You've read about Customer Loyalty in the Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, Miami Herald, Kansas City Star, Entrepreneur, Industry Week, Marketing News, Boardroom Reports, Marketing Management, Library Journal, The Selling Advantage, Ideas Magazine, Executive Briefings, Training, Hospitality Upgrade, Direct, Quality Digest, Marketing Tools, Houseware Executive, Journal of Pharmaceutical Management, Discount Merchandiser, TeleProfessional, NationsBank Business, Modern Jeweler, Furniture Today— now read the new and revised edition of the ground-breaking book that created all the buzz.

1. Provides an overview of customer service principles, theories, and practices, and covers a range of classic and contemporary business theories 2. Includes case studies of business enterprises in various hospitality and service sectors including hotels, restaurants, theme parks, event management, airlines, cruises, (e-)retailers, finance 3. Suggests important considerations and design concepts for businesses to introduce technological innovations in service settings 4. Learning Objectives and Discussion Questions included in every content chapter as learning aids

"The Celebrity Experience" combines the best practices of the business world with those of the celebrity world to create a practical and proactive guide for anyone who wants to bring their business's internal and external customer service to the level of star treatment. Based on the unique ways celebrities are treated, the book shares techniques you can use to treat your customers to a red-carpet experience, guaranteeing repeat business and stellar word of mouth.

The need for customer friendly organizations exists across fields and industries. Corporate leaders have long known the value of customer support. Even public agency leaders increasingly recognize the need to offer better service to citizens. This book presents the organizational architecture of customer friendly organizations. How do some private companies and public agencies become customer friendly-by accident or design? Academics and practicing managers know that organizational design affects behavior. This book helps us understand how we develop high performance organizations-in this case, organizations that consistently deliver high quality service. It builds on the theory and application of "systems thinking" to organization design and behavior by showing how products, structure, psychological climate, culture, and leadership work together to produce customer friendly experiences. Beginning with the architectural model, the book offers a series of cases to illustrate the application: hospital, auto manufacturer, airline, hotel, bank, university, and library.

Borders in Service traces the intersection of service labour and national identity across global call centres in seven countries: El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Mauritius, Morocco, the Philippines, and the US-Mexico border. While most studies on offshore call centres have focused on India this collection explores the experiences of call center workers in many of the newly emerging hubs of transnational service work. In this collection, Kiran Mirchandani and Winifred Poster have gathered a wide range of contributors to explore the dynamics within global call centres. Such dynamics include: language, speech, accent issues, expressions of consumer sentiment, physical space, and organizational, human resource, and labour policies. By grounding the theoretical debates on nationhood and labour in the realities of daily life in global call centres, Mirchandani and Poster have created a timely, accessible and revealing collection that will change what we know about offshored customer service work.

A practical guide for providing exceptional client service Most advertising and marketing people would claim great client service is an elusive, ephemeral pursuit, not easily characterized by a precise skill set or inventory of responsibilities; this book and its author argue otherwise, claiming there are definable, actionable methods to the role, and provide guidance designed to achieve more effective work. Written by one of the industry's most knowledgeable client services executives, the book begins with a definition, then follows a path from an initial new business win to beginning, building, losing, then regaining trust with clients. It is a powerful source of counsel for those new to the business, for industry veterans who want to refresh or validate what they know, and for anyone in the middle of the journey to get better at what they do.

This work offers a state-of-the art survey of information systems research on electronic customer relationship management (eCRM). It provides important new frameworks derived from current cases and applications in this emerging field. Each chapter takes a collaborative approach to eCRM that goes beyond the analytical and operational perspectives most often taken by researchers in the field. Chapters also stress integration with other enterprise information systems. The book is organized in four parts: Part I presents an overview of the role of CRM and eCRM in marketing and supply chain management; Part II focuses on the organizational success factors behind eCRM implementation; Part III presents cases of eCRM performance enhancement; and Part IV addresses eCRM issues in business-to-consumer commerce.

