How Hard Is It to Be Your Customer?

How Hard Is It to Be Your Customer?
Author: Jim Tincher
Publisher: PMP
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2019-06-11
Genre:
ISBN: 9781941688649

Learn how to create journey maps that actually get resultsNearly two out of three journey maps fail to drive customer-focused change. Find out how to make your initiative successful, and avoid the pitfalls that doom so many others, with this authoritative new book. With insights from dozens of CX pros, extensive research, and real-world case studies and examples, How Hard Is It to Be Your Customer will help you understand why some maps drive action - leading to an improved customer experience, greater customer loyalty, and impressive ROI - while others just gather dust on a shelf.

Uncommon Service

Uncommon Service
Author: Frances X. Frei
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2012
Genre: Customer relations
ISBN: 1422133311

Offers an organizational design model for service organizations, covering such topics as funding mechanisms, employee management systems, and customer management systems.

Pitch Perfect

Pitch Perfect
Author: Haje Jan Kamps
Publisher: Apress
Total Pages: 103
Release: 2020-08-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781484260647

You have a home-run startup idea and a whip-smart team to execute it. Everything should be in place to kick-start your company and secure funding. However, there is one more step that can make or break the entire deal: the pitch. Founders everywhere struggle to nail the perfect pitch to garner VC backing, and this book is here to help. Pitch Perfect by Haje Jan Kamps expertly teaches you how to tell your startup’s story. To raise venture capital, it is absolutely crucial that your foundation is a story that is accessible, compelling, and succinct. Kamps uses his invaluable experiential knowledge to guide you through your presentation, from slide deck specifics to storytelling details to determining a fundamental philosophy for your business. In the process of creating and formulating a pitch deck and the story to go with it, founders often discover deep flaws in their business idea. Perhaps the market is non-existent. It could be that the “problem” isn’t worth solving. Maybe the idea is so simple that it would be too easy to copy. Maybe it’s already been done, or the team simply is not up to the job. Pitch Perfect has all of those bases covered so that you can excel. How do you convince an institutional investor to part with their money and fund your company? The small block of time you are given for a pitch holds your startup’s future in its grasp. Learn how to craft your startup story in a way that will get people to lean into your message with Pitch Perfect. Your dream is only one pitch away.

Superconsumers

Superconsumers
Author: Eddie Yoon
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2016-11-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1633692086

Not your average consumer. Pork dorks. Craftsters. American Girl fans. Despite their different tastes, these eclectic diehards have a lot in common: they’re obsessed about a specific brand, product, or category. They pursue their passions with fervor, and they’re extremely knowledgeable about the things they love. They aren’t average consumers—they’re superconsumers. Although small in number, superconsumers can have an outsized impact on a company’s bottom line. Representing 10% of total consumers, they can drive between 30% to 70% of sales, and they’re usually willing to spend considerably more than the average consumer. And because they’re so engaged and passionate, they can offer invaluable advice to managers looking to improve their products, change their business models, energize their cultures, and attract new customers. In Superconsumers, growth strategy expert Eddie Yoon lays out a simple but extremely effective framework that has helped companies of all types and sizes achieve more sustainable growth: he’ll show you how to find, listen to, and engage with your most passionate and profitable consumers, and then tailor your decisions to meet their wants and needs. Along the way, he’ll let you into the minds and homes of superconsumers of all kinds, revealing what makes them tick and why they’re willing to spend so much more than other consumers. Rich with data and case studies of companies that have implemented superconsumer strategies with great success, Superconsumers is a fun, practical, and inspiring guide for anyone interested in making their best customers even better.

Be Your Customer's Hero

Be Your Customer's Hero
Author: Adam Toporek
Publisher: AMACOM
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2015-04-22
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0814449069

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.

