Ruthlessly focus on what's convenient for customers, not what's convenient for you

Ninety percent of dissatisfied clients will take their business elsewhere and never tell you why. However, ninety-five percent will become loyal customers again if their needs and problems are addressed and remedied.

Speaker and salesperson Michael Aun shares these secrets and many more in "It's the Customer, Stupid ," a guide to growing any business by gaining new customers, and, more importantly, by keeping the ones you have happy and coming back for more. This fun-to-read book explains common myths about sales and customer satisfaction, starting with the fact that most businesses think they're customer-centric, but they just aren't.Get proven steps to REALLY put your customer at the center of what you doDistinguish your business from the competition by understanding the principle that good sales ARE good serviceAuthor received the Toastmasters "World Championship of Public Speaking" award and is also a full-time businessman practicing what he preaches daily

"It's the Customer, Stupid " reveals key actions that will shake up your business approach. Your customers will love you for them, and you'll love the effect on sales

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.

RAVING FANS!

"Your customers are only satisfied because their expectations are so low and because no one else is doing better. Just having satisfied customers isn't good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create Raving Fans."

This, in a nutshell, is the advice given to a new Area Manager on his first day – in an extraordinary new business book that will help everyone, in every kind of organization or business, deliver stunning customer service and achieve miraculous bottom-line results.

'Raving Fans' is written in the parable style of the bestselling 'The One Minute Manager' and uses a brilliantly simple and charming story to teach how to define a vision, learn what a customer really wants, institute effective systems, and make Raving Fan Service a constant feature – not just a passing fad.

Business is in the midst of a service crisis that has left millions of disillusioned customers in its wake. 'Raving Fans' includes startling new tips and innovative techniques that can help anyone create a revolution in any workplace – and turn their customers into raving, spending fans.

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

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.

SugarCRM is an innovative customer relationship management software solution that enhances your company's marketing effectiveness, drives sales performance, improves customer satisfaction, and provides executive insight into business performance. "SugarCRM For Dummies" will show you to take advantage of this free, open source CRM application to boost your sales and please your customers.

This guide helps you choose the flavor of Sugar you need, acquire and deploy it, set up accounts and contacts, and organize your day. You'll first learn how to install SugarCRM, customize user preferences, create databases, and import contacts from other software. Next, you'll discover how to extend SugarCRM's capabilities to meet needs unique to your business. You'll also find out how to: Schedule appointments, link them to records and notes, and organize your sales opportunitiesBuild campaigns, track their success, and grow your contact list with Web-to-lead formsManage customer issues and forums to exterminate software bugsSend e-newsletters and automate customer e-mail communication with templatesTake advantage of a complete recipe book for SugarCRM administratorsImprove sales performance with SugarCRMProvide great service to your customersDevelop searchable libraries and FAQsCreate and share documents

"SugarCRM For Dummies" will get you quickly up to speed on this customer relationship management software so you can enhance your business.

Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

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."

* The ideal introductory guide to Microsoft's much anticipated entry into the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software marketplace
* Discusses the key features of Microsoft's CRM software, including tools to help businesses sell more effectively, manage all customer communications in one place, track and convert leads, make informed decisions faster, and provide consistent service
* Provides expert tips and tricks to make the software work more effectively
* Explains how to achieve increased customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and more profitable customer relationships
* Author is considered one of a handful of global experts on CRM for small- and medium-sized businesses

If you don't offer great customer experience, your main competitors will take away 50% of your business. Period. Gone are the days in which businesses could simply offer an "OK" experience and get away with it. In today's hypercompetitive environment, companies can no longer be just B2C or B2B. They must become B2Me - more personal, more relevant. With customers having higher expectations and access to more information than ever before, companies must create stellar, frictionless, personalized, and memorable customer experiences, if they plan to stay in the game. In this book, you will learn: * What customer experience truly is. * How emotions can increase customer loyalty...or make customers ditch a brand. * Which behaviors and attitudes lose customers. * Ten easy, practical, and proven ways to immediately improve your customer experience. * What renowned companies do to offer the best customer experience. This book is for anyone who works serving customers in a B2C company or other businesses in a B2B environment. Everyone has an important role to play in creating a good customer experience, whether it be managers, associates, sales reps, marketing professionals, web strategists, accountants, customer service reps, delivery people, or installers. No matter what role you play, this book offers easy tips, recommendations, and examples to help improve customer experience, realistically, sustainably, and affordably.

The Internet is the world's largest marketplace and provides businesses with the ability to interact with their market in a much more direct and tailored way than ever before. Customer.Community takes a new look at online communities as a source of value for both customers and businesses; it shows how to build an online "customer community" that gives customers a reason to stay loyal. Drew Banks and Kim Daus explain exactly what the customer community is and then reveal the tenets that will make it strong: sustainability, size and scalability, social connectivity, and soul. The authors show how to "communitize" commerce, build a solid base of repeat customers, and create value for the customer, and they explain how to manage a site in a cost-effective way. Customer.Community will help cultivate a mind-set to leverage the collective, untapped power of your customer base.

