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Managing the Customer Experience: Turning Customers into Advocates
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.
- GenresBusiness
272 pages, Paperback
First published November 8, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 25, 2008
Managing the Customer Experience: Turning Customers into Advocates
Shaun Smith and Joe Wheeler
Financial Times/Prentice Hall
The core concept in this book can be summarized as follows: “Experience the brand” and “Brand the experience.” 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."
Credit Smith and Wheeler with providing a remarkably thorough analysis of how to manage the development of customer relationships that 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 Experience: `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 "experiencing 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 employee. The people have created the magic. The people have created the experience." Appropriately, Schultz entitled his autobiography Pour Your Heart Into It.
Most organizations that have problems retaining valued customers also have problems retaining valuable employees and usually for the same reasons which include not feeling appreciated and a lack of trust. 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 is a corollary to that insight: "If you don't have employees who are competent and cordial as well as committed to the enterprise, you won't have any customers."
Shaun Smith and Joe Wheeler
Financial Times/Prentice Hall
The core concept in this book can be summarized as follows: “Experience the brand” and “Brand the experience.” 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."
Credit Smith and Wheeler with providing a remarkably thorough analysis of how to manage the development of customer relationships that 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 Experience: `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 "experiencing 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 employee. The people have created the magic. The people have created the experience." Appropriately, Schultz entitled his autobiography Pour Your Heart Into It.
Most organizations that have problems retaining valued customers also have problems retaining valuable employees and usually for the same reasons which include not feeling appreciated and a lack of trust. 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 is a corollary to that insight: "If you don't have employees who are competent and cordial as well as committed to the enterprise, you won't have any customers."
November 26, 2013
READ NOV 2013
Nice piece with good stories to illustrate what a branded customer experience looks like.
Nice piece with good stories to illustrate what a branded customer experience looks like.
February 16, 2008
Pretty interesting.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews