Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It [Paperback]

Jill Griffin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 26, 1997

Your guide to building and sustaining the most critical partnership of all

Both the front-line salesperson concerned with a single customer and the senior manager responsible for the organization-wide sales and marketing strategy will find Griffin's Profit Generator system a useful process for building a base of consistently profitable customers.
-- Quality Digest

Hold on to the best asset you've got! This pragmatic guide to achieving customer loyalty outlines a savvy seven-step process for turning prospects into customers and customers into loyal advocates. Presenting detailed case studies -- from a Florida picture framer and a Nebraska travel agent to Home Depot and Sharp Electronics -- author Jill Griffin shares her trademarked Profit Generator System, a step-by-step approach to pricing, value, positioning, and targeting designed to systematically move customers up the loyalty ladder. With real-world detail, she also shows how to win back inactive customers and develop a loyalty-driven corporate culture.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Management consultant Griffin here addresses the failure of the "market share" theory. Presenting case studies-Home Depot's customer intimacy standard; Sharp Electronics' sales doctor approach-she stresses the need to develop customer loyalty programs. Griffin deftly examines pricing, value, customers' purchasing cycles, positioning and targeting to create repeat purchasers. She ponders: What "exactly" does a company do that engenders loyalty? A Florida picture framer she interviewed discovered by surveying his customers that the uniqueness and quality of his work ensured their patronage, not his low-end framing options; a Nebraska travel agent learned that he retained his corporate accounts because of his willingness to hold regular review sessions with them. Readers will profit from the arsenal of tools Griffin provides.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Studies have shown that customer satisfaction does not equate with continued sales. What a business needs instead is customer retention and repeated purchases, otherwise know as customer loyalty. Marketing consultant Griffin has written a practical guide for planning strategies to assure customer loyalty. She uses actual examples to describe whom a company should target, how to find qualified prospects, and how to turn customers into company advocates. Griffin also details how to win back inactive customers and how to develop a loyalty-driven corporate culture. Several recent books have been published in this area, including Joan Cannie's Turning Lost Customers into Gold (American Management Assn., 1994), which provides sample survey forms but an abbreviated text. Griffin's thoroughgoing treatment is recommended for public libraries.
Kathy Shimpock-Vieweg, O'Connor-Cavanagh Lib., Phoenix, Ariz.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass (June 26, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787908606
• ISBN-13: 978-0787908607
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,366,566 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jill Griffin has been preaching and teaching the gospel of customer loyalty in Corporate America for almost three decades. Dell, Microsoft, Ford Motor Company, Subaru, Marriott Hotels, Hewlett Packard, Cendant, IBM, AMD, Wells Fargo, Western Union, Sprint, Toyota and other similar organizations have sought her solutions and welcomed her deep inside their conference rooms, call centers and customer sites.

Jill's most recent duties have earned her a seat in the boardroom. Since 2002, Jill has served on the Board of Directors of Luby's, Inc. (NYSE: LUB), overseeing the restaurant chain's critical turnaround. In four short years, Luby's has returned to profitability, paid off all debt, enhanced shareholder value four-fold, and restored its storied Brand to prominence by winning back lapsed customers and marketing to new ones.

Jill's string of best-selling, award-winning books on customer loyalty began publication in the mid nineties, with the release of the internationally published, business best-seller, Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It. The second edition of Customer Loyalty, revised for the digital age, is on Harvard Business School's 'Working Knowledge' list of recommended books.

Jill is the co-author of Customer Winback: How to Recapture Lost Customers and Keep Them Loyal, which won Soundview Executive Book Summaries' '30 Best Business Books' award.

Jill's newest book is Taming the Search-and-Switch Customer.


Her books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Portugese and Spanish.

Jill served on the University of Texas McCombs School of Business faculty from 1988 to 1990. Today, she is a frequent UT guest lecturer. Her two books have been used as textbooks for the university's MBA and undergraduate courses on customer management.

In her early career, Jill served as senior brand manager for RJR/Nabisco's largest brand and distinguished herself as one of the youngest brand managers in the corporation's history. From RJR/Nabisco, Jill joined AmeriSuites Hotels as the start-up chain's first National Director of Marketing and Sales. She launched Griffin Group in 1988.

Jill is the recipient of the 2003 Distinguished Alumna Award for the University of South Carolina Moore School of Business (received alongside Larry Kellner, Chairman and CEO of Continental Airlines) from which she holds MBA and Bachelor of Science degrees, Magna Cum Laude. Jill serves on the Moore School's Board of Trustees.

Jill's passion is speaking to audiences world-wide about the power and pit-falls of customer loyalty. Each of her Loyalty Maker presentations is 'painfully customized' and loaded with industry-specific how to's, wrapped around real-world, heart-felt stories and case studies. Jill's in-the-trenches leadership and experience, married with her high energy, fun-loving platform style, make her a real stand-out among corporate speakers.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Customer Loyalty-A Bird in the Hand is worth 12 in the bush., October 13, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It (Paperback)

As a business developer, I tend to look for quality business advice that is both practical and true to real life situations. I hit a "bulls-eye" with Jill Griffin's "Customer Loyalty, How to Earn it - How to Keep it!" And what a plus to find it also to be relational in a genuine way. For that is the best kind of business. And the author illustrates that truth with so many wonderful examples.

Of course there is a difference between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty! But Jill Griffin is the first person I've read who points it out. We all need to be wiser about the customers we have. Why do we spend so much time looking for new customers, out there somewhere, compared to our existing clientele? Here we have an author who shows us how to easily nuture the customers we have toward additional sales AND toward being our supporters and promoters for new clients as well.

As I read "Customer Loyalty" through, I immediately and consistently found myself thinking, "A bird in the hand is worth at least 12 in the bush!"

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best business books I've read, June 24, 1999

By 

Gerardo "GD" (Austin, TX, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It (Paperback)

As a marketing consultant, I have found this book extremely valuable. It will be extremely valuable to ANY business and will make you change your view on how your business should opperate. It is written in a simple clear manner so a student can understand it, yet as professional with 14 years of experience, I found many interesting concepts.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Griffin is a Customer Guru and Loyalty Leader, May 21, 2003

By 

Carol Parenzan Smalley (Johnstown, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It (Paperback)

As the managing editor of CRMGuru.com, the largest online community of business professionals focusing on customer loyalty and related issues, my bookshelves are overflowing with review copies of books on CRM, loyalty, customer centricity and the like. Jill's book does not reside on these bookshelves. Her latest second edition sits next to my computer monitor, within easy reach. I use it frequently as one of my "customer loyalty bibles" when looking for case studies and working examples to weave into our numerous newsletters and online forum discussion board topics. Jill goes beyond information; she allows the reader to engross herself as a customer of the book. It is a win-win situation for all customers. A must read in my book! So much so that I list it in my suggested reading for students in my entrepreneurial classses that I teach on the college level.

Carol Parenzan Smalley
Managing Editor
CRMGuru.com