Teaches you to use Zoho CRM effectively to benefit your business. This book takes you through a number of real-life scenarios and teaches you how to use Zoho CRM to create solutions for your business, with no technical background needed and with little to no coding required. Sound too good to be true? Technology makes our lives easier and there are a large number of resources on offer to help with various tasks, including managing business information. With all the tools, apps, and services to choose from, it is still a daunting and often expensive undertaking for businesses to create solutions that fit their specific requirements. That's where Zoho CRM comes in. Using this book you can create a fully-functional cloud-based app that manages your company information, is elegant to use, and cost-effective to maintain. Basic computer and internet skills is all you need to successfully launch your very own CRM with the help of this book. Get started today with Mastering Zoho CRM. What You'll Learn Set up Zoho CRM properly from the ground up Model your business processes and implement them on Zoho CRM Centralize and manage your entire marketing, sales, and customer service processes Integrate CRM with other Zoho tools to streamline day to day business operations Create powerful dashboards and reports to provide relevant, actionable information to concerned people Use advanced CRM features such as workflow automation, role-based security, territories, etc. Connect Zoho CRM to external tools and services to extend features, and let CRM scale up with your business needs. Who This Book Is For Small business owners and solopreneurs who want to take control of the beating heart of their business -their marketing, sales, and customer-service efforts- without spending tens of thousands of dollars on customized solutions. Solution providers and consultants who want to learn the ins and outs of one of the hottest CRM tools in the market and provide winning related services to their clients by adding Zoho to their list of offerings.

Most firms consider the lost customer a lost cause. But in this ground breaking book, Jill Griffin and Michael Lowenstein provide you with step-by-step solutions for winning back lost customers, saving customers on the brink of defection, and making your firm defection proof. Whether your business is small or large, product- or service-based, retail or wholesale, this book offers proven strategies for recognizing which lost customers have the highest win-back value and implementing a sure-fire plan to recover them. It includes the techniques of hundreds of innovative companies who are already working to recapture lost customers and keep them loyal. In today's hyper-competitive marketplace, no customer retention program can be entirely foolproof, but with this guide gives you today's best methods for winning back those customers you simply can't afford to let go.

A practical approach to better customer experience through service design.

Service Design For Business helps you transform your customer's experience and keep them engaged through the art of intentional service design. Written by the experts at Livework, this practical guide offers a tangible, effective approach for better responding to customers' needs and demands, and provides concrete strategy that can be implemented immediately. You'll learn how taking a design approach to problem solving helps foster creativity, and how to apply it to the real issues that move businesses forward. Highly visual and organized for easy navigation, this quick read is a handbook for connecting market factors to the organizational challenge of customer experience by seeing your company through the customers' eyes.

Livework pioneered the service design industry, and guides organizations including Sony, the British Government, Volkswagen Procter & Gamble, the BBC, and more toward a more carefully curated customer experience. In this book, the Livework experts show you how to put service design to work in your company to solve the ongoing challenge of winning with customers:

• Approach customer experience from a design perspective
• See your organization through the lens of the customer
• Make customer experience an organization-wide responsibility
• Analyze the market factors that dovetail with customer experience design

The Internet and other digital technology has brought the world to your customers' fingertips. With unprecedented choice, consumers are demanding more than just a great product—the organizations coming out on top are designing and delivering experiences tailored to their customers' wants. Service Design For Business gives you the practical insight and service design perspective you need to shape the way your customers view your organization.

Scientific investigation in the service industry has produced a major effect on productivity and quality in order to lead to new services. With ever-evolving internet technologies and information environments, system science and knowledge science seem to be an effective tool for service innovation in the 21st century. Progressive Trends in Knowledge and System-Based Science for Service Innovation illustrates new approaches to service innovation and new methodologies from the knowledge science and system science perspectives. Practitioners and researchers interested in knowing more about practical theories and successful examples in service science will find this book to be a vital asset to their studies.

Excellent customer service does not come about by accident. It is a learnable set of behaviors that can be monitored, measured, and managed. Drawing from his highly successful seminars and training programs, Gary S. Goodman presents a surefire system for building a first-class customer service department. Goodman identifies the behaviors that constitute top-level service, examines the results that kind of service produces, and shows how to measure it in terms of daily customer satisfaction. He provides managers with specific guidelines for developing, sustaining, and rewarding high levels of service from their customer service reps--with emphasis on telephone contact, the primary link to customers for most companies.

