Learn why customer advisory boards are so successful--and how to create one for any business
From a leading authority in business management comes a book to give your company the winning edge. Customer Advisory Boards: A Strategic Tool for Customer Relationship Building examines the customer advisory board (CAB)--one of the most effective competitive tools for building and maintaining customer satisfaction. This business guide shows how to create and make use of an effective CAB, and how doing so can give your company a marketing advantage and improve vital aspects of business, including customer responsiveness, trust-building, and customer satisfaction.
Customer Advisory Boards focuses on bringing companies and customers closer together utilizing input and advice from a CAB. This book shows how to use three types of customer bases--existing customers, potential customers, or former buyers--to form three different types of advisory boards: corporate strategy boards to plan future investments, product planning boards to create new product, and launch success boards to improve existing product. Using the information in this book, your company can transform from being customer focused to customer driven.
Customary advisory boards benefit your company by: improving sales contact and dialogue dynamics of the company enabling the company to see itself through the customers' eyes sharing ideas and suggestions to improve a company's programs and services to its customers showing that the company values its customers' opinions and wants to improve for them providing access to expertise and experience from a wide range of necessary disciplines without legal liability Customer advisory boards also benefit the board members by: giving them opportunities to offer practical advice that can affect a company allowing them to establish personal and professional contacts from each other rewarding them with company perks and products giving them a sense of belonging and empowerment With case studies, appendices, notes, references, and surveys, Dr. Tony Carter has created an illuminating, educational research tool for company owners and managers. Whether applied to a corporation, a medical or religious institution, or a not-for-profit organization, Customer Advisory Boards will help increase customer loyalty and satisfaction.

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.

Learn about new strategies to improve service, quality, and profitability for quick service restaurants Quick Service Restaurants, Franchising, and Multi-Unit Chain Management examines a variety of issues pertaining to quick service restaurants. Quick-service restaurants (QSR) are the dominant sector of the foodservice industry and a one-hundred-billion-dollar industry. Since their inception in the 1920s, quick-service restaurants have become one of the cultural icons of America. This informative book contains vital information on: growth, change and strategy in the international foodservice industry food safety as an international problem and the formation of outreach committees to combat the challenges faced globally food consumption patterns and the driving forces that influence consumer food preferences the differences between mature and younger customers' expectations and experiences in QSRs, casual, and fine dining restaurants consumer attitudes toward airline food adding quick-service meals to airplane menus factors influencing parental patronage of QSRs a case study on how Billy Ingram, founder of White Castle restaurants, made the hamburger a staple on American menus

As a leader in your organization, you will be very familiar with your organization's key financial statements and monthly management reports. You may have spent countless hours discussing budgets and expenditures. But how much time have you spent reflecting on the fact that these revenues are generated by actual customers-the people who pull out their wallets and pay for your products and services? In The Customer-Base Audit: The First Step on the Journey to Customer Centricity, experts Peter Fader, Bruce Hardie, and Michael Ross start you on the path toward really getting to understand your customers' buying behavior as well as the health of your overall customer base. A customer-base audit is a systematic review of the buying behavior of a firm's customers using data captured by its transaction systems. It will help you answer questions such as: -- How healthy is your customer base? How realistic are your growth objectives? -- How do your customers differ in terms of their behavior and value? -- How has the quality of your customers changed over time? -- What changes in customer behavior lie behind period-to-period changes in firm performance? -- What is important to your high-value customers? Which products help you acquire and retain your best customers? Fader, Hardie, and Ross present five "lenses" through which an executive can address questions like those above. The answers are often lurking in various parts of the organization, but it is rare to find all the relevant analyses in one place, let alone performed on a regular basis (as an audit should be). Yet without such a basic, systematic understanding of the foundations of the firm's primary source of cash flow, how can executives make informed decisions? Fader, a Wharton professor, is the author of Customer Centricity and coauthor of The Customer Centricity Playbook, both of which have helped businesses radically rethink how they relate to customers. In this first step of the journey, Fader, Hardie, and Ross assist leaders in gaining a fundamental understanding of their customers' buying behavior-and thus their company as a whole.

Driven by rapidly changing business environments and increasingly demanding consumers, many organizations are searching for new ways to achieve and retain a competitive advantage via customer intimacy and CRM. In this context, new strategic frameworks and cooperation with everybody along the whole value chain are needed to allow managers to deal with the changes in shopping patterns of consumers. This book presents a new strategic framework that has been tested successfully with various global companies. New management concepts such as Collaborative Forecasting and Replenishment, CRM, Category Management, and Mass Customization are integrated into one holistic approach with a view to jointly develop customer bonding and loyalty. Experts from companies like McKinsey, Procter&Gamble, Accenture, and AC Nielsen, as well as authors from renowned academic institutions, offer valuable insights on how to redesign organizations for the future.

This revised edition of Robert Jolles's classic book on sales technique features brand new material throughout, including illustrations, teaching aids, coaching techniques, and true implementation strategies
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When you have a process, you have a way of measuring what you are doing. When you can measure it--you can fix it "
Customer Centered Selling "teaches the secrets of the world-famous Xerox sales training by reversing the conventional selling practices of searching for customer needs, pitching product, and adopting an order-taking mentality. Jolles provides a systematic, repeatable, predictable approach that teaches how to anticipate and influence behavior by studying and understanding the client's "Decision Cycle" and critical "Decision Points." Through the use of case studies, interactive activities, and job aids, anyone--from a seasoned sales professional to a manager or parent--can not only learn the power to influence behavior, but can implement these ideas as well. Put to good use by Toyota, Disney, NASA, Nortel, General Electric, a dozen universities, and more than fifty financial institutions, "Customer Centered Selling "provides a step-by-step, consultative process that inspires as it teaches.

