Marketing is one of the most optimistic business disciplines with the goal of serving consumers or organizations and increasing customer satisfaction and happiness. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the optimism of the world, thus hindering these marketing goals. This book explore the challenges faced by marketers during and post-COVID-19 and offers strategies for marketers to invoke a sense of optimism as the world enters the "new normal". It provides success stories and regional case studies to offer marketers new ways in which to serve consumers and satisfy their needs. It also acknowledges the role digital technology and innovation have played a crucial role during these dark times and how they impact current and future customer experiences. Founded in 1971, the Academy of Marketing Science is an international organization dedicated to promoting timely explorations of phenomena related to the science of marketing in theory, research, and practice. Among its services to members and the community at large, the Academy offers conferences, congresses, and symposia that attract delegates from around the world. Presentations from these events are published in this Proceedings series, which offers a comprehensive archive of volumes reflecting the evolution of the field. Volumes deliver cutting-edge research and insights, complementing the Academy's flagship journals, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS) and AMS Review.

Praise for "Rules to Break & Laws to Follow: How Your Business Can Beat the Crisis of Short-Termism"

"A fascinating, highly readable synthesis of business principles, technology, sociology and common sense, "Rules to Break and Laws to Follow" persuasively shows the connection between customer trust and business profits, and then explains how to make it happen. As a bonus, you'll learn how to make your company more innovative, how to ensure your employees actually enjoy what they're doing, and how to deal with the kinds of service and quality breakdowns that occasionally plague any company, even a well-managed one. This book should be on your required reading list."
--Stephen M. R. Covey, bestselling author of "The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything"

"Over the years, Peppers and Rogers have given me valuable advice about navigating the changing business landscape. This book is a must-read for managers who want to empower their employees and customers to?make change their ally."
--Jim McCann, founder and CEO of 1-800-FLOWERS.COM

"Highly readable and entertaining. Make sure everybody in your firm reads this book by last Friday."
--Dror Pockard, CEO of eglue

"In a time when most companies are built to flip, Peppers and Rogers have planted a stake in the ground to help you survive past the next round of financing or consumer fad. Knowing what rules to break is arguably even more important than what laws to follow, and this book imparts knowledge for both."
--Guy Kawasaki, cofounder of Truemors and author of "The Art of the Start"

"Peppers and Rogers have created the unthinkable: an enjoyable wake-up call Their book serves up one compelling and provocative idea after another, and the authors enjoy debunking some of our most deeply ingrained business beliefs. Read this book and your customers will thank you."
--Dan Heath, coauthor of "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die"

This fully updated second edition of Understanding Customers is a recommended textbook for the Understanding Customers Certificate CIM paper. It is divided into six parts covering the social sciences, people as individuals, people in groups, people in society and people in organisations. Each chapter of Understanding Customers consists of: * learning objectives and definitions * the theoretical background * exercises * issues to consider * current examples * implications for marketing * recent examination questions. Chris Rice isSenior Lecturer in the Nottingham Business School at Nottingham Trent University. He is a CIM examiner on the Understanding Customers paper and has widespread consultancy experience in both the private and public sector.

The food and beverage aspect of hotel operations is often the most difficult area to control effectively, but it plays a crucial role in customer satisfaction. Improving Food and Beverage Performance is able to show how successful catering operations can increase profitability whilst providing continuing improvements in quality, value and service. Keith Waller looks at the practical issues of improving performance combining the key themes of quality customer service and efficient management. This text will enable managers and students alike to recognise all the contributing factors to a successful food and beverage operation.Keith Waller is Senior Lecturer for the Faculty of Business and Management at Blackpool and the Fylde College. He has extensive experience in the hospitality industry and is a member of the Hotel and Catering International Management Association. He is the co-author, with Professor John Fuller, of The Menu, Food and Profit.

Practical Customer Success Management is a complete "handbook for CSMs", written by a customer success expert who has coached and trained many hundreds of customer success managers across the globe. The book is aimed at increasing both productivity and consistency of quality of output for customer success managers of all levels, from relative newcomers through to seasoned professionals. The book is highly practical in nature and is packed full of good humored but very direct advice and assistance for dealing with exactly the types of real world situations CSMs face every day. Practical Customer Success Management provides a simple-to-follow, best practice framework that explains what the core customer success management steps are at each stage of the customer journey to business outcome success and in what circumstances to apply those steps. It describes and explains which situations each step applies to and provides recommendations for activities or tasks that the CSM can perform to complete each step, together with detailed explanations and step-by-step guidance for successfully completing each activity or task. Included in this book is an entire suite of tools and templates that enable rapid completion of each task and ensure consistency of approach both across multiple customer engagements and by multiple CSMs within a team. Each tool's use is clearly explained within the book, and CSMs are able to adapt and customize the tools to suit their own specific needs as they see fit.

