This invaluable resource is the training manual you need to give your employees the thorough training, review, and--if necessary--overhaul they need in the vitally important area of customer service. If their interactions with you and your employees were the only things your customers knew about your business, what would they say about it? Would they use descriptions such as "uninformed," "rude," "hot-tempered," "uncaring"? For your customer, nothing else represents your business more than your employees; therefore, nothing is more important than arming them with the knowledge and skills they need to find the best solution for every customer. Using scenarios, guidelines, and practice exercises, Customer Service Training 101 will train them in: Creating positive first impressions Speaking and writing effectively Listening attentively Identifying needs Making customers feel valued Confidently handling customer complaints Your business plan is sound. Your product is needed. Your growth strategies are ground-breaking, but poor customer service can bring it all to a crashing halt. Equip you and your employees with the necessary skills before it's too late.

This book represents the work of some of the contemporary world leaders in marketing. The contributors are authors of a set of path-breaking books on marketing. To ensure sufficient depth of coverage, the contributors have taken the essence of their earlier books and combined it with their latest understanding and cases. This has served to enhance the content and put it in the readers' current context. It is common knowledge that keeping pace with the growing application of marketing requires a novel approach. With new ideas and nuances being discovered every day, it has become a real challenge for marketers and students of marketing to keep up to date on important contemporary marketing concepts. Given its unique approach and thoughtful curation, this book presents readers with diversity of perspectives along with a unique depth of thinking.

Electronic Customer Care (ECC) ist seit Erscheinen der zweiten Auflage ein Bestseller fur Softwareanbieter geworden. Unter dem Begriff Customer Relationship Management (CRM) bieten boomende Firmen Losungen zur Optimierung der Kundenprozesse an. Sie werben mit hoher Kundenzufriedenheit und reduzierten Kosten. Auch traditionelle Softwaregiganten beginnen, Losungen im Bereich Marketing, Sales und Service zu vermarkten. Fur viele Unternehmen allerdings ist die Reorganisation der sogenannten Front-Office-Prozesse Neuland. Auf was mussen Unternehmen achten, wenn sie CRM-Projekte starten? Wichtig ist es, vom Kundenbedurfnis auszugehen und die Kundenbeziehung ganzheitlich zu betrachten. Das Buch abstrahiert die Kundenbeziehung anhand des Customer Buying Cycles und schafft so einen neutralen Orientierungsrahmen fur CRM-Projekte. Die dritte Auflage nimmt neue Themen wie e-Marktplatze in die Betrachtungen auf und bietet einen aktuellen Uberblick uber fuhrende CRM-Anbieter."

Eine Kundenbeschwerde als zunachst einmal unangenehmes Ereignis kann Ausgangspunkt fur beachtliche Qualitatsschube innerhalb eines Unternehmens sein. Damit sowohl die Kunden als auch die Dienstleister als Adressaten fuhlbar und schnell von den Verbesserungen profitieren konnen, mussen die Verantwortlichen sinnvolle und effektive Arbeitsablaufe im Beschwerdemanagement etablieren. In diesem Buch beschreiben anerkannte Praktiker nutzliche, leicht umsetzbare Konzepte. Die Autoren verraten ausserdem, wie man den Teil der Unzufriedenheit entdeckt, den die Kunden gar nicht erst ausdrucklich formulieren. Auch hier liegen grosse Potenziale fur zukunftige Ertrage. Dieses Buch haben vornehmlich Experten aus dem Bereich Finanzdienstleistungen geschrieben. Die gewonnenen Erkenntnisse sind aber problemlos auf andere Branchen ubertragbar."

RockStar Service, Rockstar Profits reveals a new, fast, easy way to increase revenues, grow a business, and create loyal customers for life. Imagine for a moment that your favorite artist, musician, group or rock star came into your office or called you today requesting your product or service. What would you say to them? What would you do to serve them? Now ask yourself: When was the last time I treated a customer or a client like a rock star? What would it do for your business if you treat every customer and client like a rock star? Rockstar Service, Rockstar Profits shows business owners, executives, customer service reps, and others a more effective way for their team to deliver world-class, rockstar customer service to their customers. Inside, business coach David Brownlee teaches how to build rapport in 60 seconds or less, create customized customer service strategies to implement immediately, and how to look at customers in a new light. Rockstar Service, Rockstar Profits reveals how to increase revenues, grow a business, and create raving fans-clients that will never leave.

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.

