa - this is a critical point - in order to ensure a positive patient experience, we must invest similar amount of time and resources meeting the needs of our employees.
2. As a loyal "Hardwiring Excellence" and Quint Studer flywheel fan, I appreciate how Micah used Studer-esque language to talk about "the importance of purpose-focused orientation" (p. 54) for employees and "use of the right words" (p. 63) at the right time in conversations with customers - again, increasing the relevance for healthcare professionals.
3. Micah's perspective on artificial intelligence (AI) is spot on. He describes the fears around AI replacing humans or jobs, and crafts a compelling case that AI will not replace, but will increase the ability for humans to do more purposeful work. AI will replace the jobs that can be done by a non-human, allowing for humans to increase the amount of time they are spending with the customer (healthcare - the patient). Love this perspective.
4. The free discussion guides and email or links to free resources sprinkled throughout the makes it easy for this to be a team, department or organization-wide read. This takes the work off us as leaders to lead meaningful discussion on the topic and offers prompts to spark in-depth discussion. Thanks Micah for fantastic tools!
Overall, his witty tone makes this an easy and enjoyable read, and I'm grateful to be able to add another recommendable book to my list for PX leaders and healthcare professionals.
Read Ignore Your Customers (and They'll Go Away): The Simple Playbook for Delivering the Ultimate Customer Service Experience (HarperCollins Leadership) by Micah Solomon. ... The author, today's best-known customer service and customer customer experience consultant, shows how you can transform your own customer service and culture--one that you can sustain day after day.
I especially liked his inclusion of case studies and behind-the-scene visits with such companies as Zappos, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, MOD Pizza and the Cleveland Clinic. And his use of examples made his material come alive, especially this one that he personally experienced: When my Nordstrom shoe delivery was left in the rain by a common carrier ... and my $200 shoes were ruined before they even got to me, it put things in a legal grey area. The responsible party might be me, or it might be the trucking company, but to my understanding, it's not Nordstrom.
Yet when this happened to me, not for an instant did my salesperson, Jeanne, even consider saying, "You need to file a claim with the trucking company."
Instead, she told me, without hesitation, the following: "I'm so incredibly sorry that happened, and I'm bringing over a brand new pair of shoes--will you be home in forty-five minutes?"
In addition, I liked his discussion of the 10-5-system every employee at the Hotel Irvine in Orange County, California, is trained to use: At 10 feet: Look up from what you are doing and acknowledge the guest with direct eye contact and a nod. At 5 feet: Smile, with your lips and eyes. At 3 feet: Verbally greet the guest and offer a time-of-the day greeting. ("Good morning.")
Solomon points out that "a wow experience is when service goes beyond fulfilling basic customer expectations and does so in a creative, unexpected way." His book now has me wanting to do this with not just clients I encounter, but also with my friends and family members.
Micah Solomon’s “Ignore your customers (and They’ll Go Away) offers a simple and easy to read answer to the challenging question “how do I keep my customers?” It is much more cost effective to keep a customer than it is to have a sales representative find a new customer, or a marketer to come up with a strong marketing campaign to entice people to buy from you.
That being said, many organizations do not hold customer facing roles with such esteem as they do sales roles. Therefore, they invest resources incorrectly, and need to fix the structural issues facing their businesses to remain competitive.
Solomon offers simple but powerful examples on how, if you find the right customer focused people, place them in the right role, and provide them with the right resources, they can help grow your business exponentially and save you money.
Word of mouth reviews are extremely powerful. One statistic Solomon provides is 93% of people said if they got a word of mouth referral for a product or service, they would buy it. Solomon provides examples of how different businesses in very different industries all add the “power of wow” to increase their bottom line in a very cost-effective way.
Employees at the Ritz Carlton know they have a budget, within reason of course, to meet the needs of hotel guests. One powerful example is, upon discovering one of the hotel’s guest’s son had a birthday and loved Hobbit, the front desk employees created a special adventure. With notable examples of stellar customer service from Drybar, Jetblue, Zappos and many more, Solomon’s book offers ways to think outside the box, out smart your competition, and remain competitive in a world of rising artificial intelligence.
