Managing the Customer Experience: Turning Customers Into Advocates

by Joe L. Wheeler and Shaun Smith

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0273661957
• ISBN13: 9780273661955
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Pearson FT Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.41 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.2" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Helpful, great templates

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 References to technology were very light, i'm assuming so as not to seem outdated in this fast moving world.

How to "experience the brand" and "brand the experience"

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,

a must read for CEO's

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!

Practical Insight

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.