Praise For What's the Secret?

"In a world of ever-increasing mediocrity, real customer service and relationship buildingare the keys to competitive differentiation. DiJulius's work is a blueprint to helping businesses exceed customer expectations."
--John Maguire, COO, Panera Bread

"It's no secret that DiJulius helps companies go above and beyond mundane services to stage truly compelling experiences. His real-world, down-in-the-trenches perspective in What's the Secret? is sure to help many managers create an enduring legacy of being the very best they can be."
--James H. Gilmore, coauthor of Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want

"DiJulius has an amazing ability to offer clarity and simplicity to the message of creating world-class service. This book offers a road map to creating superior service in any industry."
--Nance Hastings, Vice President, Field Education and

Talent Development, Estee Lauder

"Given the general uniform quality of global products and services, the primary way firms differentiate themselves and drive exceptional margins is through outstanding customer service--secret service! DiJulius's book provides the kind of practical simplicity and depth it takes to achieve industry-dominating customer service. I know, because we've exposed thousands of business owners to DiJulius's approach and results match the promises."
--Verne Harnish, founder, Entrepreneurs' Organization; CEO, Gazelles, Inc.;

and author, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits

"In this fast-changing global world, DiJulius has been able to simplify the game of service. People's tastes and time constraints have rapidly changed, but the desire for personalized humancontact still remains the overwhelming factor in winning."
--John Rolfs, General Manager, The Ritz-Carlton

"What's the Secret? delves even farther into the customer service experience and, more importantly, explains how to focus the entire organization on this one key element to all business success. DiJulius has once again delivered a fine addition to any business library."
--Maggie Hardy Magerko, owner and President, 84 Lumber Company

The role of UX manager is of vital importance -- it means leading a productive team, influencing businesses to adopt user-centered design, and delivering valuable products customers. Few UX professionals who find themselves in management positions have formal training in management. More often than not they are promoted to a management position after having proven themselves as an effective and successful practitioner.Yet as important as the position of manager is to the advancement of the field there are no books that specifically address the needs of user experience managers. Though information is available on the Web, nothing ties that advice together in the way a manager would need to integrate it in their work.

"User Experience Management"speaks directly to the UX manager and to the unique challengesone mayface. It outlines the robust framework for how to be an effective UX manager, from creating a team, to orchestrating product development, to ensuring UX is not compromised, to achieving company buy-in on results. This acts as a checklist readers can use to make sure they have covered the bases as they think about how to build their own user experience programs. Written by an experienced UX manager, and containing testamonials from many leading managers in the field, managers both current and aspiring will find this an invaluable reference loaded with ideas and techniques for managing user experience.

*Gives a UX leadership boot-camp from putting together a winning team, to giving them a driving focus, to acting as their spokesman, to handling difficult situations

*Full of practical advice and experiences for managers and leaders in virtually any area of the user experience field

*Contains best practices, real-world stories, and insights from UX leaders at IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and many more "

Whether it's the interminable hold times, the multitude of buttons to press, or the automated voices before reaching someone with a measurable pulse--who hasn't felt exasperated at the abuse, neglect, and wasted time when all we want is help, and maybe a little human kindness? "Your Call Is (not that) Important to Us" is journalist Emily Yellin's highly entertaining and far-reaching exploration of the multibillion-dollar customer service industry and its surprising inner-workings. Since customer service has a role in just about every industry on earth, Yellin travels the country and the world, meeting a wide range of customer service reps, corporate decision makers, industry watchers, and Internet-based consumer activists. She shows the myriad forces that converge to create these aggravating experiences and the people inside and outside the globalized corporate world crusading to make customer service better for us all. Because of the fast-moving nature of the industry, the paperback will be revised and updated throughout, including a fresh Introduction.
For the first time, Yellin gets at the heart of the human stories behind the often inhuman face of call-center customer ?service--and why customer service doesn't have to be this bad.

A comprehensive guide to a burgeoning field, this book shows how to design and implement a future-proof post-sales service program focused on proactively addressing customers' needs in a personalized way. For too long, companies have detached from customers after the moment of purchase and done post-sales service in a way that is reactive, generic, and not scalable. Empowered by the boom in data availability and analytics, future-ready companies will offer their customers proactive personalized post-sales service and reap tangible benefits, including higher customer satisfaction and retention and less negative word of mouth - leading to increased sales and customer lifetime value. As the stories in this book demonstrate, companies like Amazon, Adobe, Garmin, and Liberty Global are leading the way, but companies do not have to be global giants to capitalize on the techniques presented in this guide. To excel at customer experience (CX) management, companies need to implement the best customer feedback and data collection and management practices, develop state-of-the-art analytical models, and have the willingness to act. This book's strong vision and actionable roadmap, illustrated with real-life success stories, make this a compelling read for CX and customer analytics leaders, practitioners, and students alike.

