What simple innovation brought billions in new investments to Fidelity? What basic misunderstanding was preventing Office Depot from achieving its growth potential? What surprising insights helped the Mayo Clinic better serve both doctors and patients?

The solution in each case was a focus on customer experience, the most powerful—and misunderstood—element of corporate strategy today.

Customer experience is, quite simply, how your customers perceive their every interaction with your company. It’s a fundamental business driver. Here’s proof: over a recent five-year period during which the S&P 500 was flat, a stock portfolio of customer experience leaders grew twenty-two percent.

In an age when customers have access to vast amounts of data about your company and its competitors, customer experience is the only sustainable source of competitive advantage. But how to excel at it?

Based on fourteen years of research by the customer experience leaders at Forrester Research, Outside In offers a complete roadmap to attaining the experience advantage. It starts with the concept of the Customer Experience Ecosystem—proof that the roots of customer experience problems lie not just with customer-facing employees like your sales staff, but with behind-the-scenes employees like accountants, lawyers, and programmers, as well as the policies, processes, and technologies that all your employees use every day. Identifying and solving these problems has the potential to dramatically increase sales and decrease costs.

Customer experience engineering applied to the engineering department is rare, but needed. Most companies keep support, UX, engineering, product, and CX separate. To address this gap, this book highlights roles and techniques that are proven to accelerate issue detection and prevention by 30% or more. With the author's vast experience in tech support, he has developed techniques and skills that allow engineers to gain customer insights faster and through new and insightful sources that are within their reach. You will develop a deep understanding of the impact of issues; understand and optimize the speed of the engineering feedback loop (issue resolution time); and develop the ability to calculate the cost of the issues or customer friction to the business (in aggregate and on a case-by-case basis). Organizations can save significant money and add additional revenue by addressing customer friction proactively in collaboration with product, engineering, and site reliability engineering (SRE) functions and reduce the average time of an issue resolution by 80%. The cross-functional leadership, mentoring, and engineering techniques you'll learn from this proactive stance are very valuable and teachable, and this book will show you the path forward. What You Will Learn Gain the techniques and tools necessary to validate customer journey success in production Contribute to customer-centric key performance indicators (KPIs) on executive dashboards Create meaningful insights and data points that allowed the feedback loop to be optimized and efficient Who This Book is For Professionals participating in the value stream of digital software engineering for the benefit of customer experiences, directly or indirectly. You may be an engineer practicing DevOps or site reliability, or you might be a product owner, UX designer, or researcher. You might be working in support and seeking for new ways to engage with your engineering teams.

WINNER: CMI Management Book of the Year Awards 2015 - Innovation and Entrepreneurship Category (1st edition) Many organizations approach customer-centic marketing and innovating their business strategy in isolation to one another, missing groundbreaking opportunities for advancement. Customer Innovation, second edition, turns this on its head by starting with the customer, innovating around their needs, then building a customer led business strategy around it. It presents a well-constructed three-by-three formula of connect, convert, collaborate, laying the foundations for innovation and change, to improve the current customer journey and expand into new customer horizons. This enables new product and service development to flow with outstanding efficiency and substantial growth. Customer Innovation, second edition, includes exciting updates around co-creation and the benefits of involving customers, stakeholders and employees from the beginning. It provides guidance on using technology to reinvent traditional business models, with consumer needs at the heart. With a spectacular range of case studies, including Disney, LEGO and Johnson & Johnson, all delivered with active takeaways, this is the ultimate handbook for any leader, business or marketing strategist, ready to pave the way in a new era of customer led strategy.