I received this book as a gift and I'm so glad I read it. The book really hits its target. My business is based on contracts that generally do not last more than two years. Keeping customers longer and gaining referrals are two primary goals of mine. This has given me quite a few keys to unlock those possibilities.
The author establishes high credibility right up front with a forward and a preface written by leaders of large, competitive companies (Safelite AutoGlass and JetBlue).
Then, it's structured in a way that is very easy to manage and digest. Each chapter is followed by a cheat sheet, a group discussion guide (thank you for giving me a way to bring my whole team on board!), and diversity and inclusion notes.
Last, but certainly not least, the examples (all from the real world) are highly engaging and perfectly appropriate for the topic being discussed. Just flipping through the book, I was hooked.
In the end, I was able to envision my own company gaining a Zappo's or Nordstrom's reputation for customer service. My team and I have already been able to successfully implement a couple of baby step strategies and we're looking forward to creating this new culture of premium customer service.
I have to confess, Micah Solomon is on my personal Mount Rushmore – his approach and delivery make the Customer Service and Company Culture genre both approachable and something to strive toward daily… In fact, it’s a perfect example of how he practices what he preaches through his writing --- see Chapter 7 on Eye-Level Customer Service.
The funny part is, after reading so many of Micah’s previous books and even though I am an avid fan – I was curious how he was going to bring me something new --- but he delivered once again! The best part – I feel like the playbook approach is going to work even better than his previous work because it covers the perfect formula for business books:
1. Inspire Me – he’s got this covered!
2. Executive Summaries for non-readers and people with little time (because I want to be able to recommend it!) --- I love that Micah calls these sections “Get to the Point, Micah!” LOL
3. Be Possible - provide practical ways to put the principles in practice that work whether you’re reading it as an individual or as an organizational leader.
In the past, I’ve read books that were very inspirational, filled with great ideas, but there was little I, personally could do to put them into practice because of the company I was working for at the time. I really feel Micah must take that into consideration when he chooses his topics – they are always grand enough to be communicated from the top down and accessible enough to be useful if you’re alone on the front lines.
Another big plus – this book is written to be accessible for business to business (B2B) companies as well. I would love to see even more focus on B2B companies in the future, maybe that will be next on the horizon? …take the hint, Micah! LOL
Hands down, this is now my new favorite Micah Solomon book and I will be recommending it personally!
Everyone talks about the Experience Economy but how do you move your organization successfully into this new world? @Micah Solomon's new book "Ignore Your Customers and They'll Go Away" is the perfect primer for you and your team to define what Customer Experience is for your customers, your employees and your organization.
Micah has created a roadmap and a guidebook for you and your team to play out how your organization can define and execute your transformation. Each chapter is filled with real world examples, access to downloadable and email resources and most importantly, each chapter ends with a Reading Group Guide for that chapter which is a list of questions for you and your team to discuss and debate as your define your organization's journey.
The other home run for me in this book is the attention Micah pays to Diversity and Inclusivity as well as Millenials. Instead of having himself as a CX Expert preach to your about D&I, Micah brings in qualified guest authors who discuss D&I issues in both the Talent Management and Experience chapters. As for Millenials, they are the largest population generation ever and he rightfully speaks to their value and impact as both employees and customers.
I will caution my friends in CX Sales or Customer Experience, Micah discusses several CX platforms by name with customer examples (and no my employer is NOT one of them) so be thoughtful about passing this book along to your customers or prospects.
Overall, this book is a great workbook for helping your company, your team or your customers move into the Experience Economy.
NOTE - I was provided with a pre-publication copy of this book but have no relationship with the author.
I just finished reading "Ignore Your Customers..." and have to say that I learned a lot of great ideas which I can put into practice immediately.
And one of my unexpected but highly appreciated features is the Reader's Cheatsheet at the end of each chapter. Micah hit all the high point of the chapter on this 1-3 page section. I know because on the first two chapters I used colored flags to help me find each point I wanted to remember or use again. Then I read the cheatsheet and compared the items with my flags. I had enough confidence in the lists that I stopped flagging the rest of the book.