Much in the same vein as DELIVERING HAPPINESS, LOOPTAIL combines both Bruce Poon Tip's extraordinary first-person account of his entrepreneurial instincts to start and develop G Adventures, a highly-successful international travel adventure company, and along the way, he reveals his unusual management secrets that not only keep his employees fully engaged but also keep his customers extremely happy.

The Seven Myths of Customer Management is required reading for everyone who's job interacts with or impacts customers. Written in a lively, readable and anecdotal style, this book challenges much conventional wisdom and provides a powerful antidote to many potentially dangerous and expensive misconceptions. Written by two experienced and expert practitioners, it offers practical and pragmatic advice on how to unlock customer value and maximise corporate revenues.

'I wish I had had this book in front of me as the Marketing & IT snake-oil men tried to sell me their wares. This is the best exposition I have so far seen on creating focused customer strategies around what really counts and what will ultimately drive the bottom-line. Without ever losing sight of the importance of customers and meeting their needs, it introduces a realistic management-based approach and kills some sacred cows along the way.' Michael Pinder Managing Director, Premier Banking , Barclays Private Clients

'Before launching Switch I was employed in the strategic planning department of a major UK bank concentrating on the personal sector market - I only wish that back in the mid-eighties I had access to this book and the fund of knowledge it contains! A very readable and understandable book, down to earth with many appropriate real life examples - a good and compelling read.' Timothy M Green CEO of Switch Card Services (1991 - 2002)

'We shouldn't be surprised that Paul Hawkes and John Abram have penned a very surprising book. Exploding the myths of customer leadership is the dose of realism we should expect from two people who have always had their feet firmly on the ground. As leaders of one of the most successful marketing organisations of the past 20 years, they are renowned for their radical common sense. In this book, they tear sloppy arguments and widely held mantras to shreds. In their place they present a cogent, integrated framework for maximising the value of your organisation by maximising the value of your customers. Read it before you get your cheque book out; you'll use a lot less ink if you do.' Peter Simpson Commercial Director, First Direct

'Businesses thrive on creating and serving customers. In The Seven Myths of Customer Management, Paul Hawkes and John Abram show managers how to do so successfully and for long-term profits. The book is full of practical and workable advice on how to approach your markets and manage your customers.' Peter Lake Managing Director, Sweet & Maxwell Group

'An enjoyable book that provides lots of practical advice in a straightforward entertaining way. And, it tells the truth about the excesses of the 'CRM industry'.' Catherine McGrath Director Direct to Customer, Prudential Assurance

'Paul Hawkes and John Abram built an unrivalled reputation through their enormously successful consultancy practice for no-nonsense, hugely practical and extremely commercial solutions for every marketing issue imaginable across most industry sectors. An obvious next step was to produce a book that leverages the unique asset they have built over those years, a genuine insight into how to really deliver customer strategies to drive maximum value for shareholders. This is not a book for the office cabinet, it is the best 'policy and procedures manual' I have read relating to the hugely talked about but equally hugely misunderstood subject of CRM. Keep it handy - you'll need it!!' Simon Waugh Group Director of Marketing, Centrica Plc

Making Customer Satisfaction Happen provides a customer focus for your company's Total Quality process. Drawing on actual case studies of 'world-class' customer satisfaction organizations, Rod McNealy clearly illustrates the power of customer satisfaction as a strategic weapon for any business. Significantly, this book provides both an easily understandable and implementable approach to meeting and exceeding your customers' needs and expectations. Making Customer Satisfaction Happen is targeted at a broad audience of managers in any type of organization - large or small, public or private, operating for profit or non-profit. This is a 'hands-on', action-oriented, instructive guide to achieving customer satisfaction. It offers a proven approach for meeting and exceeding customers' needs and expectations to the point of 'delighting' them.

This book provides retail managers with a practical guide to using data. It covers three topics that are key areas of innovation for retailers: Algorithmic Marketing, Logistics, and Pricing. Use cases from these areas are presented and discussed in a conceptual and comprehensive manner. Retail managers will learn how data analysis can be used to optimize pricing, customer loyalty and logistics without complex algorithms. The goal of the book is to help managers ask the right questions during a project, which will put them on the path to making the right decisions. It is thus aimed at practitioners who want to use advanced techniques to optimize their retail organization.