Based on four empirical studies, Moritz Merkle examines the introduction of humanoid robots to the frontline service encounter in a customer-centric approach focusing on customer expectations and customer responses. The author identifies desirable robotic behavioral cues and shows that service robots meet great acceptance among customers. After service failures, customers are even more likely to forgive service robots than human employees. Further, he shows how crucial it is to manage customer expectations that depend on cultural dimensions and internal reference categories.

Swiping a grocery store's loyal-customer card has become second nature to shoppers these days. "Scoring Points," one of the seminal marketing books of the last decade, tells the story of how British supermarket chain Tesco conceived, launched and developed its hugely successful Clubcard program -- and transformed itself into a winning brand. Authors Clive Humby and Terry Hunt, two key members of the project, and Tim Phillips, a leading business writer and broadcaster, bring a compelling, behind-the-scenes account of Clubcard -- the successes, failures and lessons learned. They show how Tesco made customer loyalty marketing work, even when almost every other loyalty program failed, thanks to vision, a strong team ethic and a company-wide commitment to customer satisfaction. It includes three new chapters, including an examination of the US retail market and the authors' work with both Tesco and Kroger.

The sales function is the front--line of any business. Keeping up with the latest sales techniques is essential, as well as ensuring you have a motivated, incentivised and focused sales team well--versed in the basics of selling, from identifying new prospects and getting repeat business to closing the deal. This module gives essential insight into all the key sales drivers such as account management, handling complex sales, selling services, FMCG selling, customer relationships and self--development for sales people.

Creating a unique value for your customers is crucial if you want to differentiate in an overcrowded market. To do so, you need to define a powerful strategy that determines consistent action across your organisation to deliver your unique flavour. Szostek describes this strategy as umami, which is the fifth category of taste (besides sweet, sour, salt and bitter), and gives an exceptional flavour to your food. How do you build a powerful yet actionable strategy, and successfully implement it across your organisation? Many leaders, marketers and designers try to answer these questions. The Umami Strategy proposes a novel approach that will help you build and execute an experience strategy. The model used in the book allows you to (a) find out what stories your customers are telling today; (b) uncover motivators and demotivators that guide these stories; (c) envision the ideal future experience you want to deliver; (d) define the actionable measures that will ensure progress toward that vision; and (e) evaluate that progress through future customer stories. Enjoyable, practical and full of hidden gems and tips, this book will help you get your organisation to align with building a unique market value through delivering memorable experiences to your customers. Because to be noticed, you need to stand out of the crowd.

This volume includes the full proceedings from the 2011 World Marketing Congress held in Reims, France with the theme The Customer is NOT Always Right? Marketing Orientations in a Dynamic Business World. The focus of the conference and the enclosed papers is on marketing thought and practices throughout the world. This volume resents papers on various topics including marketing management, marketing strategy, and consumer behavior. Founded in 1971, the Academy of Marketing Science is an international organization dedicated to promoting timely explorations of phenomena related to the science of marketing in theory, research, and practice. Among its services to members and the community at large, the Academy offers conferences, congresses and symposia that attract delegates from around the world. Presentations from these events are published in this Proceedings series, which offers a comprehensive archive of volumes reflecting the evolution of the field. Volumes deliver cutting-edge research and insights, complimenting the Academy's flagship journals, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS) and AMS Review. Volumes are edited by leading scholars and practitioners across a wide range of subject areas in marketing science.

Improving service quality has finally become a top priority of management today, yet according to service quality expert Leonard Berry only a handful of companies have managed to determine exactly what to improve and how to improve it. For the past two years, Berry studied dozens of companies of all sizes renowned for their capacity to deliver what they promise and more. From his on-site observation of the strategies and practices of such companies as Mary Kay Cosmetics, Tattered Cover Book Store, Longo Toyota & Lexus, Lakeland Regional Medical Center, and Hard Rock Cafe, Berry has constructed a dynamic new framework for improving service.

This framework provides a roadmap for implementation found nowhere else in the service quality literature. In every chapter Berry draws on his twelve years of research in service quality to explain each part of the framework in detail. He provides rich insights and inspiring examples of great service -- including numerous examples unique to this book as well as the classic success stories of USAA, Taco Bell, and many more. Berry shows that a company must (1) develop service leadership skills and values -- a concept substantially different from developing general leadership; (2) build a service quality information system; and (3) create a comprehensive service strategy based on the four principles of great service: reliability, surprise, recovery, and fairness. He demonstrates how these four principles, when adopted by the leadership and infused into the systems of a service company, are the building blocks of the framework and form the anchor for implementation.