Learn how to cultivate the most incredible customer experiences on earth through this essential guide by Colin Cowie, distinguished purveyor of unforgettable "wow" events for the world's most demanding clients. If you're searching for ways to ensure your customers walk away from your company with a smile on their face and a plan to return, you found it. And any business organization can adapt the tools and techniques in this book. Colin Cowie, one of the world's most sought-after event planners, shares the hard-won and hard-nosed advice he has learned through entertaining and engaging stories and examples. He gives readers the indisputable blueprint for creating a customer-service culture that anyone can tailor to their own needs, whether you're a shopkeeper, corporate marketing director, or budding event planner. Upon coming to the United States from South Africa with $400 in his pocket, Colin built his highly successful catering and event-planning business from the ground up to become event planner to the most respected tastemakers and personalities in the world-including Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Lopez, Ryan Seacrest, and Kim Kardashian, to name a few. In this book, you will: Learn how to formulate your own vision, mission statements, and guiding principles, and effectively communicate them to your team. Learn how you can align your vision with your essential mission statement. Discover the core values, including service and accountability, that fuel Colin's customer-care ethos, and how you can apply those values to your own business. Have a renewed understanding of how vitally important it is that you take good care of the people who work for you so they, in turn, can care for your customers. Become armed to inspire and empower your team. Be guided to create your own "bible" of scripts, protocols, and procedures that will streamline customer-care situations while making every customer feel like their individual desires are being taken care of. Learn how to use every complaint as an opportunity, as well as why you should be more afraid of a client who doesn't complain when something goes wrong versus one who does.

This pioneering book on food study pursues an interdisciplinary approach to service science and the service engineering field. Further, it highlights a range of experiments conducted at actual business sites to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methodologies and theories. In modern society, food study has become more complex, as it involves multiple fields of science. For instance, a long-lived society entails a number of problems for human beings. A balanced intake of nutrients is important for a healthy life, but in many cases, healthy food is not the most enjoyable. As such, it is important for the food industry to provide foods that are both tasty and wholesome, based on the sciences of gastronomy and nutrition. Conventional food study proceeds along the lines of a specific field such as nutrition, agriculture, or gastronomy, though it should be conducted in an interdisciplinary manner. This book covers multifaceted research on food study to respond to today's societal demands, based mainly on the natural and social sciences. It addresses a wide range of topics, including: food production management using mathematical modeling, operations research, and production engineering; evaluation of food products based on big data analysis; psychological experiments and ethnography; food products based on consumer behavior; organoleptic assessment and health improvement; design of physical dining environments using virtual reality, pedestrian debt recognition (human indoor position measuring), and observation of behavior. Reporting on and assessing many studies conducted at actual business locations, the book offers a unique and highly practical resource.

"Designing the Customer-Centric Organization" offers today 's business leaders a comprehensive customer-centric organizational model that clearly shows how to put in place an infrastructure that is organized around the demands of the customer. Written by Jay Galbraith (the foremost expert in the field of organizational design), this important book includes a tool that will help determine how customer-centric an organization is- light-level, medium-level, complete-level, or high-level- and it shows how to ascertain the appropriate level for a particular institution. Once the groundwork has been established, the author offers guidance for the process of implementing a customer-centric system throughout an organization. "Designing the Customer-Centric Organization" includes vital information about structure, management processes, reward and management systems, and people practices.

Based on interviews with fifteen top financial advisors, each doing several million dollars' worth of business every year, this priceless tool contains universal principles to guide both veteran and new financial professionals to immediate success. The Million-Dollar Financial Advisor distills these success principles into thirteen distinct step-by-step lessons that teach readers how to build and focus on client relationships, have a top advisor mindset, develop a long-term approach, and much more. The book also features two complete case studies, featuring a "best of the best" advisor whose incredible success showcases the power of all the book's principles working together in concert, and an account of a remarkable and inspiring career turn around that demonstrates it's never too late to reinvent yourself. Brimming with practical advice from author David J. Mullen and expert insights from his interview subjects, The Million-Dollar Financial Advisor equips any financial advisor to succeed-- regardless of market conditions.

