CEO and award-winning business writer John R. Brandt offers concrete examples of how any organization can innovate in ways that delight customers and attract top-level talent. Nincompoopery--terrible customer service, idiotic business processes, and soul-crushing management practices--surrounds all of us. We lose time, patience, and profits as stuck-in-the-past organizations actively prevent us (and our customers) from getting the value we (and they) deserve. In Nincompoopery, Brandt leverages research across thousands of companies to show leaders how to find and kill the corporate stupidity that drives customers crazy. It usually starts by asking simple questions, such as: Why should our customers have to rekey their data multiple times to make a single purchase? Why are there four levels of approval just to order basic supplies? Why can’t we get qualified candidates for open positions, or provide new employees with decent training? In short: How did we become such nincompoops? And when will we stop? Brandt has worked with hundreds of companies to help them outwit competitors, and in this book, he shares his unique blueprint for success. Nincompoopery offers leaders the answers they need--and the profits they crave--with a scoop of humor on the side.

This book will teach you how to eliminate what customers hate and lead your market and customer satisfaction. Whether you’re selling to consumers or business-to-business (B2B), perfection in the marketplace does not exist. When making buying decisions, customers are faced with an array of imperfect choices. The best organizations in the world are not only delivering great customer experience, but they’re also taking steps to proactively avoid the things that customers hate. These companies have learned that if you can eliminate what customers hate, you will instantly become the best option in your market. No company, brand, or service enjoys 100 percent love. There will always be some degree of hate in the mix. Hate is a source of friction, and if there is too much friction, the process of moving products and services— regardless of their high quality—into the hands of customers will grind to a halt. What Customers Hate will show you how to avoid the common pitfalls that have damaged some of the best organizations, and best teams in the world, and how to change the philosophical view of customer experience so you can learn that customer experience is actually an innovation activity. This customer experience playbook will give you actionable takeaways that include: How to turn an upset customer into a customer for life, in five easy steps. Why “haters” will determine your organization’s growth and profitability. How to thrive in the “experience economy.” The importance of the five-touch journey mapping. The impact of hate-love personification. How to turn your customers into “Evangelists.” The power of: Attraction, Promotion, Retention, and Avoiding Deflection. The secrets of the best organizations in the world. This book is the product of many years of front-line work with some of the top brands in the world and their customers. Set aside the theories and concepts, this is the playbook you need. You’ll find that this approach will make it fast and easy to drive scalable growth, profitability, and most importantly, customer happiness.

This book focuses on the concept of “brand hate” and consumer negativity in today’s digital markets. It explores the emotional detachment consumers generate against valued brands and how negative experiences affect their and other consumers' loyalty. It is almost impossible not to run into hateful language about companies and their brands in today’s digital consumption spaces. Consumer hostility and hate is not hidden and silent anymore but is now openly shared on many online anti-brand websites, consumer social networking sites, and complaint and review boards. The book defines consumer brand hate and discusses its dimensions, antecedents, and consequences as well as the semiotics and legality of such brand hate activities based on current brand dilution arguments. It describes the situations which lead to anti-branding and how consumers choose to express their dissatisfaction with a company on individual and social levels. This newly updated edition discusses recent research findings from brand hate literature with new cases and extended managerial analysis. Thus, the book provides strategic perspectives on how to handle such situations to achieve better functioning markets for scholars and practitioners in marketing, psychology, and consumer behavior.

To many people, marketing means personal selling or advertising, imposing oneself on others, and trying to get people to buy something they may not want. In this guide to marketing and building relationships with customers to achieve success, Rick Crandell debunks these myths.

Think you know your customers? You better be more assured than just thinking you do, because your success depends on it! The best companies in the world first research exhaustively what their customers desire, and then they deliver it in memorable and deeply human experiences--resulting in success previously believed to be unachievable. So once again, how well do you know your customers?In a hyperconnected economy that is radically changing consumer expectations, this vital expectation for any successful business is not always easy. But in What Customers Crave, author and business strategist Nicholas Webb simplifies this critical task into being able to confidently answer two questions: What do your customers love? What do they hate?Jam-packed with tools and examples, this must-have resource helps businesses reinvent how they engage with customers (both physical and virtual). Learn how to:• Gain invaluable insights into who your customers are and what they care about• Use listening posts and Contact Point Innovation to refine customer types• Engineer experiences for each micromarket that are not only exceptional, but insanely relevant• Connect across the five most important touchpoints• Co-create with your customers• And more!It’s time to reinvent the ways you engage with your customers. Because when you learn to provide for them exactly what they want, they not only bring along their wallets but those belong to their friends as well!

Face it, whether your company has 10 employees or 10,000, you must grapple with people you can't stand in the office. Luckily Jonathan Littman and Marc Hershon have written I Hate People!, a smart, counter-intuitive, and irreverent turn on the classic workplace self-help book that will show you how to identify the Ten Least Wanted -- the people you hate -- while revealing the strategies to neutralize them. Learn to fly right by the "Stop Sign" (nay-sayer) and rise above the pronouncements of the "Know-it-None." I Hate People! will teach you how to carve out more time for yourself by becoming a "Soloist" -- one of those bold individuals daring to work alone or collaborate with a handful of other talented people....while artfully deflecting the rest.

Why can't operational managers ever get what they really want from IT? Why is the relationship so fraught with frustration from all parties? IT managers and business leaders simply don't understand each other, the way they think, the pressures they face, and the goals they are trying to achieve. Enter Susan Cramm, the prospective Deborah Tannen of the Business-IT relationship. - Personality-wise, if men are from Mars and women are from Venus, then the IT people are from Microsoft and their business partners are from Apple - In spite of great effort to become more business-smart, line and IT managers have very different backgrounds and experiences which make it difficult to communicate what they do and why and how they do it - Different pressures and incentives further increase the difficulty of forming positive IT-business relationships. While line managers need to "get 'er done now" to support the needs of their function or units (or pay the price in terms of near term business results and bonuses), IT managers need to "get 'er done right" to support the longer term needs of the enterprise (or pay the price in terms of fragmented, fragile systems.) The key to reconciling these and other differences is to figure out how to manage the paradox. If you want to get what you want from IT, you need to shift your perspective and look through the eyes of your IT partners. Doing so will allow you to develop a single version of "truth" and give you the insight necessary to change the relationship for the better. Similarly, this book will help dispel the notion that managers can "hand off" their IT responsibility to the IT organization and will provide the tools to incorporate the management of IT into their daily leadership agenda and repertoire. Business leaders should assume accountability for IT, much as they have assumed accountability for the management of the financial and human resource asset, and build the necessary capabilities into their organization. The core ideas in this book also promise to have applicability to managing other relationships between business units and specialized service providers. Think supply-chain management, or better yet, graphic design.