I personally really got a lot of ideas from Chapters 2 and 3. Chapter is about culture and I love Micah's definition of culture. But I really like the matrix he includes looking at how we serve customers and how we serve those wo serve customers on one axis and how we behave when stress is low or high on the other axis. When I thought about it, I saw it hit the 4 key states and will be extremely useful while working with my peers. Also, Micah offers to send along a printable copy of the blank matrix for future use. Very thoughtful.
Chapter 3 is all about talent management. One of the cool ideas involves setting up a 10 question questionaire on the company website and guide prospective employees to fill it out anytime, not just when it is convenient for me. The system can automatically score the results and, if the person is successful, it can schedule a phone interview at a time that is connvenient for the applicant. Of course there are other great ideas but you will gain more from reading the whole story than just a sentence or two from a reviewer.
I shall stop now since I am sure you get my point. Lots of great insights in a very readable format.
From the title you can see it’s a book on driving truly amazing customer service.
But rather than 250 pages of platitudes, Solomon breaks down the service secrets into bite-sized, actionable steps and smart examples that stick with you.
Each chapter has a nice summary that makes referencing takeaways later super easy.
This books is easy to read, partly bc Solomon is so authentic. He is a customer service thought leader who gained a new fan (me). You can tell he believes what he’s writing about (and I do too)
This book is fresh, rising above the din of other mundane customer service books I’ve read.
Great eye toward the millennial angle also (something oft-overlooked)
Big take away: putting the client first needs to extend from mere words to a way of life, & empowering your team to live out amazing service in an authentic way is the only scalable model to maintain your “special sauce” as you grow (kind of a branding tie-in in a way)
If you want to keep your customers coming back, you must read this book. Micah Solomon covers much more than the basics we come to expect in a customer service book. He gives you insider secrets on topics like talent management, diversity and inclusion, the realities of our tech-driven world, and so much more. Filled with compelling stories from successful companies (and Micah's own brand of humor) this book also gives you end-of-chapter cheat sheets for quick reference. Plus a reading guide to encourage your team to put what they read into practice. I highly recommend you get copies for yourself and your team. It will give you the advantage you need to stay on top.
Micah Solomon follows up his other wonderful books, Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit, Your Customer is the Star and The Heart of Hospitality, with another great book that is a culturally current, A-Z Guide to providing simply exceptional, authentic customer service: Ignore Your Customers And They'll Go Away. Micah's personal insights, and the principles he outlines that every staffer should be trained in, along with his sharing of insights from people like Tony Hsieh and Richard Branson makes Ignore Your Customers his best book ever.
Ignore Your Customers is informative, helpful, and like all of Solomon's books, easy to read and digest. He has an easy conversational style in his writing that makes it feel like he is sharing stories with you over a drink. The book never gets dry or didactic. An excellent feature is the suggestion to read it in groups at work, and there are chapter recaps and even questions to discuss among the team that is reading it together. I've read all of his books, and they are all very worthwhile, as a professional in hospitality, I could not recommend this more.
Once again, Micah Solomon has written a comprehensive, easy to understand playbook on how to deliver exceptional customer service. As a patient experience professional, I eat, sleep, and breathe this every day and always look forward to what Micah has to say. I’d love to see this as required reading in hospitals across the country. Humorous, practical, and spot-on, Micah has written a must-have for any industry.
The title of the book is a truism that we all know and acknowledge, but somehow ignoring customers still takes place in many organizations. Micah Solomon's new book "Ignore Your Customers (and They'll Go Away), takes on this dichotomy directly and offers accessible guidance and instructions that can benefit every customer service organization. Each chapter is filled with helpful tips, entertaining anecdotes, and a big bonus is the reading guide in each chapter and the Group reading guide is ideal for sharing and propagating these lessons and guidance across your service organization. This book is bound to become one of the most referenced books in any CX or Customer Service library. I endorse and highly recommend "Ignore Your Customers (and They'll Go Away)" to anyone who wishes to improve the service that their organization delivers.
Micah Solomon’s latest book is a fantastic guide for anyone looking to reassess, revamp, and relaunch their approach to customer service. The inclusion of subject matter on digital communication and social media impacting traditional approaches to customer service was some of my favorite content - per usual Micah’s insights are current with the times and clearly laid out. After reading the book, I feel inspired to tackle our areas of improvement and prepared to take those next steps to action.
