Service-Ability. Create a Customer Centric Culture and Achieve Competitive Advantage

Competing in a Service Economy is a hands-on guide to creating services, with illustrative examples from service-oriented companies including Disney, Ericsson, IKEA, National Association of Convenience Stores, Ritz Carlton, Scandinavian Airline Systems, Sterling Pulp Chemicals, and Telia Mobile. This practical resource for executives, general managers, and managers in marketing, operations, and human resources reveals how to gain a competitive advantage by creating and implementing a strategic plan that will ultimately improve their organization's services. Written by the authors of the best-selling book Improving Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty, and Profit, this important new book will help business professionals to think and plan strategically to dramatically improve services, service development, and service innovation within their organizations.

The practical, expert guide to reaching the new consumer Customer-Centric Marketing is a comprehensive game plan on succeeding in the new marketing landscape by focusing on the customer. Written by one of Canada's top communications pioneers, this book examines the complex forces influencing the rise of empowered and demanding customers and outlines a framework that helps marketers exploit these forces to engage them. You'll find actionable advice to help you pull together these seemingly independent elements to create a customer-centric business model that is ideally positioned to take on the dynamic requirements of today's marketing environment, and learn the strategic rules that CMOs can use to model their organizations to win. Valuable insights on customer experience, innovation, content, social media, and operating strategies will help you formulate a workable plan, and when combined with the practical guidance and expert advice, enable you to put your plan into action today. The new purchasing journey has created a whole new set of customer touch points with unique needs, and has identified key activity areas that drive success or failure in the marketplace. This guide helps you sort it all out, and make your organization rise to the top. Define the new customer-purchasing journey Identify and influence the new consumer Engage, nurture, and utilize brand advocates to spread your message Position your organization to win in the new marketplace As customers evolve, smart companies evolve with them, and, with a track record that speaks for itself, putting the customer at the center of strategic thinking is the key to a winning plan,. Consumer evolution is happening more rapidly than ever before, and keeping your organization out in front has never been more important. Customer-Centric Marketing provides the concrete framework, expert insight, and actionable advice that turns strategy into reality.

The marketer's guide to modernizing platforms and practices Marketing in the digital era is a whole new game: it's fundamentally about competing on the customer experience. Marketers must integrate a complex set of technologies to capture the customer's digital body language—and thereby deliver the right experiences, at the right times, via the right channels. This approach represents a formidable technological and practical challenge that few marketers have experience with. The methods that enable marketers to meet this challenge are emerging from an unexpected place: the world of software development. The Agile methodologies that once revolutionized software development are now revolutionizing marketing. Agile provides the foundation for alignment between the marketing and product management sides. It can unleash a whole array of new marketing opportunities for growth hacking as well as for «baking» marketing directly into your products or services. Beyond that, as a discipline it can serve as a bridge to strategic alignment, positioning the chief marketing officer alongside the chief product officer as the two primary drivers of the business. Written by a premier practitioner of modern marketing, this book will provide you with: Insights on the evolution of product development and management in the organization—and why marketing must partner with them in the new era An understanding of Agile methods and their application to marketing A plan for integrating Agile with your traditional methods Tactics to drive alignment with product management A pathway to becoming the steward of customer experience Rich with examples, case studies, illustrations, and exercises drawn from the author's wide-ranging experience (from startups to a top global technology company), The Agile Marketer will help you transform marketing in your organization, in spirit and practice—and help realize its critical roles in product management and the customer experience.

Designing the Customer-Centric Organization offers today???s business leaders a comprehensive customer-centric organizational model that clearly shows how to put in place an infrastructure that is organized around the demands of the customer. Written by Jay Galbraith (the foremost expert in the field of organizational design), this important book includes a tool that will help determine how customer-centric an organization is- light-level, medium-level, complete-level, or high-level- and it shows how to ascertain the appropriate level for a particular institution. Once the groundwork has been established, the author offers guidance for the process of implementing a customer-centric system throughout an organization. Designing the Customer-Centric Organization includes vital information about structure, management processes, reward and management systems, and people practices.