This research monograph brings AI to the field of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to make a customer experience with a product or service smart and enjoyable. AI is here to help customers to get a refund for a canceled flight, unfreeze a banking account or get a health test result. Today, CRM has evolved from storing and analyzing customers' data to predicting and understanding their behavior by putting a CRM system in a customers' shoes. Hence advanced reasoning with learning from small data, about customers' attitudes, introspection, reading between the lines of customer communication and explainability need to come into play. Artificial Intelligence for Customer Relationship Management leverages a number of Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning (ML), simulation and reasoning techniques to enable CRM with intelligence. An effective and robust CRM needs to be able to chat with customers, providing desired information, completing their transactions and resolving their problems. It introduces a systematic means of ascertaining a customers' frame of mind, their intents and attitudes to determine when to provide a thorough answer, a recommendation, an explanation, a proper argument, timely advice and promotion or compensation. The author employs a spectrum of ML methods, from deterministic to statistical to deep, to predict customer behavior and anticipate possible complaints, assuring customer retention efficiently. Providing a forum for the exchange of ideas in AI, this book provides a concise yet comprehensive coverage of methodologies, tools, issues, applications, and future trends for professionals, managers, and researchers in the CRM field together with AI and IT professionals.

Bridget Brennan, CEO of Female Factor, shows readers how to win sales and grow market share by creating a customer experience that appeals to the most powerful consumers: women.

When people think about the world's growth markets, they often envision countries like China and India. Yet they miss the largest one right here at home, no matter where you call home: women. With women driving 70 to 80 percent of consumer spending, it would seem an obvious strategy to learn how best to appeal to this continually expanding market. Common sense? Yes. Common practice? No.

In Winning Her Business, Bridget Brennan, advisor to some of the world's biggest brands and businesses, provides a roadmap for selling in a world dominated by the rise of women's economic power. Brennan introduces The Four Motivators(R) Framework, which shows how every company can help customers feel:

- connected to them, their brand, and their business,

- inspired to buy from them specifically,

- confident in their buying decisions, and

- appreciated for their business.

Showcasing best practices from brands as diverse as Lexus, Sephora, Allstate and the Minnesota Vikings NFL team, Winning Her Business offers invaluable insights into women as consumers and shows that almost all businesses have an opportunity to create an inclusive customer experience that inspires increased sales, referrals, and repeat business.

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.

Easy to digest tips and tools on how "not" to run a business

Experts are constantly telling us what we need to be doing to improve our businesses. Hundreds of books in the market are filled with advice from these experts. But how can you filter out all of the bad advice, misinformation, and misuse of business tools that is out there? None of us needs another list of what we should be doing. "QR Codes Kill Kittens" tells you what not to do. Easy to digest, easy to avoid. The book is separated into several sections, and each will include a story related to the topic in addition to tips and explanations on what not to do.Includes real-life examples along with tips and guidance on experts, human resources, marketing/branding, networking (in person and online), public relations, and customer serviceWritten by Scott Stratten, author of "UnMarketing" and the President of UnMarketing.com, a company that combines efforts in viral, social, and authentic marketing; he has appeared on Mashable.com and CNN.com, and in the "Wall Street Journal, USA Today," and "Fast Company"

It doesn't do you any good to do a few things right and a lot of things wrong. Find out what not to do. If reading this book saves just one kitten's life, it's worth it.

We live in extraordinary economic times - volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. In the service sector, many traditional approaches are no longer relevant and the landscape of brand identity, employee engagement and customer experience is changing. Organizations no longer own their own brand, while customers' expectations are increasing. Brands are now co- owned by all stakeholders - employees, service partners, local communities, investors and customers. This book explores the idea that a new 'values economy' is emerging. The successful organizations of tomorrow will establish a shared consensus of values between stakeholders - providing transparent communications and inclusivity. It then offers a practical enabling methodology: the SERVICEBRAND approach, combining brand identity, employee engagement and customer experience. The SERVICEBRAND approach will redefine the nature of business: one ecosystem of values-driven service for multiple stakeholders driving sustained organizational performance and authentic business success.

This book gathers a selection of refereed papers presented at the 8th International Conference on Kansei Engineering and Emotion Research 2020 (KEER 2020), which was held in Tokyo, Japan, 7-9 September 2020. The contributions address the latest advances in and innovative applications of Kansei Engineering and Emotion Research and related topics. This book caters researchers and graduate students in the field of design, art, Kansei engineering, and other engineering fields, psychology, physiology, and education.