Sport and Policy is the first book of its kind to critically analyse the regulatory role of the state and its impact on sport and the intersections of sport with other areas of government policy. Offering a unique and comprehensive examination of how sport is affected by a range of government policy, each chapter uses an international comparative approach in order to facilitate a broad understanding of sport and policy in a global context. This book is essential reading for any student or practitioner studying or working in policy today, and is: The first book to examine the intersection of sport with other (non-sport) policies from an international perspective including topics such as gambling, the media, social inclusion and economic development Far-reaching in scope encompassing government regulation and sport's intersections with other government policies This challenging text provides an accessible critical analysis of the intersections of sport with government policy.

This book examines the effective and appropriate integration of project customers in intercultural settings. It first presents the theoretical background and the state of the art in intercultural project stakeholder management. The book then describes the use of qualitative and quantitative (Delphi survey) methods to produce a dataset, and the development of a relational model for customer engagement in intercultural projects based on this dataset. The book can be used to inform future research in the area of international project management, while also serving as a guide for project management practitioners who need to engage culturally diverse users, sponsors and customers.

The current shift in demographics - aging and shrinking populations - in many countries around the world presents a major challenge to companies and societies alike. One particularly essential implication is the emergence and constant growth of the so-called "graying market" or "silver market", the market segment more or less broadly defined as those people aged 50 and older. Increasing in number and share of the total population while at the same time being relatively well-off, this market segment can be seen as very attractive and promising, although still very underdeveloped in terms of product and service offerings. This book offers a thorough and up-to-date analysis of the challenges and opportunities in leveraging innovation, technology, product development and marketing for older consumers and employees. Key lessons are drawn from a variety of industries and countries, including the lead market Japan.

Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships, Second Edition, shows organizations how to lead their key clients into lasting, profitable, high-value relationships. Building on the powerful, tested principles of knowledge-based client relationships, Ross Dawson provides clear and extremely practical approaches for all professional and knowledge-based firms on how to create unique value for both clients and themselves. Detailed case studies across a wide variety of professional services industries offer valuable insights into world leading practice in the field. He examines key client programs, and how to create deeper knowledge-based relationships through these. He discusses in detail the collaborative technologies available today and how they can be used in client relationships, along with managing portfolios of communications channels. He also discusses firm-wide relationship management, leading relationship teams, and value-based pricing for knowledge-based client relationships. This is done by presenting underlying theoretical framework, a variety of tools for structuring relationships and presenting knowledge to clients, and numerous case studies and examples of firms which have implemented these concepts successfully.

Today it is no longer enough to simply provide a service - companies who want to stay in business must also provide impeccable service with such consistency, integrity and creativity that people who experience it will not only keep coming back for more, but recommend your business to their friends, families, and colleagues. 'The Customer Rules' is entirely focused on one ultimate goal: to help you, no matter what your position or job title, secure the most revenue-boosting asset you could wish for: a reputation for excellent service.

There's one voice that matters more than any other: the voice of the customer. Learn how to fully understand the number one source of your organization's prosperity, profits, and productivity. These actionable insights will help you to better connect with your customers and gain an undeniable lead over your competition. Listen Up!: How to Tune In to Customers and Turn Down the Noise teaches readers how to create a customer experience that's built on listening and designed for engagement. Author and Salesforce executive Karen Mangia has created a practical and comprehensive examination of how best-of-breed companies listen and respond to customer demands--creating a foundation of customer success, loyalty, and brand evolution. Listen Up! features discussions about: How to go beyond the survey: best practices associated with customer understanding, customer experience, and customer service How to move from deep listening to data-based insights into customer behavior The statistics and stories behind companies, organizations, and even city governments that have created a customer-centric culture How powerful new questions can offer a fresh perspective into any customer, anywhere: empowering your customer-facing teams, including sales teams, in the current market Winning greater mindshare, and market share, with a fresh look at the future of customer service, customer success, and customer satisfaction Perfect for anyone in a leadership or management role in a customer-facing organization, including sales teams, business development leaders and marketing professionals, Listen Up! belongs on the bookshelves of executives, customer service and success employees, and leaders who want to better engage with the one voice that matters most: the voice of the customer.

This interface is being recognized by business organizations as a key priority for management, and both practitioners and academics alike have placed a greater emphasis on the need to view the supply chain as a whole as the vehicle by which competitive advantage is achieved. As well as drawing upon current research and the experience of firms worldwide, Marketing Logistics uses numerous 'mini-cases' and vignettes to illustrate the key messages in each chapter and bring the theory to life. This book is an invaluable resource for managers who seek to understand more about the way in which the supply chain should be managed to improve their organization's competitive position, as well as students undertaking degree-level courses in marketing, logistics and supply chain management.

