Delivering Effective Social Customer Service. How to Redefine the Way You Manage Customer Experience and Your Corporate Reputation

What you experience is what you remember. The more emotional the experience, the deeper it is branded into your memory. Experience has a massive impact on buying decisions. Every touch point, every time you or someone in your company engages a customer, it creates an experience – something they remember. When they have a negative experience, they tend to vote with their feet (and their wallets) and head straight to your competitors. When customers have positive emotional experiences, it anchors them to your brand, your product or service, and ultimately to you. In the twenty-first century, competitive advantages derived from unique products are services are short-lived because competitors are able to quickly and easily duplicate or match your offering. Likewise a focus on customer satisfaction and loyalty will no longer give you the competitive edge. Delivering a legendary customer experience has emerged as the single most important competitive advantage for companies across all industries. In People Love You you’ll learn the real secrets of customer experience including: 7 Essential Principles of Customer Engagement 5 Levers for Creating a Legendary Customer Experience The Secret to Bridging the Experience Gap How to Leverage the Pull Strategy to become a Trusted Advisor 2 Most Important Rules for Dealing with Pissed-off Customers In a hypercompetitive, global marketplace protecting your company’s customer base, the lifeblood of your business, must become your number one priority. The rubber hits the road with account managers, project managers, sales professionals, and customer service professionals—the people most connected to customers—who are on the frontlines of customer experience. They build unique and enduring emotional connections with customers that creating long-term revenue and profit streams. In People Love You, human relationship guru, Jeb Blount, gives you a powerful playbook for interacting with customers in a way that creates deep, enduring, visceral connections that withstand relentless economic and competitive assaults.

The fully revised and updated edition of the classic book about Nordstrom's extraordinary customer service In this new edition of the management classic, the authors explore in-depth the core values of the culture that have made Nordstrom synonymous with legendary customer service. These essential values have enabled Nordstrom to survive and adapt to dramatic market shifts regularly since 1901, and the new edition explains how the Nordstrom approach can be emulated by any organization—in any industry—in every corner of the world. This is not a book about selling shoes or clothes or cosmetics or jewelry. It is a book about how underlying values such as respect, trust, compensation and, even fun, are the building blocks of a culture where employees are empowered to consistently deliver a world-class experience to customers. Nordstrom believes that the employee experience determines the customer experience, and that when you attract and reward people who are comfortable in a service-oriented culture, then everyone succeeds—both individually and collectively. No wonder Nordstrom is one of only five companies to make Fortune's «Best Companies to Work For» and «Most Admired» lists every year since those surveys have been taken. With new interviews from senior Nordstrom executives and family members, the book explains how to successfully respond to today's tech-savvy, time-crunched customers who demand a convenient, seamless, painless, personal experience across all channels. Nordstrom gives its frontline people all the digital tools necessary to satisfy the customer—and your organization must do the same, if it wants to adapt. The authors show what it takes to earn brand loyalty, lead through change and uncertainty, and combine extraordinary brick-and-mortar with online experiences. 'The single most important reason we try to provide great service is this: It enables us to sell more,' says co-president Blake Nordstrom, great-grandson of the founder. 'The best way for our company to achieve results is to do what's best for the customer.' In this book, readers will find: Suggestions for becoming the Nordstrom of your industry The ten values that define a customer-driven culture Lessons for providing superior service and experience across all channels

Optimize the customer experience via the cloud to gain a powerful competitive advantage Customer Obsessed looks at customer experience through the lens of the cloud to bring you a cutting-edge handbook for customer experience. Cloud technology has been hailed as a game-changer, but a recent IDC report shows that it accounts for less than three percent of total IT spending; why are so many companies neglecting such an enormous asset? This book provides a high-level overview of how the cloud can give you a competitive advantage. You'll learn how to integrate cloud technology into sound customer experience strategy to achieve unprecedented levels of success. More than just a state-of-the-field assessment, this book offers a set of concrete actions you can take today to leverage cloud computing into technical innovation and better business outcomes at all levels of your organization. You'll examine the many factors that influence the customer experience, and emerge with the insight to fine-tune your approach using the power of the cloud. What kind of advantage is your company leaving on the table? This book guides you through the key drivers of customer success to help you optimize your approach and leverage the future of global technology. Learn the keys to competitive advantage in the digital era Gain insight into each element that affects customer experience Harness the power of the cloud to achieve customer success Follow a prescriptive framework for optimizing customer experience We are in the golden age of IT innovation, but the majority of companies haven't even adopted cloud technology, much less begun to utilize its full business capabilities. Jump into the gap now, and reap the benefits as other struggle to catch up. Customer Obsessed gives you the guidance you need to achieve sustainable success in today's digital world.

