Category Archives: Customer Service Books

Customer Mania!

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Customer Mania!Customer Mania! It’s Never Too Late to Build a Customer-Focused Company
by Ken Blanchard, Jim Ballard, and Fred Finch

Here we have another must-read book to add to your corporate or personal library in your ever-growing Ken Blanchard section. There are a number of reasons to classify Blanchard’s latest contribution as a must read—not least of which is the author himself. He has authored or co-authored more than 30 books, including one of the best-selling business books of all time, The One Minute Manager and the giant business best-sellers Raving Fans, Gung Ho!, and Whale Done! We’ve previously reviewed many of his best-sellers on our website. Credited with 15 best-sellers to date, his books have combined sales of more than 17 million copies in 27 languages. There is good reason for those numbers. This man knows of what he speaks.

Blanchard and his two co-authors, Jim Ballard and Fred Finch, draw on lessons gleaned from the world’s largest restaurant chain as they explain that any company, large or small, can develop a unified, people-first, customer-oriented culture. This relatively small book (195 pages) is packed with practical insights, concepts, strategies, tools, tips, and case studies that will leave you eager to share with your team in an effort to create your own Customer Mania!

Time and space restraints prohibit my sharing the myriad of valuable suggestions and examples offered within the pages of Blanchard’s soon-to-be next best-seller. However, I can tell you Customer Mania! emphasizes four critical steps:

  • Set your sights on the right target.
  • Treat customers the right way.
  • Treat employees the right way.
  • Build the right kind of leadership.

Don’t be misled by the simplicity or familiarity of these powerful steps. The authors not only define each step but also provide vivid examples of each as demonstrated by the world’s largest restaurant company, YUM! They also share the impressive success this company has enjoyed as a result of its focused efforts around the four critical steps.

You may not be familiar with the name YUM!, but I’m sure you’re familiar with its products, service, and success. In 1997 KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut had been spun off from PepsiCo to form a new entity, Tricon. At that time, Tricon’s balance sheet was in trouble. The new company inherited a $4.7 billion debt and its return on invested capital hovered at a feeble 8 to 9 percent. As if that weren’t a big enough challenge, in 2002 Tricon bought two additional quick service restaurant brands—Long John Silver’s and A & W All American Food Restaurants—and in the process became the world’s largest restaurant. At this point, Tricon changed its name to YUM! Brands. Given its financial situation and the sheer size of the enterprise, the task of creating massive cultural change was daunting! Think change is difficult? Try it with 840,000 employees at 33,000 restaurants in more than 100 companies!

Was YUM! successful? Since its spin-off in 1997 from PepsiCo, YUM! has more than tripled its earnings per share, doubled its return on investment capital and has taken the market capitalization from $3.7 billion to $10 billion! The $4.7 billion of debt YUM! was saddled with is now just $2.1 billion, and today the company has an investment-grade quality balance sheet. In short, not bad! Wanna know how YUM! did it? Read this book!

Regardless of how large or small your company is—whether it’s conservative or cutting-edge, old or new, whether it involves top level executives or front counter folks—you can build it right by focusing on your customers too.

(This book review was originally published in 2005 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 13.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life

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Change Your Thinking, Change Your LifeChange Your Thinking, Change Your Life: How to Unlock Your Full Potential for Success and Achievement
by Brian Tracy

Here’s another book focusing on the obvious. We’ve heard it all before. In fact, as stated on the inside flap of this very book, we’ve been hearing this message from this particular author for 30 years. My guess is we’ll be hearing it from him for as long as he can speak. And speak he does. Brian Tracy is one of the top professional speakers in the world; he has given more than 2,000 presentations and addresses as many as 450,000 people each year. He’s published 32 books and more than 300 audio and video learning programs. And now, believe it or not, he has thrown his hat into the ring for the Governorship of California! He continues to spread his message because he believes it; he has lived it successfully for decades, and has helped thousands of others learn how to set goals, expand their thinking, and reach their full potential.

His message is simple but tremendously powerful. What you think has a profound effect on what you do and how you do it! Your life experiences determine the way you think. But your thoughts aren’t set in stone. Just like you can learn to ride a bike or play chess, you can also learn to control your thinking, and in turn, control your life. Henry Ford may have said it best decades ago when he told his staff: “Whether you think you can or think you can’t … you’re absolutely right!”