Never Lose a Customer Again

Never Lose a Customer Again
Author: Joey Coleman
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2018-04-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0735220034

Award-winning speaker and business consultant Joey Coleman teaches audiences and companies all over the world how to turn a one-time purchaser into a lifelong customer. Coleman's theory of building customer loyalty isn't about focusing on marketing or closing the sale: It's about the First 100 Days® after the sale and the interactions the customer experiences. While new customers experience joy, euphoria, and excitement, these feelings quickly shift to fear, doubt, and uncertainty as buyer's remorse sets in. Across all industries, somewhere between 20%-70% of newly acquired customers will stop doing business with a company with the first 100 days of being a new customer because they feel neglected in the early stages of customer onboarding. In Never Lose a Customer Again, Coleman offers a philosophy and methodology for dramatically increasing customer retention and as a result, the bottom line. He identifies eight distinct emotional phases customers go through in the 100 days following a purchase. From an impulse buy at Starbucks to the thoughtful purchase of a first house, all customers have the potential to experience the eight phases of the customer journey. If you can understand and anticipate the customers' emotions, you can apply a myriad of tools and techniques -- in-person, email, phone, mail, video, and presents -- to cement a long and valuable relationship. Coleman's system is presented through research and case studies showing how best-in-class companies create remarkable customer experiences at each step in the customer lifecycle. In the "Acclimate" stage, customers need you to hold their hand and over-explain how to use your product or service. They're often too embarrassed to admit they're confused. Take a cue from Canadian software company PolicyMedical and their challenge of getting non-technical users to undergo a complex installation and implementation process. They turned a series of project spreadsheets and installation manuals into a beautiful puzzle customers could assemble after completing each milestone. In the "Adopt" stage, customers should be welcomed to the highest tier of tribal membership with both public and private recognitions. For instance, Sephora's VIB Rogue member welcome gift provides a metallic membership card (private recognition) and a members-only shade of lipstick (for public display). In the final stage, "Advocate," loyal customers and raving fans are primed to provide powerful referrals. That's how elite entrepreneurial event MastermindTalks continues to sell-out their conference year after year - with zero dollars spent on marketing. By surprising their loyal fans with amazing referral bonuses (an all-expenses paid safari?!) they guarantee their community will keep providing perfect referrals. Drawing on nearly two decades of consulting and keynoting, Coleman provides strategies and systems to increase customer loyalty. Applicable to companies in any industry and of any size (whether measured in employee count, revenue, or total number of customers), implementing his methods regularly leads to an increase in profits of 25-100%. Working with well-known clients like Hyatt Hotels, Zappos, and NASA, as well as mom-and-pop shops and solo entrepreneurs around the world, Coleman's customer retention system has produced incredible results in dozens of industries. His approach to creating remarkable customer experiences requires minimal financial investment and will be fun for owners, employees, and teams to implement. This book is required reading for business owners, CEOs, and managers - as well as sales and marketing teams, account managers, and customer service representatives looking for easy to implement action steps that result in lasting change, increased profits, and lifelong customer retention.

The Effortless Experience

The Effortless Experience
Author: Matthew Dixon
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2013-09-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0698137582

Everyone knows that the best way to create customer loyalty is with service so good, so over the top, that it surprises and delights. But what if everyone is wrong? In their acclaimed bestseller The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon and his colleagues at CEB busted many longstanding myths about sales. Now they’ve turned their research and analysis to a new vital business subject—customer loyalty—with a new book that turns the conventional wisdom on its head. The idea that companies must delight customers by exceeding service expectations is so entrenched that managers rarely even question it. They devote untold time, energy, and resources to trying to dazzle people and inspire their undying loyalty. Yet CEB’s careful research over five years and tens of thousands of respondents proves that the “dazzle factor” is wildly overrated—it simply doesn’t predict repeat sales, share of wallet, or positive wordof-mouth. The reality: Loyalty is driven by how well a company delivers on its basic promises and solves day-to-day problems, not on how spectacular its service experience might be. Most customers don’t want to be “wowed”; they want an effortless experience. And they are far more likely to punish you for bad service than to reward you for good service. If you put on your customer hat rather than your manager or marketer hat, this makes a lot of sense. What do you really want from your cable company, a free month of HBO when it screws up or a fast, painless restoration of your connection? What about your bank—do you want free cookies and a cheerful smile, even a personal relationship with your teller? Or just a quick in-and-out transaction and an easy way to get a refund when it accidentally overcharges on fees? The Effortless Experience takes readers on a fascinating journey deep inside the customer experience to reveal what really makes customers loyal—and disloyal. The authors lay out the four key pillars of a low-effort customer experience, along the way delivering robust data, shocking insights and profiles of companies that are already using the principles revealed by CEB’s research, with great results. And they include many tools and templates you can start applying right away to improve service, reduce costs, decrease customer churn, and ultimately generate the elusive loyalty that the “dazzle factor” fails to deliver. The rewards are there for the taking, and the pathway to achieving them is now clearly marked.