HACK YOUR WORKPLACE CULTURE FOR GREATER PROFITS AND PRODUCTIVITY «I LOVE THIS BOOK!» —CHESTER ELTON, New York Times bestselling author of All In and What Motivates Me «When companies focus on culture, the positive effects ripple outward, benefiting not just employees but customers and profits. Read this smart, engaging book if you want a practical guide to getting those results for your organization.» —MARSHALL GOLDSMITH, executive coach and New York Times bestselling author «Most books on customer service and experience ask leaders to focus on the customer first. Shane turns this notion on its head and makes a compelling case why leaders need to make 'satisfied employees' the priority.» —LISA BODELL, CEO of Futurethink and author of Why Simple Wins «This is a must read for anyone in a customer service-centric industry. Shane explains the path to creating both satisfied customers and satisfied employees.» —CHIP CONLEY, New York Times bestselling author and hospitality entrepreneur The question is not, «does your company have a culture?» The question is, «does your company have a culture that fosters outstanding customer experiences, limits employee turnover, and ensures high performance?» Every executive and manager has a responsibility to positively influence their workplace culture. Culture Hacker gives you the tools and insights to do it with simplicity and style. Culture Hacker explains: Twelve high-impact hacks to improve employee experience and performance How to delight and retain a multi-generational workforce The factors determining whether or not your employees deliver outstanding customer service

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.

Links theory and practice for investment professionals and portfolio managers, demonstrating why some portfolios consistently perform better than others Investing well, like any other business, depends on competitive advantage. Some portfolios reliably generate greater returns than others because they simply are better positioned to benefit from strengths and avoid weaknesses. Building and using competitive advantage becomes central to the daily work of the best mutual funds, hedge funds, banks, insurers and virtually every other type of portfolio. But competitive advantage commonly is overlooked in most written work for investment professionals. The literature often varies between abstract formal treatments and pragmatic workbooks with little in between. Competitive Advantage in Investing fills the gap by integrating modern portfolio theory with actual practice in one comprehensive volume. This innovative book guides investment professionals on building and sustaining competitive advantage and helps policymakers and researchers apply theory in a wide range of practical settings. Author Steven Abrahams—Senior Managing Director at Amherst Pierpont Securities and former Adjunct Professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia Business School—draws from his experience in both academic theory and real-life strategic investing to bridge the two worlds. This valuable resource: Connects the formal literature on investing to the actual work of most institutional portfolio managers Examines core strengths and weaknesses that drive portfolio behavior at mutual and hedge funds, banks and insurers, at other institutions and for individuals Demonstrates how linking portfolio theory and practice can increase competitive advantage Offers a robust description of investing, markets, and asset value Competitive Advantage in Investing: Building Winning Professional Portfolios is a must-have book for any investment professional, policymaker, or researcher.

Praise for Connected CRM “Many books explore the subject of CRM. In this book the ‘m’ is for Marketing and David’s seasoned perspective indeed makes it a capital ‘M.’ Taking core direct response marketing techniques and moving beyond the simple use of data and analytics, he explores how today’s marketers can leverage advances in technology to create successful customer-centric business strategies.” —Ted Ward, VP of Marketing, GEICO “A must-read for CMOs, and more importantly CEOs, to simplify all the buzzwords around ‘big data’ and dimensionalize the organizational change necessary to become truly customer centric.” —Theresa McLaughlin, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Citizens Financial Group “Big Data, Social, and Cloud have become overused buzzwords with ambiguous meaning, but David brings to bear his years of industry leadership and experiences to break down today’s trends and opportunities in a practical, actionable fashion. A must-read for anyone who prefers profit over PowerPoint.” —Manish Bhatt, SVP and Chief Digital Officer, MetLife “In a data-rich world, consumers demand that marketers turn data into highly relevant and personal experiences—‘Don’t talk with me as a member of a segment, talk with me about how you will meet my unique expectations and solve my unique problems.’ For those of us who grew up in the marketing world of mass and broadcast, this is a tall order. Connected CRM helps marketers unpack customer centricity for their organizations, providing real insight into the development of a framework for enterprise customer centricity; a framework that promises true sustainable advantage.” —Tom Lamb, CMO, Lowe’s “Never before has customer data been more available, more necessary to build sales and loyalty, and more confusing to act on. David shows exactly what needs to be done. It’s about time. And we should all thank him. A lot!” —Steve Cone, EVP of Integrated Value and Strategy, AARP “The marketers who truly learn to harness the power of customer analytics and big data will take the spoils in an increasingly digital age. Those who don’t will quickly find themselves on a growing heap of failed marketing plans.” —Paul Guyardo, Chief Revenue and Marketing Officer, DIRECTV