Tracy continues to hammer home this simple philosophy: Change Your Thinking—Change Your Life. He offers a framework, based on 12 powerful principles, that will help anyone get on the road to a better, more fulfilling professional and personal life. Tracy offers a proven plan for transforming your life by changing the way you think about yourself and your potential.

Each chapter offers inspirational stories and principles that get you thinking, backed up with action exercises that help you train yourself to think and act like the successful person you truly are. Every principle helps you change your thinking in a positive way. Every exercise brings about a positive change in the way you see yourself, the world, and your future. Soon, you’ll begin to see unlimited possibilities in your future. These principles will show individuals how to delve into their inner resources so that they can not only identify realistic goals but develop a plan on how to achieve these goals. Use the powerful “mental software” program in this book to tap your vast inner resources and bring the life you’ve been dreaming about into reality.

It looks as though Brian Tracy has done it again with his latest effort. Maybe the current leadership of California should adopt this philosophy before the upcoming recall election.

(This book review was originally published in 2003 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 12.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

Hug Your Customers

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Hug Your CustomersHug Your Customers: The Proven Way to Personalize Sales and Achieve Astounding Results
by Jack Mitchell

Don’t panic. The author isn’t suggesting that you take his title literally. Hugging your customers, he says, has nothing to do with being touchy-feely around them and everything to do with offering them over-the-top service. His advice is hardly groundbreaking. For instance, what rookie employee has not heard the old adages such as “know your customer, think outside the box, have a ‘no problem’ attitude”? While we’ve all heard this obvious, age-old advice repeatedly, how many of us can honestly say we’ve seen it practiced with any level of success where we shop, eat, travel, etc.? That’s the point of this book. Everyone knows what should be done to create repeat customers … very few people do it!

Chances are pretty good that you’ve never heard of this author or his business establishment. Jack Mitchell is co-owner and CEO of Mitchells/Richards, two independent clothing stores in southern Connecticut and New York’s Westchester County (two of Manhattan’s most affluent suburbs). This upper-end clothing retailer dresses many Fortune 500 executives from Chase, GE, IBM, Merrill Lynch and Pepsi to name a few. Today, Mitchells/Richards sells $65 million in apparel annually. However, the store began as a modest family business, started by Jack’s dad in 1958. Don’t make the mistake of tuning out at this point because you don’t work in the clothing business. What Jack learned from his father decades ago can be applied to any and all customer-centric businesses that appreciate the importance of knowing that having satisfied customers no longer insures success—you must have extremely satisfied customers who want to return time and time again and encourage others to do the same!

Mitchell credits his family store’s success to making the store a home, where customers feel welcome. Mitchell says his parents: “… understood that customers wanted five things more than they wanted a great location or enormous inventory:

  • A friendly greeting
  • Personal interest
  • A business that makes them feel special
  • A ‘no problem’ attitude
  • Forward thinking”

For Mitchell, that means literally offering a customer the coat off your back, if that’s the only one left in the store in the customer’s size and preferred style and color. It means going to customers’ homes to tie their bow ties for big events. It means serving coffee and bagels in the store and giving away hot dogs in the parking lot on summer Saturdays. Some might view this as fawning, but for Mitchell, it’s the best way to keep customers coming back. You, of course, will have to determine what it takes to “HUG” a customer within your environment. This would make an excellent exercise for your staff. Once the crucial determination is crystallized, discuss expectations, training, and follow up to insure success.

Mitchell writes: “When you have strong relationships, customers will do more of their buying from you. They’ll refer other customers. They’ll communicate with you better and tell you what they like and what they don’t like, in turn making your business more efficient and effective.”

The author points out that hugging is difficult to quantify, and many companies ignore customer satisfaction and customer profiling altogether. While inventory is recorded on the balance sheet, Mitchell tells us that a company’s greatest asset—repeat customers—doesn’t appear on any financial statements.

Further, while companies invest significant amounts in computer systems, they rarely develop computer systems that support a hugging culture.

Mitchell writes: “What’s amazing is that although personal relationships are absolutely crucial to any company’s success, they are rarely tracked by any system. Hotels don’t know who likes queen-sized beds and who wants extra pillows. Airlines don’t know who prefers aisle seats and who prefers the window.” Can something similar be said about you, your business and your customers? If so, take action to correct this situation.

