Customer Reviews

Managing the Customer Experience: Turning customers into advocates

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Actually, the title of this book is somewhat misleading because Smith and Wheeler have as much of value to say about how to create an appropriate customer experience as they do about how to manage it effectively. In fact, the two are not only connected, they are interdependent. The ultimate objective is to establish an ever-increassing critical mass of customers who are "advocates" or as Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba would characterize them, "evangelists."

Obviously, customer relationship management (CRM) is a multi-stage process which begins with obtaining sufficient and relevant information about the target customer (or customer segments), proceeds through the design and implementation phases, continues with refinement and modification based on rigorous evaluation of CRM initiatives and measurement of their impact. Effective marketing creates or increases demand for whatever is offered whereas effective CRM ensures that "customer satisfaction" becomes "customer loyalty" which, eventually, becomes and remains "customer advocacy."

At this point, it is worth noting that, in several dozen research studies on what customers consider to be most important, three attributes were almost always ranked among the top five: feeling appreciated, convenience (i.e. easy-to-do-business-with or ETDBW), and perceived value. Cost? Depending upon which research study is consulted, it was ranked 9-14 in importance. By the way, Warren Buffett once observed something to the effect, "Cost is what you charge but value is what they think it's worth." Marketers and service providers would be well-advised to keep that in mind.

Credit Smith and Wheeler with providing a remarkably thorough analysis of how to manage the development of relationships with customers which evolve from their satisfaction to loyalty to advocacy. As Bernd Schmitt correctly notes in the foreword, "Towards the beginning of this book, the authors distinguish two key routes toward a Branded Customer Exerience': `experiencing the brand' and `branding the experience.' Experiencing the brand...begins with the brand, turns it into a promise, and delivers on it. Branding the experience is about creating an innovative experience for customers and then branding it.."

Starbucks offers an excellent example. Under Howard Schultz's leadership , the international chain of gourmet coffee shops demonstrates how to combine "excperiencing the brand" and "branding the experience." The result is that Starbucks has become, as Schultz proudly notes, not a "trend" but a "lifestyle." Perhaps no other organization treats its part-time employees treats better (both compensation and benefits) and they reciprocate with a consistency high level of service (both competence and cordiality) and thus function as - yes - advocates. According to Schultz, "What we've done is said the most important component in our brand is the emplopyee. The people have created ther magic. The people have created the experience." Appropriately, Schultz entitled his autobiography Pour Your Heart Into It.

One final point. Most organizations which have problems retaining valued customers probably also have problems retaining valuable employees. Hence the even greater relevance and value of what Shaun Smith and Joe Wheeler share in this book. Peter Drucker once observed, "If you don't have a customer, you don't have a business." There corollary to that insight: "If you don't employees who are competent and cordial as well as committed to the enterprise, you won't have any cuistomers."

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out McConnell and Jackie Huba's Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force, Leonard L. Berry's Discovering the Soul of Service: The Nine Drivers of Sustainable Business Success and On Great Service: A Framework for Action as well as Theodore Levitt's The Marketing Imagination (which includes his classic HBR article, "Marketing Myopia"), Kenneth E. Clow and Donald Baack's Integrated Advertising, Promotion, and Marketing Communications (Second Edition), George E. Belch's Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective, P. R. Smith and Jonathan Taylor's Marketing Communications: An Integrated Approach, and Noel Capon and co-authors' Total Integrated Marketing: Breaking the Bounds of the Function.

Also, Irving Rein and co-authors' High Visibility: The Making and Marketing of Professionals into Celebrities, Kellogg on Marketing (edited by Dawn Iacobucci), Kellogg on Integrated Marketing (co-edited by Iacobucci and Bobby Calder), and finally, Harry Beckwith's What Clients Love: A Field Guide to Growing Your Business.

As the CEO of a software company, I have been searching for PRACTICAL advice for enhancing the experience for our customers. Most books I have seen are full of theory and are basically worthless. If you don't walk away from this book with a list of action items, then you obviously don't care about serving your customers.

I believe that this book will be on my desk as a reference for a long time. It will take a couple of years to implement all that I learned.

Definitely worth the read!

I bought this and several other books on this topic of a project at work. This so far has been the most comprehensive and thoughtful book on the topic. There are plenty of templates and workflows to help a team frame their customer experience goals and is supplemented with substantial facts and figures that resonate with executives. This book will provide me with much of what i need to clearly articulate these ideas to my leadership (as i build yet another powerpoint deck to do so).

My only gripe is that while many of these themes transcend time, we need a good 2008 version of this thinking that incorporates the huge changes in the internet and pervasive connectivity. References to technology were very light, i'm assuming so as not to seem outdated in this fast moving world.

This book is definitely worth the read. It does a nice job of quickly building the case as to why delivering an exceptional customer experience is the key issue for many companies today, especially service firms. More importantly it provides a clear example of how to get it done, so for internal practioners this book can serve as a straightforward roadmap for implementation. I also thought the examples were good, especially as they related to the issue of senior leadership engagement. Overall I would highly recommend this book to anyone else interested in this subject since I have not found a lot of material that actually describes what to do to deliver a branded customer experience.

This is a must-read book for executives and managers seeking to improve customer loyalty. The authors convincingly demonstrate how branded customer experience drives customer loyalty to create a sustainable competitive advantage. The book is well researched and contains dozens of examples of companies who have met the loyalty/branding challenge. The stories behind the success of Harley Davidson, Amazon.com, Virgin, Home Depot and many others are fascinating and highly instructive. The ideas and perspectives covered in this book are both insightful and pragmatic. It is an excellent resource.

Unlike others in the field, Wheeler and Smith lay out what you need to do to consciously design a business that consistently gives the customer an experience that lives up to their brand. In the rush to cost control, we often forget that it's easy to make life difficult for the customer, and the result is massive damage to the brand, even to the point of destroying the organization.

A must read, especially in uncertain times, where the tendency will be to cut, without regard for the customer.

This book is a good resource for managers trying to develop brands where experience accounts for and important portion of the value perceived by the customer.
It is well structured, goes beyond the obvious.

This is a great read for anyone who wants to be inspired to improve the customer experience their own company provides and then wants to know how to do it. I particularly loved the stories and examples from Krispy Kreme and Pret A Manger.

We all know that the customer has already become the decision maker of company operations in the digital economy. Without custmers, no company can survive. Shaun's book certainly uncovers the secrets on how to sustain the performance and growth of the company. He illustrates his proven model with a number of cases we can benchmark. In this regard, I dare to say that this book may be used by all business people as the bible of management.

We do Graphic Design for Restaurants which is all about "The Experience". We have not only started using some of the suggestions for our own firm, but are purchasing copies for clients as Christmas presents.