This book presents the Recommender System for Improving Customer Loyalty. New and innovative products have begun appearing from a wide variety of countries, which has increased the need to improve the customer experience. When a customer spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on a piece of equipment, keeping it running efficiently is critical to achieving the desired return on investment. Moreover, managers have discovered that delivering a better customer experience pays off in a number of ways. A study of publicly traded companies conducted by Watermark Consulting found that from 2007 to 2013, companies with a better customer service generated a total return to shareholders that was 26 points higher than the S&P 500. This is only one of many studies that illustrate the measurable value of providing a better service experience. The Recommender System presented here addresses several important issues. (1) It provides a decision framework to help managers determine which actions are likely to have the greatest impact on the Net Promoter Score. (2) The results are based on multiple clients. The data mining techniques employed in the Recommender System allow users to "learn" from the experiences of others, without sharing proprietary information. This dramatically enhances the power of the system. (3) It supplements traditional text mining options. Text mining can be used to identify the frequency with which topics are mentioned, and the sentiment associated with a given topic. The Recommender System allows users to view specific, anonymous comments associated with actual customers. Studying these comments can provide highly accurate insights into the steps that can be taken to improve the customer experience. (4) Lastly, the system provides a sensitivity analysis feature. In some cases, certain actions can be more easily implemented than others. The Recommender System allows managers to "weigh" these actions and determine which ones would have a greater impact.

Two of the major parallel challenges facing businesses today are how to adapt to the changes of fast-paced, fragmenting markets and how to grow a business whilst engaging in recognisably sustainable practices. It is not enough to just be sustainable, it is about communicating it and getting the customer involved in the message. Customer-Centric Marketing shows readers how sustainable development practices and digital marketing techniques work naturally together to add value, leading to improved customer satisfaction, better professional relationships and increased effectiveness. Ideal for senior marketing professionals and students on digital marketing or marketing strategy modules who wish to utilise the benefits of sustainable development and forms of digital marketing, this accessible and straight to-the-point book uses case studies to show how the marketing theories and tools work in actual business scenarios. Customer-Centric Marketing covers contemporary issues such as the increasing use of mobile, QR codes and social network sites for consumers interested in ethical, environmental and sustainable marketing.

Take Care of Your Customers--or Someone Else Will

Legendary Service

Great customer service is a concept organizations love to be known for. Yet most people consider the service they receive to be average, at best. Successful companies make the connection between legendary customer service and a thriving business--they recognize that the way employees treat customers is directly related to the way managers treat employees.

Kelsey Young is an optimistic but disillusioned sales associate working her way through college. Her world opens up when one of her professors challenges her to create a culture of service at her workplace by putting the five components of Legendary Service into practice. Although Ferguson's, the store where Kelsey works, certainly isn't known for service excellence, Kelsey believes she can make a positive difference. She quickly learns that culture change isn't easy--and that her role as a frontline employee is more significant than she ever could have imagined.

In characteristic Blanchard style, "Legendary Service: The Key Is to Care" is a quick and entertaining read for people at all organizational levels in every industry. When applied, its lessons will have a profound impact on the service experience your customers will receive. Whether a CEO or a part-time employee, every person can make a difference--and customer service is everyone's job.

PRAISE FOR "LEGENDARY SERVICE"

""Read this book and establish a service culture in your organization."" -- Horst Schulze, Chairman/CEO, Capella Hotel Group

""Legendary Service has great learnings for people at all organizational levels: for executives and managers, the value of a service culture; and for frontline staff, the reality that they are the face of the company and can make a difference. Legendary service--it's everyone, always."" -- Mark King, CEO and President, TaylorMade Golf

""Everything I know about service I learned from my career at Hilton Hotels, Marriott International, The Walt Disney Company, and Ken Blanchard. The One Minute Manager dramatically changed my thinking 32 years ago. Legendary Service will teach the next generation how to deliver sensational service. Buy it, study it, implement it."" -- Lee Cockerell, Executive Vice President, Walt Disney World (Retired & Inspired), and author of "Creating Magic" and "The Customer Rules"