Mitchell is a big fan of profiling customers to provide more personal service. He likes his sales associates to know which customers like M&M’s and what nicknames they prefer.

Knowing personal information about each customer is nearly impossible without a database to support this information. However, it doesn’t stop there. I know of many companies who boast a tremendous database and yet do nothing with it. Like any other customer service strategy, knowing it is not enough. You have to use it. In today’s unbelievably competitive marketplace, there are few who “use it.” So-o-o-o-o, define your “HUG,” make it an expectation, train your staff to “HUG,” practice it, and then, most importantly, “HUG!”

(This book review was originally published in 2003 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 12.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

Customer Once, Client Forever

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Customer Once, Client ForeverCustomer Once, Client Forever: 12 Tools for Building Lifetime Business Relationships
by Richard Buckingham

This author, best known for co-authoring Customers for Life, makes several observations that should make you seriously consider your current state of customer service. For instance, he points out that: “In a rapidly changing business world, what was once excellent service is now commonplace. The customer service bar is constantly being raised, and if you are not improving daily, you’re falling behind.” As customers, we immediately agree with his statement remembering a recent episode of poor service we may have received. However, review his statement as a representative (owner, CEO, manager, or employee) of an organization providing service and you may feel differently. Are you improving daily or are you falling behind? It’s one or the other! If you hesitate or cringe at this point, you need to read this book!

Buckingham puts you to work from cover to cover with this book. He tells you what steps you need to take to convert a one-time customer into a lifetime client. He presents the necessary steps businesses should take in order to ensure that their clients keep coming back. He offers his strategies as 12 tools, each one building on the one before it. It’s a guide to being the best at customer service, with an emphasis on fostering repeat business and customer referrals.

He puts you to work in several ways.

  1. He offers margin notes focusing on the dominant thoughts of each page.
  2. He provides chapter-ending checklists of “Things to Do on Monday Morning.”
  3. He offers thought-provoking “Questions for You.”
  4. He provides true stories that illustrate the principles of excellent customer service.
  5. He’s created useful worksheets to help you plan your strategy for achieving lifetime clients.

Tired yet? No? Then read on and learn more about bringing clients and companies together.

(This book review was originally published in 2001 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 8.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

Customer Winback

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Customer WinbackCustomer Winback: How to Recapture Lost Customers—And Keep Them Loyal
by Jill Griffin and Michael W. Lowenstein

Here we find 300+ pages dedicated to an unusual approach to the subject of customers and their contribution to your success as an organization. It’s interesting how many companies will spend an enormous amount of money, time, and energy to attract new customers while investing little or, more often, nothing in retention or win-back. That’s baffling when you consider the fact that vigilante customers are leaving in droves every day and they are very expensive to replace. Too many companies consider these customers as a lost cause and therefore make no attempts to discover why they left or to win them back.

With the average company losing 20% to 40% of its customers every year (for Web-based companies defection rates are substantially higher), it’s imperative that firms create focused strategies for retention and win-back in addition to their acquisition efforts. The authors provide you with step-by-step solutions for winning back lost customers, saving customers on the brink of defection, and making your firm defection proof. This pragmatic guide is brimming with savvy methods and detailed case studies that show you in real-world detail how to turn lost customers into gold!

(This book review was originally published in 2001 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 8.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

The Customer Revolution

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The Customer RevolutionThe Customer Revolution
by Patricia B. Seybold

For most companies, the issue of customers in charge is just coming onto the radar screen. For many, it was over before they had an inkling. Patricia Seybold, author of the influential, best-selling Customers.com, makes it plain in her most recent offering, that this can be either your biggest problem or your greatest opportunity.

Thanks to the Internet and mobile wireless devices, both business and consumer customers are demanding that you change your pricing structure, distribution channels, and the way you design and deliver products and services. Your business must be transformed so that it is completely customer-centric, or you will be out of business.

You can fight it if you want but you’re better off, says the author, to practice “sweet surrender,” just as the music industry has started to come to terms with Napster. Many try to characterize the changes taking place as the New Economy, the Internet Economy, or the information, knowledge, or bio-economy. However, simply put, what we now have is a customer economy, and it’s going to result in changes that you would not have thought possible even a few short years ago.