"The Call Centre Training Handbook" is a complete resource for providing learning, training and development within contact centers. Whether for induction or for periodic training, those who train staff will find it a valuable resource. It also offers call center managers and trainers information with which to benchmark training and identifies best practice in learning and development.

The book addresses the key areas of training call center staff including: quality of customer service, dealing with difficult customers, outsourcing and offshore training, and measuring and evaluating performance. International case studies provide the reader with practical examples of real-life training, while sample exercises and models supply the tools to deliver effective learning.

Across the global economy, customers' expectations are continually rising - but many companies fail to deliver against those expectations. With the rise in social media, customers are becoming more vocal in expressing any dissatisfaction, which can both lose existing customers and alienate potential new ones. Complaint Management Excellence provides practical advice, tools and techniques for managers to adopt when managing any complaints that come into their organisation. In order to arrive at a culture where complaints are welcomed, the underlying values, processes, structure, strategy and people within an organization all need to be aligned with, and respect, customer needs. Not only does this improve the long-terms prospects for the company itself, but can have a tremendous knock-on effect in terms of boosting employee morale and engagement. With case studies from companies as diverse as John Lewis, Waitrose, DHL, Hilton Hotels, the Starwood group (including Four Seasons and Ritz Carlton hotels) and BT, Complaint Management Excellence explains what customers are really looking for when they make a complaint, how to avoid conflict and how managers can lead culture change to ensure the best experience for all customers and clients.

On the front lines of customer service, every day presents new and unexpected challenges-and even the most dedicated employees can be caught unprepared. They need confidence. They need training. They need help. Those who work on the front lines of customer service never know what new and unexpected challenges await them each day. But they do know one thing--they will be needed. But how can you prepare for the unexpected? How can customer service reps get the training and confidence required to tackle the unknown? In Be Your Customer's Hero, internationally recognized customer service expert Adam Toporek provides the answers to preparing for the surprises awaiting the CSR. Through short, simple, actionable advice, in quick, easy-to-read chapters, this invaluable guide shows customer-facing CSRs how to: Achieve the mindset required for Hero-ClassTM service Understand the customer's expectations--and exceed them Develop powerful communication skills Avoid the seven triggers guaranteed to set customers off Handle difficult and even irrational customers with ease Armed with the tools and techniques in Be Your Customer's Hero, you will have all they need to transform themselves into the heroes their customers need.

This book provides clarity and guidance on effective strategy, implementation and management of CRM. It explores both the conceptual and cultural context of CRM initiatives along with the particulars of CRM system implementation and management. In order to provide this clarity, it surveyed the existing academic publications surrounding CRM, sales force automation, and related topics within information systems literature. The book supplements this research with insights from CRM experts to provide a robust picture of the CRM landscape and how to improve it no matter what role you play within your organization. This book is for everyone who wants to achieve CRM success.

This thesis addresses the issue of customer complaints in the context of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). After a comprehensive survey of the current literature on CRM, the thesis describes the development of a new intelligent CRM (I-CRM) framework, which integrates text analytics, type mapping, SPSS, structural equation modeling, and linear and fuzzy approaches. This new methodology, in contrast to previous ones, is able to handle customer complaints with respect to different variables, thus allowing organizations to find their key customers and key complaints, and to address and provide solution to the major complaints of the key customers, hence promoting business development. The thesis also describes the successful application of the method to a real-world case, represented by the immeasurable truck drivers complaints at the Fremantle port in Western Australia.

This volume presents concepts, policies and cost models for various long-term warranty and maintenance contracts. It offers several numerical examples for estimating costs to both the manufacturer and consumer. Long-term warranties and maintenance contracts are becoming increasingly popular, as these types of aftersales services provide assurance to consumers that they can enjoy long, reliable service, and protect them from defects and the potentially high costs of repairs. Studying long-term warranty and service contracts is important to manufacturers and consumers alike, as offering long-term warranty and maintenance contracts produce additional costs for manufacturers / service providers over the product's service life. These costs must be factored into the price, or the manufacturer / dealer will incur losses instead of making a profit. On the other hand, the buyer / consumer needs to weigh the cost of maintaining it over its service life and to decide whether or not these policies are worth purchasing. There are a number of complexities involved in developing failure and cost models for these policies due to uncertainties concerning the service life, usage pattern, maintenance work and long-term costs of rectifications. Mathematical models for predicting failures and expected costs for various one-dimensional long-term warranty policies are developed at the system level and analyzed by taking into account the uncertainties in connection with longer coverage periods and the rectification costs over the warranty period. Failures and costs are modeled using stochastic techniques and illustrated by means of numerical examples for estimating costs to the manufacturer and consumer. Various rectification policies are proposed and analyzed. The models developed here can be used to aid in managerial decisions on purchasing products with long-term warranty policies and maintenance contracts or outsourcing maintenance.