""Kathy Cuff and Vicki Halsey have created a fantastic customer service model called ICARE. When you add their voices to that of the master storyteller Ken Blanchard, you have a masterpiece entitled Legendary Service. It is a must-read for everyone who, like me, has a passion for service."" -- Colleen Barrett, President Emeritus, Southwest Airlines, and coauthor of "Lead with LUV"

""Ken Blanchard has done it again and delivered the right book at the right time. Legendary Service provides the essentials of hospitality and servant leadership in a way that everyone can adopt--right now--today "" -- John Caparella, President and COO, The Venetian, The Palazzo, and Sands Expo

""Ken, Kathy, and Vicki show us how to change everyday service events into memorable experiences. Their book is a must-read for anyone unwilling to accept mediocrity."" -- Leonardo Inghilleri, coauthor of "Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit"

Scoring Points is the compelling and dramatic inside story, told from a project point of view, of how the Tesco Clubcard was conceived, launched and developed. It explains in detail how Tesco collected, analysed and used customer data to become a retail giant, making customer loyalty marketing work when almost every other programme failed. By pairing its loyalty scheme with sophisticated information technology, Tesco set a new standard for knowing your customer. Scoring Points is one of the seminal marketing books of the last decade. A fascinating tale of what can be achieved through vision, a strong team ethic and a company-wide commitment to customer satisfaction, it is an inspirational read for anyone in business, from junior marketers or salespersons working in an FMCG environment, to any practitioner looking to better analyse their customer base.

There is no such thing as an easy sale. However, selling to an existing customer-whether by refreshing an old product or introducing a new and different product-is often easier, faster, and returns higher margins. Centering your organization's sales strategy on your installed base is a smart and proven way to achieve long-lasting, profitable growth. Using Installed Base Selling to Maximize Revenue reveals a step-by-step, integrated approach you can begin using today. Authors Remi Gicquel and Paul-Andre Lambert show how you can apply this robust and reliable end-to-end solution by illustrating concepts though real-world case studies from Spotify, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Nestle, and more. Full of wisdom fit for the digital era, this book presents the results of the authors' experience and research into current installed base selling processes, identifying, from an objective point of view, what works and what does not. This book explains fundamental concepts such as the profitable growth paradox, the installed base profit wedge, operational methodologies for managing your installed base selling transformation, and much more. Innovative companies protect and nurture their most valuable asset-their customers and the data that defines them. They put installed base selling at the heart of their sales strategy. Now, it's your turn! What You Will Learn How to maximize the return from installed base customers Fundamental concepts such as the profitable growth paradox, the installed base profit wedge, and turnkey operational sales methodologies to best maneuver your sales teams Keys to changing patterns to become a company that can enjoy higher profitable revenues for years Who This Book Is For General Managers, Sales and Marketing Leaders who are eager to transform their business to secure long-lasting profits, and for leaders looking for a pragmatic approach to transform their sales force to harvest the potential of their existing customers.

The Simple Truths of Service is a customer service classic that will grab your heart and not let go! More than five million people have been touched by this story. Have you? Your competitive edge in today's business environment is in how your customers are treated. If you want to succeed, then it's time to get creative about customer service! The Simple Truths of Service is an unforgettable true story about a very special young man who takes a chance and changes the culture of a grocery store. Each and every member of your team will be coming up with their own ideas of how to deliver that extra special service after they read this book. Johnny is young man living with Down Syndrome who changes the culture of a grocery store by being creative and giving the customers more than they expect. He puts his own personal signature on each and every interaction. Read about Johnny and other great customer experience stories that will have your customer service team bursting with new ways to make your company stand out from the crowd.