Seybold has been on a worldwide quest to find companies in North America, Europe, and Asia that are developing the state-of-the-art practices that will help them win in the new area of the customer economy. They’re profiled and analyzed in case studies ranging from small businesses to multinational giants and range from manufacturers to retailers, and service firms. What she provides is not only a brilliant analysis but also a practical program for how you can make the customer revolution a profitable one. The companies that thrive in the customer revolution will be those that measure and monitor what matters to customers, in near real time!

(This book review was originally published in 2001 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 7.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

1,001 Ways to Keep Customers Coming Back

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1,001 Ways to Keep Customers Coming Back1,001 Ways to Keep Customers Coming Back: WOW Ideas That Make Customers Happy and Will Increase Your Bottom Line
by Donna Greiner and Theodore Kinni

You can now have the customer-service secrets of the world’s most successful businesses right at your fingertips. The authors spent five years uncovering how Nordstrom, Southwest Airlines, Ritz-Carlton, American Express, and many other world-class companies keep their customers for life. You’ll find these customer-retention ideas to be timely, entertaining, and brilliantly inventive. You’ll discover the secrets to:

  • Creating products/services tailored to your customers’ needs
  • Using three kinds of guarantees to build customer trust
  • Turning first-time customers into frequent buyers 

This book identifies the companies and individuals who have found successful techniques, strategies, and programs that not only satisfy customers but keep them coming back and bringing others. It’s a quick, easy read that you’ll want to share with your entire staff.

(This book review was originally published in 2000 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 5.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

Best Practices

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Best PracticesBest Practices: Building Your Business with Customer Focused Solutions
by Robert Hiebeler, Charles Ketteman, and Thomas B. Kelly

What makes the world’s top companies so adept at providing stellar customer service? How do they meet the needs of every customer and still turn healthy profits? And, most important, how can you adapt their practices to fit your business?

Thanks to more than six years of ongoing research and an investment of $30 million, Arthur Andersen has created its Global Best Practices Database to uncover breakthrough thinking at world-class companies. Now, in Best Practices, Arthur Andersen for the first time shares its understanding of how more than 40 best-practices companies focus on their customers, create growth, reduce cost, and increase profits. Managers of any business in any industry can adapt and apply what those companies do best.

Unlike most books based merely on an author’s own theories or limited anecdotal experience, Best Practices is backed up by 30,000 pages of active, documented data on hundreds of companies worldwide. This book concentrates primarily on customers and how to involve them in everything from the design of products and services to marketing, selling, and product delivery.

Perhaps the greatest value of the book lies in its linking of best practices to business processes, thereby encouraging managers to expand their thinking and engage in creative problem-solving with the help of insights from companies inside or outside their own industry. For example, the manager of a clothing store chain can study how Federal Express adapted the concept of just-in-time manufacturing to its rapid delivery of parts between supplier and customer. The owner of a small coffee shop chain might learn from American Express and Peapod how to target customers by offering particular products and predicting exactly when they will make their next purchases.

These and other examples will help business people diagnose the processes in place at their own companies and determine how best to improve them. Comprehensive and on the cutting edge, Best Practices will serve as an invaluable information resource.

(This book review was originally published in 2000 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 4.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

Customer Satisfaction Is Worthless … Customer Loyalty Is Priceless!

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customer-satisfaction-is-worthlessCustomer Satisfaction Is Worthless, Customer Loyalty Is Priceless: How to Make Them Love You, Keep You Coming Back, and Tell Everyone They Know
by Jeffrey Gitomer

While the title may be shocking at first glance, the concept is indeed profound! It may just be the decisive factor in determining the success of your organization.

Loyal.

All have heard about it, and most have experienced it at one time or another. What a wonderful feeling to have the unconditional love and affection that comes from loyalty. It is the highest form of friendship and the highest form of commitment. Loyal is unyielding, unrelenting, and ever faithful. True to the end.

It is with that understanding that this book is centered. So how do you get to “loyal” in the relationships with your customers? Simple—apply the principles that build loyalty in every other aspect of your life. Believe it or not, there are easy answers, but you have to work hard to achieve mastery of them. This book helps you discover those loyalty answers and the best ways to master them.

This book is an easy read laced with bullet points, lists, examples and stories from the viewpoint of cash-paying customers—some are hilarious—some will make you applaud—some will make you nauseous. All will enlighten and educate you in the fine art of creating customer loyalty. This is a must-read for every member of your organization!

(This book review was originally published in 1999 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 1.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.