Putting the customer first is easier said than done. Micah delivers a great playbook on how to deliver customer-by-customer excellence. From culture to conversations this is an extremely helpful read for any executive looking for that extra competitive advantage.
It’s long been accepted as an article of faith in the business community that exceptional customer service can be a way for a company to distinguish itself from competitors. But implementing a strategy based on exceptional customer service is not at all clear. Strategies based on pricing, product or promotion are easy to explain and simple to implement. Not easy, but understandable. It’s easy to point to examples of exceptional customer service but a strategy based on customer service is harder to implement and manage because it doesn’t come from a few clear principles but from hundreds of small decisions. And these decisions happen in ways that are almost invisible to see – as decisions – because they arise from the culture within a company. And shaping and directing a company’s culture is not easy. I have taught business strategy to MBA students and undergraduate business majors at a large state university for many years. I’ve accumulated many examples of exceptional customer service to show students what it is and how valuable it can be to a company’s identity. But I’ve never had a tool to help me show students how to create a company culture driven by an emphasis on customer service. This book gives me that tool. The book is accessible – which means it’s not boring to read – and it emphasizes that culture comes from the top of the organization and has to be constantly reinforced and defended. Good customer service has a cost and that cost can easily be identified by the accounting department. The returns from good customer service are much harder to identify on a balance sheet. Customer service can make (and sometimes break) a company but it’s power to shape a company’s identify comes from a constant repetition of its importance. It has to be baked into the hundreds of small daily decisions that employees at every level make. If you want to use exceptional customer service as the foundation of your business strategy or if you want to understand its power, buy this book.
Frank Allen Philpot, Ph.D. Business School George Mason University
Beginning with the title of Micah Solomon's newest book, Ignore Your Customers.....And They'll Go Away, the reader is provided with stand-alone gems in every chapter on how to provide service that will keep the customer coming back for more. It's truly simple, as Micah spells out, just what to do from how to say yes, instead of no, to appreciating staff (those who deliver the good service) to creating authenticity in your organization. Success stories from companies we all know and love support Mr. Solomon's premises and the chapters are anchored with Cheatsheets consolidating the material into easy to implement steps. I am grateful to the author for writing a primer on what good customer service is and how to deliver it. Richard Shapiro, President, The Center For Client Retention
I stumbled upon an article written by Micah Solomon a few years back, and it was an instant following. His clear and concise logic when speaking about customer service brings a new, fresh simple perspective to customer service that some businesses overlook and continue to miss the mark.
If you are looking for a “simple playbook for delivering the ultimate customer service experience”, his new book, “Ignore Your Customers and They’ll Go Away” is a must have. It is organized, in such a way that, makes it easy to go back and reference all of the great examples and tips to deliver great customer service and customer experiences.
His great customer-centric company case studies, tips and creative design of the chapters make his book a best seller. Anyone who works with customers will find this a sacred keepsake that you will be referencing and re-reading again and again to transform your own customer service and culture.
—Teresa Dullaghan, MBA, CPHQ, CPXP Director of Patient Experience, Charleston Market, and Certified Yoga Teacher (CYT-500)
Micah’s understanding of exceptional customer service is a gift to his readers. When I first heard about his new book, I liked the title right away. Clever and pointed, it says it all. But as a sole proprietor, I wondered if the book would be helpful for me or if it would be geared specifically to bigger companies. What I discovered upon first look is that yes indeed, it applies. Whether you’re a business of 1, 100, 1000, or more, this book is a must read if you care about your customers.
As I read through the informative and pragmatic chapters, it was easy to see how Micah’s guidance could be applied to any size business and I think that is important. I especially loved the chapter entitled, “The Power of Wow” and the idea of building “wow experiences” for your customers and clients. The secret is that it’s not really a secret at all, it doesn��t have to cost anything, and the proof is in the authenticity of how it is done. Micah choreographs this elegantly to the reader. He does a great job at distilling the contents of the book into part “business bible” and part whimsical reference book.