Berry shows how the "artistry" of great service can be systematically created from this foundation through a company's organizational structure, technology, and often under utilized human resources assets. He challenges service managers to set their service quality aspirations higher, and his innovative, practical ideas will help them achieve those higher standards. Linking service excellence to value creation, Berry provides solid financial reasons for the necessity of great service. Here, at last, is the book for which managers in every service industry have waited: Leonard Berry's "operating manual" for turning plans for great service into action.

"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.

Win the attention of high-level decision makers in large corporations; spark their interest and earn their trust to achieve long-term, sustainable mutual value. When it comes to buying and selling complex, high value products and services, people buy from people. Big businesses and public sector organizations rely on solutions to keep their essential services running - things like payroll, IT, property maintenance and communications technology. For the companies that provide those services, winning the business can mean huge, multi-year, multi-million contracts. Executive Engagement Strategies is a comprehensive guide to engaging with the senior professionals making the buying decisions - to win sustainable, long-lasting business. It provides an easy-to-follow guide that will help professionals interact at each step of the B2B buying process using a combination of people, messages and communication channels. Highly practical, Executive Engagement Strategies provides a clear, step-by-step process to capture the attention of busy c-suite executives, and keep them engaged and motivated throughout the lengthy buying process. Filled with global case studies and examples, it will help readers know what to say, and when and how to say it, to build trust and win the business. With key takeaways at the end of each chapter and clearly actionable guidelines and instructions, it is the only resource you'll need to build truly customer-centric engagement with core decision makers.

Business Models for Transforming Customer Relationships What if there were a way to turn occasional, sporadic transactions with customers into long-term, continuous relationships--while simultaneously driving dramatic improvements in operational efficiency? What if you could break your existing trade-offs between superior customer experience and low cost? This is the promise of a connected strategy. New forms of connectivity--involving frequent, low-friction, customized interactions--mean that companies can now anticipate customer needs as they arise, or even before. Simultaneously, enabled by these technologies, companies can create new business models that deliver more value to customers. Connected strategies are win-win: Customers get a dramatically improved experience, while companies boost operational efficiency. In this book, strategy and operations experts Nicolaj Siggelkow and Christian Terwiesch reveal the emergence of connected strategies as a new source of competitive advantage. With in-depth examples from companies operating in industries such as healthcare, financial services, mobility, retail, entertainment, nonprofit, and education, Connected Strategy identifies the four pathways--respond-to-desire, curated offering, coach behavior, and automatic execution--for turning episodic interactions into continuous relationships. The authors show how each pathway creates a competitive advantage, then guide you through the critical decisions for creating and implementing your own connected strategies. Whether you're trying to revitalize strategy in an established company or disrupt an industry as a startup, this book will help you: Reshape your connections with your customers Find new ways to connect with existing suppliers while also activating new sources of capacity Create the right revenue model Make the best technology choices to support your strategy Integrating rich examples, how-to advice, and practical tools in the form of "workshop chapters" throughout, this book is the ultimate resource for creating competitive advantage through connected relationships with your customers and redefined connections in your industry.

To stay in business and thrive during this recession, companies need to focus and hone their value. If clients complain about the cost of a product or service, then a company is not demonstrating the superior value of their product or service. Discounting is always an option, but this means losing value during the sale - value that will be hard to regain in the future.

Instead, companies need to prove their superior value to clients using bottom-line terms - i.e. they need strong value propositions. "Creating and Delivering Your Value Proposition" shows how to do this. It explains what a value proposition is and how to build and deliver one. The authors argue that, contrary to the norm, value propositions cannot rest on unsupported marketing claims. Rather, a value proposition must be must be created at the strategy level and expressed in measurable terms.

This book illustrates the vital link between satisfying external customers and improving processes within the organization to ensure that internal customers are satisfied, too.