Use this bestselling and practical guide to steer you through how to create exceptional customer experience for the modern B2B consumer. This new edition explores key topics such as AI, the role of IT in customer experience and customer relationship management. B2B Customer Experience shows readers how to deliver the very best customer experience within the business-to-business industry. Intensely practical in its approach, it is divided into five parts to walk readers through the journey of planning, mapping, structuring, implementing and controlling an effective customer experience, all bespoke for the B2B environment. Now newly revised, this new edition will provide new case studies demonstrating what makes for good or bad customer experience as well as providing new tactics and strategies that will help build an effective customer experience plan. This new edition also aims to guide the reader on how to successfully incorporate AI into their strategy whilst still delivering great customer experience. Discussing some of the best-known examples of consumer-focused customer experiences from companies such as Zappos, Nordstrom and John Lewis, B2B Customer Experience is the must-have text for any marketing professional working within a B2B environment.

COVID-19 forced a dramatic change to customer behavior that resulted in an economic crisis not witnessed by anyone alive. Businesses can no longer operate as before because their customers are no longer operating as before. This book provides customer-centric based guidance for how businesses should adapt to this new reality, deriving insights from academic research, case studies, interviews, and best practice examples from around the world. As validated by hundreds of top-level executives, its readers will gain a better understanding of why customer behavior has changed so they can use the book's solutions to navigate through and succeed in the post COVID-19 future.

Time is limited. Attention is scarce. Are you engaging your customers? Apple Stores, Disney, LEGO, Starbucks. Do these names conjure up images of mere goods and services, or do they evoke something more--something visceral? Welcome to the Experience Economy, where businesses must form unique connections in order to secure their customers' affections--and ensure their own economic vitality. This seminal book on experience innovation by Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore explores how savvy companies excel by offering compelling experiences for their customers, resulting not only in increased customer allegiance but also in a more profitable bottom line. Translated into thirteen languages, The Experience Economy has become a must-read for leaders of enterprises large and small, for-profit and nonprofit, global and local. Now with a brand-new preface, Pine and Gilmore make an even stronger case for experiences as the critical link between a company and its customers in an increasingly distractible and time-starved world. Filled with detailed examples and actionable advice, The Experience Economy helps companies create personal, dramatic, and even transformative experiences, offering the script from which managers can generate value in ways aligned with a strong customer-centric strategy.

This book is about building and delivering great customer experiences. Many companies neglect this, but the physical execution and emotional impact of customer experiences, companies and brands may ultimately determine customer satisfaction and loyalty and commercial success. With the use of compelling examples and cases the authors show that this is key for all companies and organizations.

"There are not many people who understand the new paradigm of the Customer Experience. The emerging gurus on the subject are Colin Shaw and John Ivens with their holistic approach. We will all have to embrace the paradigm they are unlocking and focus on our Customer Experience if we are to be successful in the future. At Microsoft we understand the importance of this and are committing ourselves to this new world."

Steve Harvey, Director of People, Profits & Loyalty, Microsoft

"Many business books look at new companies and how they have become successful. This book bases itself in the reality in which most business people find themselves daily – working in companies which have been established for some time and who are faced with legacy systems, legacy processes, legacy people, legacy channels and an existing culture. It focuses on how you can change an existing organisation in order to build and deliver Great Customer Experiences. Shaw and Ivens are the gurus of the Customer Experience. Whilst we have all recognised the importance of service in the past, their book moves business thinking on apace. It is about more than just customer service, it is about the whole Customer Experience. Their 7 Philosophies for Building Great Customer Experiences explicitly outline the building blocks that are the foundation of good business."

Liam Lambert, Director & General Manager, Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, London

"John and Colin’s innovative approach deserves applause - their thought leading book is at the cutting edge. Their 7 Philosophies for Building Great Customer Experiences underpin Hilton’s own philosophy on how to delight our customers. My endorsement reflects the importance I personally place on the Customer Experience".

Mike Ashton, Senior Vice President, Hilton International Hotels

"This book hits the strikezone of how marketers, and organizations overall, need to be thinking to win today. It's a clear roadmap for building a high performance organization crystallized around the customer. Importantly, Shaw and Ivens recognize that emotions are at the core of all relationships -- it's no different with customers than our family & friends -- and truly engaging and successful brands."