Where Are the Customers' Yachts?

Where Are the Customers' Yachts?
Author: Fred Schwed, Jr.
Publisher: Wiley
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2006-01-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780471770893

"Once I picked it up I did not put it down until I finished. . . . What Schwed has done is capture fully-in deceptively clean language-the lunacy at the heart of the investment business." -- From the Foreword by Michael Lewis, Bestselling author of Liar's Poker ". . . one of the funniest books ever written about Wall Street." -- Jane Bryant Quinn, The Washington Post "How great to have a reissue of a hilarious classic that proves the more things change the more they stay the same. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent." -- Michael Bloomberg "It's amazing how well Schwed's book is holding up after fifty-five years. About the only thing that's changed on Wall Street is that computers have replaced pencils and graph paper. Otherwise, the basics are the same. The investor's need to believe somebody is matched by the financial advisor's need to make a nice living. If one of them has to be disappointed, it's bound to be the former." -- John Rothchild, Author, A Fool and His Money, Financial Columnist, Time magazine Humorous and entertaining, this book exposes the folly and hypocrisy of Wall Street. The title refers to a story about a visitor to New York who admired the yachts of the bankers and brokers. Naively, he asked where all the customers' yachts were? Of course, none of the customers could afford yachts, even though they dutifully followed the advice of their bankers and brokers. Full of wise contrarian advice and offering a true look at the world of investing, in which brokers get rich while their customers go broke, this book continues to open the eyes of investors to the reality of Wall Street.

INSPIRED

INSPIRED
Author: Marty Cagan
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2017-11-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 111938754X

How do today’s most successful tech companies—Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Tesla—design, develop, and deploy the products that have earned the love of literally billions of people around the world? Perhaps surprisingly, they do it very differently than the vast majority of tech companies. In INSPIRED, technology product management thought leader Marty Cagan provides readers with a master class in how to structure and staff a vibrant and successful product organization, and how to discover and deliver technology products that your customers will love—and that will work for your business. With sections on assembling the right people and skillsets, discovering the right product, embracing an effective yet lightweight process, and creating a strong product culture, readers can take the information they learn and immediately leverage it within their own organizations—dramatically improving their own product efforts. Whether you’re an early stage startup working to get to product/market fit, or a growth-stage company working to scale your product organization, or a large, long-established company trying to regain your ability to consistently deliver new value for your customers, INSPIRED will take you and your product organization to a new level of customer engagement, consistent innovation, and business success. Filled with the author’s own personal stories—and profiles of some of today’s most-successful product managers and technology-powered product companies, including Adobe, Apple, BBC, Google, Microsoft, and Netflix—INSPIRED will show you how to turn up the dial of your own product efforts, creating technology products your customers love. The first edition of INSPIRED, published ten years ago, established itself as the primary reference for technology product managers, and can be found on the shelves of nearly every successful technology product company worldwide. This thoroughly updated second edition shares the same objective of being the most valuable resource for technology product managers, yet it is completely new—sharing the latest practices and techniques of today’s most-successful tech product companies, and the men and women behind every great product.

The Mom Test

The Mom Test
Author: Rob Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Robfitz Ltd
Total Pages: 133
Release: 2013-10-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1492180742

The Mom Test is a quick, practical guide that will save you time, money, and heartbreak. They say you shouldn't ask your mom whether your business is a good idea, because she loves you and will lie to you. This is technically true, but it misses the point. You shouldn't ask anyone if your business is a good idea. It's a bad question and everyone will lie to you at least a little . As a matter of fact, it's not their responsibility to tell you the truth. It's your responsibility to find it and it's worth doing right . Talking to customers is one of the foundational skills of both Customer Development and Lean Startup. We all know we're supposed to do it, but nobody seems willing to admit that it's easy to screw up and hard to do right. This book is going to show you how customer conversations go wrong and how you can do better.