A practical approach to better customer experience through service design Service Design for Business helps you transform your customer's experience and keep them engaged through the art of intentional service design. Written by the experts at Livework, this practical guide offers a tangible, effective approach for better responding to customers' needs and demands, and provides concrete strategy that can be implemented immediately. You'll learn how taking a design approach to problem solving helps foster creativity, and how to apply it to the real issues that move businesses forward. Highly visual and organized for easy navigation, this quick read is a handbook for connecting market factors to the organizational challenge of customer experience by seeing your company through the customers' eyes. Livework pioneered the service design industry, and guides organizations including Sony, the British Government, Volkswagen Procter & Gamble, the BBC, and more toward a more carefully curated customer experience. In this book, the Livework experts show you how to put service design to work in your company to solve the ongoing challenge of winning with customers. Approach customer experience from a design perspective See your organization through the lens of the customer Make customer experience an organization-wide responsibility Analyze the market factors that dovetail with customer experience design The Internet and other digital technology has brought the world to your customers' fingertips. With unprecedented choice, consumers are demanding more than just a great product—the organizations coming out on top are designing and delivering experiences tailored to their customers' wants. Service Design for Business gives you the practical insight and service design perspective you need to shape the way your customers view your organization.

Your customers are your future. Smartphones, social media and the internet have given customers access to more information than ever before. If your business fails them, they will switch to your competitor and never return. So how do you keep them? By mapping their journeys, identifying potential hazards and reshaping your business with customer experience (CX) at its heart. From services to products, online to in-person, small-scale to multinational, your customers’ loyalty depends on how you interact with them. Transform Customer Experience is your ultimate guide to putting your customer first. Author and CX expert Isabella Villani shows how you can implement a customer strategy from planning to execution. Transform Customer Experience offers real-life insights into effective strategies for developing and implementing Customer Experience (CX) programs in a range of corporate, governmental and non-profit environments. • Shows you how to address dimensions of diversity in the customer base • Outlines customer journey mapping • Discusses the implications of customers’ omnichannel engagement • Addresses the importance of positive employee experience in establishing a supportive CX culture. Transform Customer Experience explains why you need to embed customer experience in your organisation and shows you how to do it.

Digital Customer Service is the new standard for creating a 5-star customer experience As much as technology has improved our lives, for many people customer service experiences remain unnecessarily frustrating. But the advent of Digital Customer Service (DCS) promises to make these interactions seamless and effortless by creating experiences that occur entirely on a customer's own screen, even in situations where it is preferable to speak to an agent. Digital Customer Service: Transforming Customer Experience for an On-Screen World traces the evolution of customer service—as well as the evolution of customer expectations and the underlying psychology that drives customer behavior – from the days of the first call centers in the 1980s all the way to today's digital world. Written for Customer Service and Customer Experience leaders as well as C-suite executives (CEOs, CFOs, CIOs), Digital Customer Service helps business leaders balance three critical priorities: Creating an excellent experience for customers that increases customer loyalty and profitability Driving down the cost of Customer Service/Support interactions, while increasing revenue through Sales interactions Moving quickly toward the goal of «digital transformation» We have discovered—in our research and our first-hand experience—that when companies commit to achieving true Digital Customer Service, they can make significant progress toward all three of these goals at once. Digital Customer Service provides the roadmap for how your company can get there. And when you do, who wins? EVERYONE.

UnSelling is about everything but the sell. We put all of our focus on the individual purchase transaction, while putting the rest of our business actions second. We've become blind to customer service, support, branding, experiences and even product quality. Sixty percent of a purchasing decision is made before a customer even contacts you. We have funnel vision, and it needs to stop. Unselling is about the big picture: creating repeat customers, not one-time buyers. Create loyal clients that refer others, not faceless numbers. Becoming the go-to company for something, before they even need you. You don't need social media, but you can be connecting with your clients socially. Your video doesn't have to be viral in front of a million people, just contagious in front of your specific market. Content, connection, engagement. It's time to separate from the pack of noise. It's time to UnSell.

