Managing the Customer Experience: Turning customers into advocates (Financial Times Series) (Paperback)

by Shaun Smith (Author), Joe Wheeler (Author)
Key Phrases: customer experience initiative, branded customer experience, managing the customer experience, Branded Customer, First Direct, Krispy Kreme (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Refreshing and practical. "Managing the Customer Experience "shows companies how to build the power of their brand. Wheeler and Smith inspire your organization to deliver a different and more valuable offering to your targeted customers." Bradley T. Gale, author of "Managing Customer Value "and President, Customer Value, Inc. "Delivering customers a consistently superior set of benefits is probably the most important driver of value creation. This book provides a number of practical insights which will guide the reader on the difficult but fascinating path leading to great customer value delivery." Jean-Claude Larreche, The Alfred H. Heineken Professor of Marketing, INSEAD "A fascinating and insightful book which is equally relevant for the leaders of professional services firms looking to build 'trusted advisor' relationships with their key clients." Michael Bray, Chief Executive, Clifford Chance "Managing the Customer Experience "is an incredibly practical guide for building customer loyalty in the new century." Marshall Goldsmith - Founding Director of the Financial Times Knowledge Dialogue and the Alliance for Strategic Leadership. "Smith and Wheeler show us what the 21st Century Company has to look like if it is to be successful. They show that great brands are not primarily built through advertising but by the experience and value they offer customers." Professor Peter Doyle, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick "This book shows how to unlock the full value potential of the customer experience, supported by a wealth of examples from world leaders such as Tesco and Harley-Davidson. The connection made between the Marketing, Human Resources and Customer Service functions is very powerful. This, combined with the emphasis on the role of leadership, makes "Managing the Customer Experience "required reading for CEO's, Marketing, Human Resource, and Operations Directors, and their teams." William Gordon, Strategy Partner, Accenture and co-author of "Brand Manners". "In their book, "Managing the Customer Experience", the authors bring forward the concept of loyalty and advocacy in customer experience in a very targeted way ! unearthing one of the most essential branding rules, which is to make your preferred customers your best ambassadors." Marc Gobe, President and Executive Creative Director, Desgrippes Gobe Group, author of "Emotional Branding: the New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People". "If you are interested in increasing customer loyalty, "Managing the Customer Experience "is the book for you. Most books on the subject focus on your company's image and tell why it's important. This book makes the business case for branding but then shows you how to do it. Full of practical "how to" advice, illustrative anecdotes, and application exercises, it is not only a good read, but a significant investment in your future success." Richard Whiteley, author of "The Customer Driven Company" "Managing the Customer Experience "provides a comprehensive blueprint for any organization that wants to deliver a customer experience that supports and builds its brand. Smith and Wheeler bring this intriguing concept to life through a well-researched variety of examples, insights, methods, and tools. Don't just read this book -- use it!" Scott Timmins, Vice President, College Marketing, Millea Hall, Babson College

Product Description
How much more profit could you make if you had customers who couldn't imagine doing business with anyone but you? In your dreams! Tell that to Virgin Atlantic or Harley Davidson. How great would life be if 40% of your new business simply knocked on your door without you having spent a cent advertising for it? Impossible! Tell that to First Direct. The companies in this book have managed to turn customers into advocates. Advocates who constantly refer their friends and colleagues to those businesses. Why? Because those companies have created a Branded Customer Experience(R). They have managed the relationship to the point where customers can't imagine wanting to do business with anyone else. How can you gain this unbeatable competitive advantage? Managing the Customer Experience shows you how. It takes you through the step-by-step process of creating Loyalty by Design. It shows you how to re-think your business from the customer's point of view and then design and deliver a customer experience that drives loyalty and profitability.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: FT Press; 1 edition (November 8, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0273661957
• ISBN-13: 978-0273661955
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #212,043 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How to "experience the brand" and "brand the experience", June 8, 2006

By	Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a must read for CEO's, June 3, 2003

By	"taw3210" (Memphis, TN) - See all my reviews

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!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Helpful, great templates, December 17, 2007

By	Annonymous "Globe Trotter" (Connecticut USA) - See all my reviews

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.