How do you develop products that people will actually use and buy? This practical guide shows you how to validate product and company ideas through customer development research-before you waste months and millions on a product or service that no one needs or wants. With a combination of open-ended interviewing and fast and flexible research techniques, you'll learn how your prospective customers behave, the problems they need to solve, and what frustrates and delights them. These insights may shake your assumptions, but they'll help you reach the "ah-ha!" moments that inspire truly great products. Validate or invalidate your hypothesis by talking to the right people Learn how to conduct successful customer interviews play-by-play Detect a customer's behaviors, pain points, and constraints Turn interview insights into Minimum Viable Products to validate what customers will use and buy Adapt customer development strategies for large companies, conservative industries, and existing products

Learn how to develop the values proven to boost sales performance, to ensure customers choose you over the competition in today's crowded marketplace. For years, sales people have struggled with cliched views of how they sell, while at the same time customers have become more sophisticated and discerning, stopping off at different or unconventional places in the sales funnel. The result is that the technique of sales people controlling the sales conversation and learning how to influence the customer no longer works. Selling Transformed introduces the new world of selling, and addresses the reasons why sales people are so poorly perceived. Selling Transformed provides fresh, tangible ideas on how to develop better sales practices. Focusing as much on the customers as on the sellers, it explains key theories of selling effectively and introduces four proven strategies that are based on the values customers look for in sales people: authenticity, client-centricity, proactive creativity and being tactfully audacious. Explaining what customers look for in sales people, and advising on how to develop and deliver these values, this is a new type of sales manual guaranteed to improve sales performance.

This book provides stimulating insights into the ways in which the adoption of experience logic can revitalize marketing perspectives and stimulate novel approaches to the creation and delivery of value. The first part of the book, which has a theoretical focus, reviews the international literature and offers conceptual observations on the experiential perspective. Suggestions are made on how experience logic can act as a new driver for the management of marketing processes in firms within the context of the experience economy. In the second part of the book, attention turns to the applications of experience logic in different sectors, including tourism, commerce, culture, and trade shows. Company-specific examples of benefits of the experiential approach are also explored in case studies on gift box providers, marketing of traditional local products, and the cosmetics industry. The book will be of particular interest for marketing specialists, but will additionally be of value for managers in private companies and public bodies who wish to enhance their marketing methods.

How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business

"The real value of this book is that it makes SOA and Web services, which are critical and business-transforming, crystal-clear to the layman, both business and IT leaders. The book stays focused on the real-world issues facing business and government institutions today. In an industry full of experts of many stripes, Ron and Jason are the real thing: savvy, experienced, and realistic. They have produced a must-read book for management."
--Paul Lipton, Senior Architect, Unicenter Web Services and Application Management Computer Associates

"This is by far the finest publication on SOA of our time. From cover to back, "Service Orient or Be Doomed " strips away the layers of confusion most IT stakeholders face when confronted with enterprise architecture, and illustrates pragmatic and practical paths towards a sustainable and efficient enterprise architecture. Both the technically savvy and the bean counters will enjoy this book that speaks to the critical points they need to understand."
--Duane A. Nickull Senior Standards Strategist, Adobe Systems, Inc. Chair, OASIS SOA Reference Model Technical Committee Vice chair, United Nations CEFACT (UN/CEFACT)

"If you're looking for a guide that's based on reality, this is it. These guys know how you can service-orient your enterprise and have the best chance of success. This book is the best SOA tool you can buy. I'm recommending it to everyone."
--Dave Linthicum, CEO, BRIDGEWERX

"Jason and Ron are experts on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and have written the first book that is aimed at helping a nontechnical businessperson understand why the SOA computing revolution is critical to business. Rather than provide a nerdy death via buzzword book, Jason and Ron take a humorous, clever, and insightful romp through this new technology and how it impacts business in general."
--Brad Feld, Mobius Venture Capital

Authors Jason Bloomberg and Ronald Schmelzer-senior analysts for highly respected IT advisory and analysis firm ZapThink-say it all in the title of their new book, "Service Orient or Be Doomed : How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business." That is, if you fail to service orient your company, you will fail in competing with the organizations that do.

This provocative new book takes service orientation out of its more familiar technological surroundings within service-oriented architecture and introduces it as a philosophy that advocates its rightful place within a business context, redefining it as a new way of thinking about organizing your business and its processes.

Informal, challenging, and intelligent in style, "Service Orient or Be Doomed : How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business" shows you how you can best use technology resources to meet your company's business goals and empower your company to go from "stuck" to "competitive."