"I've always said that education without execution is just entertainment - and Lior illustrates this beautifully in his book. It is important to learn HOW to implement a successful Customer focus strategy and you need knowledge and process to do it well. Read this book and learn."--Tim Sanders, Author of "Love is The Killer App" "Lior brings original thought to the world of business, ideas drawn from reality, based on solid observations with the clear objective of helping people make money. Read this and profit."--Jerry Vass, Author of "Soft Selling in A Hard World" and President Vass Consulting "You might not like this book. It's not filled with easy shortcuts and feel-good platitudes. BUT, when you're ready to walk the walk and not just talk the talk) about treating your customers right and growing your business, Lior's book is a fine place to start down that rarely-followed, very profitable path."--Seth Godin Author, Purple Cow & Free Prize Inside "Lior Arussy is a true customer advocate. This book is a must-read for anyone who knows that the only sustainable competitive advantage is to create a unique and meaningful customer experience."--Ginger Conlon, Editor-in-Chief, CRM magazine According to Strativity's 2003 CEM global study, 45% of executives surveyed do not believe they deserve the customer's loyalty. Following a decade of customer-centric books, the market is in a state of crises with over 50% customer focused projects fail. Passionate and Profitable is a new book that takes a critical look at the state of the companies' commitment to customers and exposes the fatal mistakes companies make and the lip service they pay to their customers. Full of examples and statistics, Passionate and Profitable argues that customer strategies success depends on making serious tough choices and not cosmetic works. It is those tough trade offs that will help companies unleash their passion for customers and in return, increase their profitability and sales.

This timely edited collection offers a multidisciplinary perspective on social commerce, a phenomenon that has gained increasing interest over the last 8 years. Investigating how social media can be used to generate value for brands beyond customer relationship purposes, the skilled authors explore how social media users co-create value for businesses, influence other consumers and generate electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). Providing insights from practitioners and academics, this book goes further than simply exploring e-commerce and social media, and addresses the real relevance of social commerce in today's business landscape. With a selection of contemporary case studies and a Foreword written by Inthefrow's creator, Victoria Magrath, Social Commerce will be an engaging read for those studying consumer behaviour, online marketing, and e-commerce.

Unlike other books which focus solely on the business or profit aspects of measuring the customer experience, this book focuses on the benefits to the consumer as well as the company or financial institution. The book describes how business and government can undertake market research to determine whether the credit and investment markets are functioning properly and providing consumers with adequate information to make sound and safe credit and investment decisions. A discussion of different market research methods abilities to uncover problems in the credit and investment markets is provided. Findings and trends from studies measuring the customers experience in the credit and investment markets during the 1991 - 2009 time periods are discussed along with regulatory guidelines and consumer protection laws. The methodologies used to measure the customer experience and detect misleading sales practices; unfair treatment and discrimination in the financial services market place are described in detail. The techniques of mystery shopping, matched pair testing and consumer surveys are described along with a detailed discussion of study design, data collection methods, sample size determination, statistical testing, reporting and analysis. Sample questionnaires, mystery shop scenarios and profiles and sample analyses and charts are provided.

Targeting, acquiring, and retaining the 'right' customers is at the core of many successful service firms. The objective is to build the relationships and develop loyal customers who will contribute to a growing volume of business with the firm in the future. Managing Customer Relationships and Building Loyalty describes how to acquire and develop desirable, loyal customers within the chosen segments, and the painstaking process to build and maintain their loyalty through well-conceived relationship marketing strategies. This book is the tenth volume in the Winning in Service Markets Series by services marketing expert Jochen Wirtz. Scientifically grounded, accessible and practical, the Winning in Service Markets Series bridges the gap between cutting-edge academic research and industry practitioners, and features best practices and latest trends on services marketing and management from around the world.

