Service Magic: The Art of Amazing Your Customers [Paperback]

Chip Bell (Author), Ron Zemke (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 22, 2003

Like stage magic, service magic is made up of more than tricks, hocus-pocus, and bravado. Service magic is an art and depends on developing customer rapport, excellent timing, and many hours of practice. Customer service wizards Chip Bell and Ron Zemke have decades of experience advising and coaching the world's biggest businesses in the fine art of providing excellent service. In their new book, Service Magic, the authors use examples from diverse industries to reveal inventive-and fun-approaches to customer service. Using new models for creating customer delight, they share a conjurer's trunk of ideas for sweeping away the mundane and creating customer experiences that will leave customers delighted, charmed, and wanting to come back for more. Readers will learn about the magic-building customer service strategies at play in industries such as: • Hospitality-How Marriott, Ritz-Carlton Hotels, Hotel Monaco, Old Faithful Inn, Berns Steak House, and Radisson have performed service magic for retaining guests, especially during a downturn in the travel and leisure market. • Financial services-How do USAA and American Express keep their customers happy when so many financial services companies are churning accounts faster than the Fed can drop interest rates? • Health care-See how some of the biggest health care providers, including Mayo, Aurora Health, Children's Memorial Hospital of Chicago, Grace Presbyterian Village, and Wayzata Dental, have created caring, nurturing, and helpful environments for patients and families. • Retail-Byerly's, SuperQuinn, Mary Jane's Farm, Macaroni Grill, Victoria's Secret, and Sewell Village Cadillac are vastly different retailers. Nevertheless, they share some common approaches to service and customer care. • Entertainment-Universal Studios, Disney World Resorts, All Outdoor White Water Rafting, and the St. Paul Saints have all captured the hearts and souls of customers through the magic of service.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Kaplan Publishing (April 22, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0793164672
• ISBN-13: 978-0793164677
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #298,589 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars What are those magic words again? Oh yeah...customer service!, May 29, 2010

By 

Donavon Roberson (Las Vegas, NV) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Service Magic: The Art of Amazing Your Customers (Paperback)

Ron Zemke takes the emotion that is tied up with the wonder of Magic and translates that experience over to the same feelings that customer should receive when they interact with our business. While the world of "slight of hand' is just that, illusion, the world of customer service cannot be. Instead we must take the basic structure used to design a magic performance and use that as a template for building out a plan for customer service.

Zemke lays out a fairly decent plan for the reader to follow and consider; beginning with the art of misdirection and ending with the wonder of the stage exit or "out". This plan is followed by many of today's most successful companies and has proven to evoke a similar feeling of wonder and amazement experienced on many of Vegas' nightly shows.

A great quote from this book is "You can't force customers to take part in the magic, but you can invite them to come and play along." Businesses that are sure to succeed no matter what the state of the economy, are those that invite the customers to participate and become part of the story.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Service Magic, November 18, 2009

By 

Adrienne M. Buzzell (me) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Service Magic: The Art of Amazing Your Customers (Paperback)

Thank-you ,the book arrived in new condition, Mailing was on the date of arrival.Even packaged so it would not be effected by the rain. Sincerly Adrienne

1 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Read!, June 3, 2004

By 

Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Service Magic: The Art of Amazing Your Customers (Paperback)

Despite the rather strained analogy and the authors' laborious attempts to make it amusing for 248 pages, this book does offer some genuine magical flashes of customer service insight. You will learn a great deal that is worth knowing. Many of these insights are the kind of pointers on customer service that bear repeating, rereading and remembering. The magic metaphor is a worthy attempt to make them fresh again, and to examine the elements of place, performance and process, step by step. We recommend this book for new magicians, and even for magicians with experience who need to renew their customer service razzle-dazzle. Now, show `em how you pull that rabbit out of your hat!