Barry Herstein, Chief Marketing Officer, Financial Times Group, New York

"The Customer Experience will be a critical differentiator in today's commoditising economy. Colin and John's thought provoking book is essential reading for anyone wishing to create engaging and memorable Customer Experiences. This simple and readable book is littered with the views and thoughts of senior business leaders on the Customer Experience. It not only explains the theory of the Customer Experience but also provides practical advice and insights on how you can begin building and delivering Great Customer Experiences".

Peter Scott, Customer Service Director, T-Mobile

Virtual Worlds and E-Commerce: Technologies and Applications for Building Customer Relationships presents various opinions, judgments, and ideas on how the use of digitally created worlds is changing the face of e-commerce and extending the use of internet technologies to create a more immersive experience for customers. Containing current research on various aspects of the use of virtual worlds, this book includes a discussion of the elements of virtual worlds; the evolution of e-commerce to virtual commerce (v-commerce); the convergence of online games and virtual worlds; current examples of virtual worlds in use by various businesses, the military, and educational institutions; the economics of virtual worlds: discussions on legal, security and technological issues facing virtual worlds; a review of some human factor issues in virtual worlds; and the future of virtual worlds and e-commerce.

Confidently shepherd your organization's implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365 to a successful conclusion In Mastering Microsoft Dynamics 365 Implementations, accomplished executive, project manager, and author Eric Newell delivers a holistic, step-by-step reference to implementing Microsoft's cloud-based ERP and CRM business applications. You'll find the detailed and concrete instructions you need to take your implementation project all the way to the finish line, on-time, and on-budget. You'll learn: The precise steps to take, in the correct order, to bring your Dynamics 365 implementation to life What to do before you begin the project, including identifying stakeholders and building your business case How to deal with a change management throughout the lifecycle of your project How to manage conference room pilots (CRPs) and what to expect during the sessions Perfect for CIOs, technology VPs, CFOs, Operations leaders, application directors, business analysts, ERP/CRM specialists, and project managers, Mastering Microsoft Dynamics 365 Implementations is an indispensable and practical reference for guiding your real-world Dynamics 365 implementation from planning to completion.

The essential guide to creating a successful organization by making things easier, better and more straightforward for your customers. Across all sectors, organizations' fixation with functionality have meant that the 'human' elements of the customer's experience have become neglected. Strict processes and automated procedures have created organizations full of people who aren't allowed to act in a 'human' way. As a result, and despite these new technologies, customers are no more satisfied than they were a decade ago (according to the Institute of Customer Service) and, according to Edelman, they now trust big organizations even less than they did in the past. In The Human Experience, John Sills draws upon extensive research and illustrative case studies to explain that the emotional experience is just as important as the functional one, and, if done right, will create a more efficient business. He also demonstrates that the customer experience is not just the responsibility of front-line employees, but shared across the company, from the CEO operating as the spokesperson of the business to the programmers developing a seamless and welcoming user interface. Whether you're a well-established incumbent or an early-stage start-up, on either end of your product or service is a human. Packed full of practical advice and engaging case studies, The Human Experience is the ultimate guide to creating a culture and an experience with humanity at its heart, helping to develop a customer base that will stay with an organization, and a company that will grow in an increasingly efficient way.

This book focuses on the implications of digitalisation in the mobility service industry. Based on an analysis of more than 450 survey responses, it explores and assesses mobility in the age of digitalisation. The content covers both changes in the relationship between the company and its customers and a potential paradigm shift among leading companies. The findings suggest that a shift from traditional mobility management to a more customer-centred management perspective is both widely accepted and increasingly necessary. Nevertheless, the inclusion of services that are not primarily concerned with overcoming spatial distances is considered to be less attractive. Given its scope, the book will be of interest to researchers and professionals who are involved in digitalisation in the mobility service industry.

This book explains how startups and brands in general can achieve a high level of customer experience (CX) in today's dynamic and competitive times. A well-structured and easy to apply customer experience framework defines customer experience as the start and end point of all business activities. The framework steps and tools (such as NPS, Empathy Map, Customer Journey, Golden Circle, Design Thinking, A/B-Testing) are designed to have a maximum impact on successful company building and the customer experience, which is key to generate first and repeat buyers that become fans of the company. The tools originate from different disciplines, such as management, design, digitisation or psychology - as only an interdisciplinary approach enables superior insights for initiating the right customer activities in today's highly competitive times. With this book, it is possible to look at customer experience systematically and derive your own strategy towards success. The following are the main contributions of this book: * Provides a clear step-by-step guide to create a customer experience-centric company * Introduces most impactful tools that managers can use to successfully complete every step of our framework * Guides managers through the process of creating a start-up, which is less about magically coming up with innovative business ideas, but rather about applying proven principles in a new context