In this book, nine librarians from across the country describe their libraries' best practices in this key area. Their contributions range from all-encompassing customer service policies and models any library can both adapt and be proud of to micro-approaches that emphasize offering excellent user-focused technology planning, picture book arrangement with patrons in mind, Web 2.0 tools to connect users with the library, establishing good service delivery chains, and making your library fantastic for homeschoolers. As past Public Library Association President Audra Caplan writes in her introduction to this book, "There is nothing magical about providing excellent customer service; it just takes the right people, the right philosophy and the passion to make it a reality." If you've got all that, here are the best practices to make stellar customer service a reality for your library's users.

"Larry's thoughts on customers, culture and talent are immensely valuable for any business, anywhere in the world."
--Sheldon S. Wiseman, President & CEO, Amberwood Entertainment Corp.

"For Larry the relationship between customers and profitability is intuitive and effortless. By reading his book you will be galvanised to do something about it at a time when it couldn't matter more."
--Amanda Mackenzie, Chief Marketing Officer, Aviva

"Larry Hochman understands the business zeitgeist exceptionally well. "The Relationship Revolution" brings together what he has learned from hundreds of customers and thousands of managers. His argument that authentic customer relationships are what will separate the winners from the also-rans is provocative, challenging and a call to action."
--Dr Stan Maklan, Cranfield School of Management

"If you are still denying the importance of Web 2.0, then read this wake-up call from one of the world's foremost speakers on customer relationships. If you "truly" value your customers then "The Relationship Revolution" is required reading - in every part of the world and regardless of the business you are in."
--Scott Gustlin, Vice President, Interactive RTP

"Finally Larry Hochman, one of the world's most popular keynote speakers, has put his wisdom into a book. His insights on management, marketing, leadership, customer service and human resources will certainly help the readers create unique value... at the speed of life."
--Santiago Zapata, Founder and President, HiCue Speakers

In this long-awaited book, leading business thinker Larry Hochman maps out what you have to do to succeed in the coming decades. He gets under your customers' skin, shows you what they really want, and then takes you through what you have to do, inside and outside your organisation, to get there.

Inspirational and enlightening, "The Relationship Revolution" should become a new 'rule book' throughout your organisation.

Phone calls and emails from customers are not just events; they are significant milestones in customer relationships. This book presents a roadmap to significantly improving customer relationships, whether by phone, mail, fax, email, or Website, by getting the most out of call centre technology. The book bridges the business, technical and financial issues in building and managing a customer contact centre. It evaluates call centre technology and its practical implementation to foster enhanced customer satisfaction, while delivering results at a reasonable cost. The author explains how to transform a call centre into an effective cross media contact point staffed by people equipped with the appropriate tools, knowledge and skills to provide responsive answers to emails, faxes and calls requesting service and information. Further, the author explores how to make the call centre an engine of business growth by minimizing costs, enhancing customer satisfaction, and using technology to upsell and generate new revenues from existing customers.

Customer Service: Career Success through Customer Loyalty, 6e provides a systematic process for building service skills that all business people need. Presented in a friendly, conversational manner, the text is filled with examples that demonstrate the link between service skills and career achievement. This edition features more on social networking, trustability, and customer service trends. Information is also included on internal customers, emerging technologies, and stress-reducing techniques. Throughout the text, there is an emphasis on transforming good service intentions into a workable plan that yields loyalty and success.

A revolution is taking place in the way companies organize and manage the "front-end" of their organization, where it meets its customers.
Traditional concepts of sales management, account management, and customer service are being overtaken by initiatives like customer business development, the strategic sales organization, and strategic customer management. This book aims to provide insights into how this revolution is unfolding and to provide a framework for executives and management students to address the issues involved. The book focuses on the transformation of the traditional sales organization into a strategic force leading the strategic customer management process in companies.
Traditionally, the area of sales management has mainly been treated as a tactical, operational topic in the conventional marketing literature--simply part of the communications mix within the planned marketing programme. However, the emergence of major customers as dominant buyers in many sectors as a result of pressures towards consolidation and enhanced scale of operations, is changing the way in which sales issues are addressed in supplier organizations. The growth of new forms of buyer-seller relationship based on collaboration and partnering has encouraged organizations to reconsider the sales and account management operation as an important source of competitive differentiation in commoditized markets. Increasingly, sales is being perceived as a central part of business strategy and attention given to the challenges in better aligning sales processes with strategy. This has many implications for the design of the sales organization and its management strategy, which go far beyond the confines of conventional marketing views.