Discover the hidden ways to raise your organizations’ customer service experiences from ordinary to extraordinary. If you want to know how strong your company’s customer service is, ask your employees to describe what their work entails. Then pay attention to whether they simply list their duties and tasks or if they speak to the true essence of their job--to create delighted customers who will be less price sensitive, have higher repurchase rates, and enthusiastically recommend the company or brand to others. The latter should be every employee’s highest priority, because when it’s not, your customers are merely the recipients of a transaction, not an experience, and transactions do not make for a lasting impression or inspire loyalty. In Delight Your Customers, customer service expert Steve Curtin makes a compelling case that customer service managers need to shift from monitoring service activities to modeling, recognizing, and reinforcing the behaviors that create happy and returning customers. Things such as: Expressing genuine interest Offering sincere compliments Sharing unique knowledge Conveying authentic enthusiasm Providing pleasant surprises Delivering service heroics when needed Simply based on their own personal experiences, everyone knows that great customer service is rare. So why wouldn’t you want to provide a unique, caring, and beneficial experience for all your customers to rave about with others? With the real-world stories, examples, and strategies shared in Delight Your Customers, you can take the customer service experience you offer from ordinary to extraordinary.

This text shows how customer "delight" not just customer satisfaction drives repeat purchasing and customer loyalty. It shows how to monitor customer delight against revenue, investment, resources and benchmark results. The book also has case studies to show how to keep up customer delight.

Everyone knows that the best way to create customer loyalty is with service so good, so over the top, that it surprises and delights. But what if everyone is wrong? In their acclaimed bestseller The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon and his colleagues at CEB busted many longstanding myths about sales. Now they’ve turned their research and analysis to a new vital business subject—customer loyalty—with a new book that turns the conventional wisdom on its head. The idea that companies must delight customers by exceeding service expectations is so entrenched that managers rarely even question it. They devote untold time, energy, and resources to trying to dazzle people and inspire their undying loyalty. Yet CEB’s careful research over five years and tens of thousands of respondents proves that the “dazzle factor” is wildly overrated—it simply doesn’t predict repeat sales, share of wallet, or positive wordof-mouth. The reality: Loyalty is driven by how well a company delivers on its basic promises and solves day-to-day problems, not on how spectacular its service experience might be. Most customers don’t want to be “wowed”; they want an effortless experience. And they are far more likely to punish you for bad service than to reward you for good service. If you put on your customer hat rather than your manager or marketer hat, this makes a lot of sense. What do you really want from your cable company, a free month of HBO when it screws up or a fast, painless restoration of your connection? What about your bank—do you want free cookies and a cheerful smile, even a personal relationship with your teller? Or just a quick in-and-out transaction and an easy way to get a refund when it accidentally overcharges on fees? The Effortless Experience takes readers on a fascinating journey deep inside the customer experience to reveal what really makes customers loyal—and disloyal. The authors lay out the four key pillars of a low-effort customer experience, along the way delivering robust data, shocking insights and profiles of companies that are already using the principles revealed by CEB’s research, with great results. And they include many tools and templates you can start applying right away to improve service, reduce costs, decrease customer churn, and ultimately generate the elusive loyalty that the “dazzle factor” fails to deliver. The rewards are there for the taking, and the pathway to achieving them is now clearly marked.

Deliver a better business experience, for every kind of customer A "one-size fits all" approach to customer service is no longer viable. Businesses competing on service need to understand and cater to customers' racial, ethnic, religious, generational, and geographic differences in order to meet or exceed customers' service expectations. Crafting the Customer Experience to People Not Like You shows how companies, brands, and products struggling to differentiate themselves in a sea of sameness can foster long-term loyalty and brand preference with exceptional and customized customer service. A detailed guide to core customer groups including women, the five generations (matures, Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z), racial and ethnic segments, such as Hispanics and African-Americans, as well as those who are defined by key lifestyle and life-stage attributes Includes onsumer insights that will help business leaders deliver a better business experience with every customer You cannot control the economy, the stock market or the costs of goods and labor. But you can control your organization's customer service. It's an empowering thought. Customer service is 100% in your control at all times and it's more important than ever.

Research in the field of service quality and consumer behavior has developed in many dimensions in the past decade. A number of models have been developed to determine the factors leading to satisfaction; however, within the past few years, scholars have proved that satisfaction is not sufficient to leave a strong mark in the minds of the customers. Service quality and customer delight have been the buzzwords in the business world in recent times as scholars have proven that customer delight is the key to customer retention. The Handbook of Research on the Interplay Between Service Quality and Customer Delight considers how companies around the world in a cross-cultural environment are dealing with service quality and customer delight and proposes a global outlook on the current trends, tactics, and opportunities. Covering key topics such as buyer funnels, consumer dissonance, and digital solutions, this reference work is ideal for business owners, managers, industry professionals, researchers, scholars, practitioners, academicians, instructors, and students.

A nationally syndicated columnist and sales trainer shows how to convert "satisfied" customers into "loyal" customers. Includes real-world techniques, helpful checklists, inspiring stories, and thought-provoking self-tests.

"A powerful and inspiring look 'inside the tent' of Mercedes-Benz that will help you learn how large companies make big changes in short timespans." --Guy Kawasaki, Chief Evangelist of Canva and author of The Art of the Start 2.0 "I can’t remember having read a more compelling example of how great luxury brands aren’t just made but are nurtured. Driven to Delight offers essential lessons on the direct and undeniable relationship between how much you value and respect your customers and how they reward you for that consideration." --Mike Jackson, Chairman, CEO, and President, AutoNation "Joseph Michelli's latest book is a masterful roadmap for transforming the relationship between leaders, employees, and the customers they serve." --Tom Rath, author of StrengthsFinder 2.0 and Are You Fully Charged? "The revolution in customer care that MBUSA is currently undertaking is rivaled only by the revolution that Mercedes began with the invention of the automobile. Dr. Michelli’s book provides the most comprehensive look at how MBUSA is undertaking and succeeding at this transformative initiative." --Alex Gellert, CEO, Merkley & Partners "Kudos to Steve Cannon and Joseph Michelli. Steve is the rare CEO who is brutally honest—in a public forum—about his own iconic organization’s growing pains. Joseph’s ability to present a compelling case study is unparalleled. If Driven to Delight can’t convince you of the bottom line benefits of balancing service and technology to differentiate from your competition, your days are numbered." --Doug Lipp, international business consultant and bestselling author of Disney U "Once again Joseph Michelli gives us a glimpse into one of the worlds’ great brands and customer experiences. Joseph helps us understand how Mercedes Benz leadership transformed and elevated sales and service experiences. Additionally, he takes the reader on a journey to examine their own organization and determine how to apply these principles and lessons in their own business. This is an important read for leaders who want to grow their businesses, by improving customers’ lives." --Jeanne Bliss, President, CustomerBliss, and bestselling author of Chief Customer Officer 2.0 and I Love You More Than My Dog "Mercedes Benz's story demonstrates the leadership and commitment that's required to transform customer experience within a large organization. The book does a great job of capturing how the company engaged all of its employees and partners on a journey to deliver upon its brand promise, which required much more than just designing great cars." --Bruce Temkin, CCXP, Customer Experience Transformist & Managing Partner, Temkin Group "Most business leaders will tell you how important it is to delight their customers—who wouldn't? But most don't. This is the story of Steve Cannon's journey to take Mercedes Benz from 'good to best'—the diagnosis, the plan, the process design, the management and measurement, but most importantly, the leadership that is making 31,600 people, 99.5 percent of whom don't work for him, WANT to deliver it." --Andrew Robertson, President and CEO, BBDO Worldwide, Inc.