An updated and expanded Second Edition of the popular guide to social media for the business community Marketers must look to the Web for new ways of finding customers and communicating with them, rather than at them. From Facebook and YouTube to blogs and Twitter-ing, social media on the Internet is the most promising new way to reach customers. Marketing to the Social Web, Second Edition helps marketers and their companies understand how to engage customers, build customer communities, and maximize profits in a time of marketing confusion. Author and social media guru Larry Weber describes newly available tools and platforms, and shows you how to apply them to see immediate results and growth. Rather than broadcast messages to audiences, savvy marketers should encourage participation in social networks to which people want to belong, where dialogue with customers, and between customers, can flourish. in Networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and even Flickr are the perfect forums for this dialog; this book shows you how to tap into this new media. In addition to the tools and tactics that made Marketing to the Social Web a critical hit among marketers, this second edition includes three entirely new chapters that cover recent changes in the field. These new chapters describe how Facebook will monetize its business and one day surpass Google; how companies can measure the influence and effectiveness of their social media campaigns; and how marketing to mobile social media will grow into an effective practice in the near future. Marketing must reach out into new forms, media, and models. Marketing to the Social Web, Second Edition presents an exceptional opportunity to use these new tools and models to reach new markets, even in today's fragmented media environment. Larry Weber has spent the last three decades building global communications companies, including Weber Shandwick Worldwide and the W2 Group. He is also the founder and Chairman of the Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange, the nation’s largest interactive advocate association.

A step-by-step guide to designing and implementing an amazing customer service culture In today's competitive business environment, keeping customers happy is the key to long-term success. But some businesses provide much better customer service than others. It's not always clear what works and what doesn't, and implementing new customer service practices midstream can be a difficult, chaotic task. Business leaders who want to transform their business culture into one of customer service excellence need reliable, proven guidance. Unleashing Excellence gives you practical tools and step-by-step guidance tailored to your company's individual customer service needs. It shows you how to navigate your teams through every step of the implementation process to achieve true customer service excellence. The book covers the training and education of your group, how to measure the quality of your service, how to build a culture of personal accountability, and how to recognize excellence and reward it. Fully revised to include updated information on the latest tools and best practices, as well as the stories and lessons learned from those organizations that have used the process described in the book. Offers proven best practices for designing and implementing an excellent customer service culture Simple format divides content into nine «leadership actions» that guide you through a step-by-step process Shows you how to build a common customer service vision for your entire organization Customer service is vital to the survival of your business. If you want to move your organization's customer service practices from good to great, Unleashing Excellence is the key.

Praise for Marketing to the Social Web «Weber understands that the world is going digital and that competitive advantage will accrue to those who understand the transformation. CEOs should heed this transformation and learn from Weber's insights how to navigate this new landscape to fully maximize their business opportunities.» -Mark Fuller, Chairman, Monitor Group «Consumers are using technology to grab power from companies, the media, and the government. Marketing to the Social Web succinctly outlines how institutions can survive and win in this chaotic new world, and lays out the revised rules of engagement-ignore them at your peril.» -George F. Colony, CEO, Forrester Research, Inc. «Larry has brought pragmatic and useful recommendations to help brand builders manage the complexity of social interaction in a digital age. I was pleased to read a book that actually suggests how to do something with social networks, instead of just ponder them.» -David Kenny, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Digitas Inc. «Where's the allure of social 2.0? Brands can talk . . . customers talk louder! Digital influence has arrived.» -Jeff Taylor, CEO, Eons and Founder of Monster.com «Larry Weber provides a simple and effective roadmap of the new customer information highway. Marketing to the Social Web is a valuable tool that will give everyone the confidence and know-how to compete in this fast-growing marketplace of ideas.» -Steve Harris, Vice President, Global Communications, General Motors Corporation «As all lines and boundaries are washed away by the Web, Weber describes how to become part of the sea versus the sand.» -Nicholas Negroponte, Chairman, One Laptop per Child