A practical, story-driven book on the importance of building and inspiring loyalty among employees, customers, clients, and vendors, based on the lessons learned from the phenomenally successful Enterprise car rental company.

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.

The proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Logistics, Informatics and Services Sciences (LISS’2014) gather 259 papers on the latest fundamental advances in the state of the art and practice of logistics, informatics, service operations and service science. The books is divided into four main sections focusing on different aspects: Service Management, Logistics Management, Information Management, and Engineering Management. It also covers ten special sessions: Advanced Management Decision Making Techniques and Application; Freight Transportation and Information Technology; Free Trade Zone (FTZ) and Supply Chain Management; Innovation in Service Science; Comprehensive Service; International Trade and Investment of Service Industries Theories and Practices, Trends and Strategies; Supply Chain Management, Industrial Economy and Urban Logistics; Management Process Optimization Modeling & Data Analysis; Logistics Management & IOT Technology Application; and Digital Publishing & Media. The papers in each section describe state-of-art research works that are often oriented towards real-world applications and highlight the benefits of related methods and techniques for developing the emerging field of service science, logistics and informatics.

Identifying customer loyalty as a crucial success factor in contemporary marketing thinking and practice, this innovative Handbook incorporates a rich collection of perspectives on the current topics and research-driven practices in the field. Leading scholars offer an insightful reimagining of the research methods, metrics, and designs for the future of measuring and predicting customer loyalty.

'As with her previous book, Customers. com, The Customer Revolution should be required reading for managers at any company - old or new - who are assessing the real impact of the Internet on their businesses. Highly recommended.' Amazon.com business editor review The Customer Revolution shows how the companies who will succeed will be the ones who design an organisation structure, develop a set of business models and have a product portfolio that can all be altered overnight based on customer behaviour, feedback and suggestions. Based on extensive research in Europe, America and Asia and covering detailed case studies of leading companies around the world (including Tesco and Hewlett Packard) The Customer Revolution shows you exactly how to win in your business.

This book demonstrates in a simple and straightforward way the process of discovering the attributes that are important to your customers, measuring their satisfaction with an unbiased survey instrument, analyzing that data, and then doing a statistical analysis to determine the best approach to improving the low-rated attribute(s) and implementing change that has a higher probability of improving customer loyalty. Satisfaction is a feeling; loyalty is a behavior with satisfaction as its foundation, coupled with a willingness to repurchase and a willingness to recommend. It is that interest in reliving a positive customer experience that creates loyal behavior. This book gives insights into the process that companies can use to create that satisfaction in their customers and promote loyal behavior in customers’ buying patterns. Each chapter is constructed as a self-contained entity. The method described in this book will help you collect data from your customers, understand the information through analysis of the metrics and comments, find root causes of problems, motivate people to contribute to improving satisfaction, and then sustain the gains by audit. There is no appendix to reference for additional materials. The basic process needed to analyze and implement a robust quality system for improving customer satisfaction is described in full, including presenting the data of “customer satisfaction values” in a way that makes it easy to understand.