In today's competitive business environment, most companies realize that the better they can manage their customer relationships, the more successful they will become. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software systems are key tools for companies to manage the customer-facing processes of their businesses. However, many companies have resisted implementing this most critical customer-oriented application due in large part to the lack of a single-point resource on implementing a CRM system. This book attempts to fill that gap. Implementing SAP (R) CRM will help technologists and managers come to grips with the vision, concept, and technology of CRM. It begins by laying out the groundwork for understanding CRM. It explains the concept and context of CRM and the tangible business benefits of CRM adoption. Demonstrating a professional approach to the evaluation and selection of SAP, it details the critical success factors (CSFs), patterns, and anti-patterns of a successful SAP CRM implementation. CRM implementations can add significant benefit to the company's bottom line only if the company first transforms itself into a customer-centric and customer-responsive enterprise. This book explains what it means to be a customer-centric and responsive enterprise, and provides a framework for business operations based on customer relationships, rather than the traditional four Ps (product, positioning, price, promotion). It further spells out business process reengineering (BPR) strategies to configure internal business processes and operations with SAP CRM to improve customer-facing strategies, services, and relationships.

Win the attention of high-level decision makers in large corporations; spark their interest and earn their trust to achieve long-term, sustainable mutual value. When it comes to buying and selling complex, high value products and services, people buy from people. Big businesses and public sector organizations rely on solutions to keep their essential services running - things like payroll, IT, property maintenance and communications technology. For the companies that provide those services, winning the business can mean huge, multi-year, multi-million contracts. Executive Engagement Strategies is a comprehensive guide to engaging with the senior professionals making the buying decisions - to win sustainable, long-lasting business. It provides an easy-to-follow guide that will help professionals interact at each step of the B2B buying process using a combination of people, messages and communication channels. Highly practical, Executive Engagement Strategies provides a clear, step-by-step process to capture the attention of busy c-suite executives, and keep them engaged and motivated throughout the lengthy buying process. Filled with global case studies and examples, it will help readers know what to say, and when and how to say it, to build trust and win the business. With key takeaways at the end of each chapter and clearly actionable guidelines and instructions, it is the only resource you'll need to build truly customer-centric engagement with core decision makers.

What you experience is what you remember. The more emotional the experience, the deeper it is branded into your memory. Experience has a massive impact on buying decisions. Every touch point, every time you or someone in your company engages a customer, it creates an experience - something they remember. When they have a negative experience, they tend to vote with their feet (and their wallets) and head straight to your competitors. When customers have positive emotional experiences, it anchors them to your brand, your product or service, and ultimately to you. In the twenty-first century, competitive advantages derived from unique products are services are short-lived because competitors are able to quickly and easily duplicate or match your offering. Likewise a focus on customer satisfaction and loyalty will no longer give you the competitive edge. Delivering a legendary customer experience has emerged as the single most important competitive advantage for companies across all industries. In People Love You you ll learn the real secrets of customer experience including: *7 Essential Principles of Customer Engagement *5 Levers for Creating a Legendary Customer Experience * The Secret to Bridging the Experience Gap * How to Leverage the Pull Strategy to become a Trusted Advisor *2 Most Important Rules for Dealing with Pissed-off Customers In a hypercompetitive, global marketplace protecting your company s customer base, the lifeblood of your business, must become your number one priority. The rubber hits the road with account managers, project managers, sales professionals, and customer service professionals the people most connected to customers who are on the frontlines of customer experience. They build unique and enduring emotional connections with customers that creating long-term revenue and profit streams. In People Love You, human relationship guru, Jeb Blount, gives you a powerful playbook for interacting with customers in a way that creates deep, enduring, visceral connections that withstand relentless economic and competitive assaults.

This is an action-oriented book for managers and entrepreneurs searching ways to tackle issues they face in terms of developing and delivering services. The book focuses on service organizations, but has a broad interpretation of what services are. Directed to the business world and combines inspirational text that is full of examples, with the features of a useful handbook of practical methods with associated templates. The central argument is that managers and entrepreneurs designing service offerings will benefit from using approaches and methods from design and the arts, especially at the early stages of projects. Sometimes called "design thinking" or "design innovation", such approaches help organizations explore and create new configurations of people and things that support users, customers, staff and partners in creating value together. In short, this book argues that design and arts-based approaches are valuable to managers and entrepreneurs designing services, when uncertainty and ambiguity are high. It shows when and how to use these approaches, introduces specific methods, reviews their strengths and limitations, and finally helps managers think through what it takes to start using them in projects and within teams and develop the culture and behaviours that access the creativity they support.

A guide to improving sales and profits in consumer financial services that stresses the development of a sales and service culture. The key principles discussed are interaction with customers, cultural support and values, service from the customer's point of view, service selling, characteristics of successful sales organizations, star sales people, perfecting the sales process, dealing with prospective clients, and ongoing interaction with the client.