Micah’s own work with companies like The Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Zappos, Jet Blue Airlines, USAA and others are peppered throughout the book with stories and anecdotes. Reading these gives credibility and validity to his sage advice. He’s walked the walk, from being a business owner to his current role as author, and consultant to some of the largest companies in business today.
He talks about all the different cornerstones of customer service in today’s world – from how to respond to complainers, to the social media impact on business, and how to avoid the “Stepford” style of customer service, a.k.a. insincerity and scripted service. The latter is told in an interview with Virgin brand’s Richard Branson, someone whose entire ethos revolves around thinking outside the box and being authentic.
Speaking of today, when I first received my copy of Micah’s new book, it was in “the before times” as I’m calling it. The world is changed now. Everything is changed now. In this time of Corona, no one knows what lies ahead, and no one knows exactly when the pandemic will be over and how and when and what will happen with the economy. Having said that, I couldn’t help but hope that Micah is already thinking about his NEXT book. I think there will be a need and appreciation for the topic of “How did you handle your business and navigate unchartered waters during the pandemic?” And I think Micah will be just the one to write it. I realize it might be too soon for the actual book at the time of this review, but in time, I think it would prove to be a good read and a good resource. How about it Micah?
In closing, my three biggest takeaways from “Ignore Your Customers…..and They’ll Go Away” are: Be real. Be kind. Be available.
Outstanding customer service doesnt just happen. It starts with a solid foundation. Micah Solomon is your personal "architect" and "Ignore Your Customers" (and They'll Go Away) is his brilliant blueprint!
I absolutely loved this book and Micah's vast customer service consulting expertise is presented with a very personable and humorous writing style...as if we were having a one-on-one chat.
Precise relatability to a variety of subjects include: Recruiting and building a great service team. Creating those "WOW" experiences ( even the small ones.) Avoiding "The Cliff of Dissatisfaction. " (How to identify and steps to prevent customers falling out of love" or heading down the slippery slope of disengagement.)
Each chapter has a summation "Cheat Sheet" (very helpful to drive home the chapter's essentials) plus a Reading Group Guide to encourage team sharing and re-enforcement.
"Ignore Your Customers (and Theyll Go Away) is pure gold and an essential read for those who strive to stand out in their industry and keep their valued customers coming back!
A how-to playbook for getting customer service right Ignore Your Customers (and they'll go away) is a great guide for improving your customer service. In an age where there is more reliance on technology than personal contact, Micah Solomon shows you the importance of the latter, but also how to integrate the latest in tech (including AI) without losing your human focus. Micah uses his experience with small businesses, mid-sized firms, and even Fortune 500 companies in a wide variety of industries to illustrate how to improve your customer service. This book is witty and an easy read; it is full of wisdom and experience.
This book was a great reminder for me of why we do the things in any customer relationship. It made me realize some of the poor customer experiences I've had recently (I'm still waiting three weeks now for M&M Mars to call me back from being entered into their queue rather than me wait on hold). Any organization that focuses on customer experience should read this book. While some of the ideas weren't new to me, there were definitely some new nuggets gleamed. So much of what I do is based on serving my customers - both internal and external ones. Many of us have both so be sure you're delivering a positive experience to both.
I really enjoyed Micah's writing style. The book was easy to read - I breezed through it in less than a week, and that is NOT the case for many business books- and offered practical advice on how to take care of your customers. I definitely recommend this to anyone in a service oriented role/ business.
Very practical advice on how to improve overall Customer Experience, no theory just empirical and proven examples across several industries. I would have enjoyed more if the author would include more companies and industries, the examples felt a little bit limited.
This was an easy book to read. The author is engaging and clearly has plenty of experience in the field. It was a bit too American for me and I probably read it too soon after reading other, similar titles.
Too similar to Micah’s other book, Exceptional Service, Exceptional profit, which was in ways more interesting and elaborate than this one. It even has the same examples and stories. It was fine but better go read that other book.
Enjoyed hearing stories of companies going above and beyond to create extraordinary customer service experiences. This book has me thinking about how AI chatbots may eventually be perceived as going ‘above and beyond’ to help customers