This book presents a new and practical segmentation approach to be used in global customer management in the form of a scale by which to measure the level of corporate globalization. This is a tool that will help companies segment their customers and enable them to adapt customer management strategies when dealing with increasingly global customers. This in turn helps determine the company's own strategic position, thereby enhancing corporate performance. MARKET 1: Academics, Researchers, Libraries and post-graduate students interested in customer management and strategy MARKET 2: Practitioners interested in customer management and strategy

By 2005, companies worldwide had created a $76-billion customer relationship management (CRM) software industry. These pioneers strove to streamline their customer transactions and maximize touchpoints over the lifecycle. On average, these dedicated, innovative firms spent the better part of a year implementing expensive CRM systems and renewing maintenance contracts. After all this devotion, investment, and IT integration, how could it be that up to 70% of CRM projects "fail to live up to expectations"? This book investigates the reason for relationship marketing's failure, and uncovers that this failure is not due solely to CRM IT implementation and strategy problems. The failure to establish long-term relationships with customers is because companies and research have ignored the emotional-relational component of developmental stages in human relationships. Relationship marketing is incomplete unless it models the stuff of real interpersonal relationships - developmental stages, trust, emotional mechanisms, and deeply felt commitment. This thesis is supported most strongly by the critical finding that emotions (rather than simply transactions or other success factors) are the primary drivers of stage progression. Therefore, traditional CRM software and, by implication, the relationship marketing vision of the firm is simply looking in the wrong place. The CRM technology itself tends to obfuscate the naked realization and raison d'etre, as James Autry profoundly mused, that "There is no business, there are only people." The research in this book empirically maps the customer's emotional-relational journey, so that marketing may be better able to connect on an emotional level to "where customers are" in the relationship stages to earn, not only commitment and profits, but also relational well-being.

In the context of rapid ICT development, this book focuses on how gamification affects consumer engagement and can be used to create a shared value for customers and companies. Based on the constructs of shared value, consumer engagement and gamification, it creates a conceptual model and a research methodology to enable empirical testing and provide complex empirical research findings. The book demonstrates the use of game elements and the motivation to play games as a means of achieving a psychological effect, i.e., consumer engagement manifested through gamified activities and brand engagement. This joint empirical study, by an expert team, concludes that the analysis of consumer perceived value in the context of engagement in gamified activities should distinguish between not just the theoretically identified company/brand-related economic, emotional, functional and social values, but also between engagement-related social and functional values.

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.

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.

In their book Winning Behavior, Terry Bacon and David Pugh showed how great companies outperform good ones through ""behavioral differentiation"" -- going beyond superior products and dependable service to connect with customers at every touchpoint. The Behavioral Advantage broadens the concept, applying behavioral differentiation to the business-to-business arena. The best B2B companies depend on a multifront approach to business interaction, and The Behavioral Advantage reveals the secrets behind what is essentially a chess game with competitors. To win the game, companies must develop a carefully plotted opening game, with all internal values, policies, practices, and behaviors fully aligned. A smart and efficient middle game lets the company build and strengthen its position, and the endgame assures victory and lays the groundwork for future business. Just as individual customers do, B2B customers remember those companies whose behavior consistently and significantly outshines even strong competitors. These firms create a lasting advantage -- and reap the profits that come with it.

What to Say to a Porcupine uses the format of Aesop's fables to illustrate fundamental principles of customer service in a quick and lighthearted way. What do a demanding colony of porcupines, an upscale restaurant run by hyenas, and a famous medieval knight have in common? They are all part of one of the most engaging books on customer service in existence. In this book, you'll explore how: great service is all about going the extra mile, as learned by a group of rabbits running an express mail delivery service in "By a Hare"; there's a better way to great your customers, as one grizzly honey-shop owner discovers in "Bear with Me"; and how to handle difficult conversations with customers in a positive, constructive manner, as demonstrated in this book's titular story "What to Say to a Porcupine." Each story is followed by a short discussion, illuminating topics ranging from the best tips for building customer relationships to how to motivate a service team. Fun, quick, and constructive, What to Say to a Porcupine provides all customer service professionals with easy-to-remember lessons for delivering superior customer service.

Learn how to navigate the bullies, manipulators and complainers who drive you mad. With example dialogue and techniques, it will help you navigate tricky situations and keep your cool. By understanding the motives and individual behaviours of difficult people, you can learn to manage aggression, reduce awkwardness and remain the better person. This 5th edition of the bestselling Dealing with Difficult People features practical exercises, useful templates and top tips you need to get the best out of the worst, including how to deal with difficult customers, dealing with difficult people in the digital sphere, advice on beating bullies at their own game and how to deal with a boss who drives you barmy. The Creating Success series of books... Unlock vital skills, power up your performance and get ahead with the bestselling Creating Success series. Written by experts for new and aspiring managers and leaders, this million-selling collection of accessible and empowering guides will get you up to speed in no time. Packed with clever thinking, smart advice and the kind of winning techniques that really get results, you'll make fast progress, quickly reach your goals and create lasting success in your career.

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.

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.

If leaders aren't integrating their digital offerings into a philosophy of Customer Success, they will be defeated in the next decade, because technical excellence and other traditional competitive advantages are becoming too easy to imitate. The Customer Success Economy offers examples and specifics of how companies can transform. It addresses the pains of transforming organizational charts, leadership roles, responsibilities, and strategies so the whole company works together in total service to the customer. Shows leaders how their digital implementations will make them more Amazon-like Helps you deliver recurring revenue Shows you how to embrace customer retention Demonstrates the importance of "churning" less Get that competitive advantage in the most relevant and important arena today--making and cultivating happy customers.

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.

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.

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.