In much the same way that Good to Great uncovered hitherto hidden secrets of highly successful companies, Navarro’s Always a Winner uses extensive research to reveal the overriding importance of learning how to forecast and strategically manage the business cycle for competitive advantage. In doing so, this book provocatively explores a critical aspect of successful management virtually untapped by the existing strategy literature. —Dan DiMicco, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Nucor Steel « Always a Winner is an important and timely guide to thriving in challenging economic times. Prof. Navarro deftly bridges the academic and business communities, showing corporate leaders how to read economic tea-leaves to anticipate business cycles. His „Master Cyclist“ credo offers many practical tips and real-world case studies for steering companies through turbulent economic seas.» —Mark Greene, Ph.D, Chief Executive Officer, FICO (Fair Isaac Corp.) «Navarro’s Always a Winner shows why forecasting the economy with a ruler can be lethal for corporate executives and money managers. He demonstrates how to skillfully anticipate the ups and downs of the economy and successfully navigate through them. The current economic crisis clearly demonstrates why this book is so important to have on your bookshelf.» —Mark Zandi, Chief Economist and Cofounder of Moody’s Economy.com «Always a Winner is required reading for every entrepreneur, money manager, and independent investor hoping to outperform the market and retire one day.» —Mark T. Brookshire, Founder of StockTrak.com and WallStreetSurvivor.com « Navarro’s wealth of real world examples will show you how to make both economic recessions and recoveries invaluable allies in executing competitive corporate strategies. A must read!» —Lakshman Achuthan, Managing Director, Economic Cycle Research Institute Why recessions are far more dangerous than any 10 competitors Most companies make a lot of money during economic expansions-and lose a lot of money during recessions. That is the way it has always been. That is the way it need not always be. This book will show you how to «always be a winner» over the course of the entire business cycle-not just when economic times are good. To do this job, this book will arm you with all the strategies and tactics and forecasting tools you will need to profitably manage your organization through the business cycle seasons-from the best of boom times to the worst of recessionary times. In this book, you will learn to Forecast movements and key recessionary turning points in the business cycle Implement a set of powerful «battle-tested» strategies over the course of the business cycle Rebuild your organization with a strategic business cycle orientation and thereby make it much more recession-resistant and resilient over the longer term The forecasting tools and management strategies revealed in this book have been developed over the last five years by the author-the world's leading expert on managing the business cycle for competitive advantage. By learning to strategically manage the business cycle, your organization will be able to create a powerful competitive and sustainable advantage over its rivals and thereby find the grail sought by every executive team in the world-superior financial performance. In this way, Always a Winner provides you with the in-depth insight and practical advice you need to help your company survive and thrive in the increasingly risky conditions of the 21st century.

The source of competitive advantage has shifted in many organizations from reliability to innovation and flexibility. But what does it take for an organization that innovates to then manage effectively? In this follow-up to Built to Change, Ed Lawler argues that it is a combination of the right structure and the right people. First, organizations must decide what structure they are: are you a high-involvement organization that has products and services that require a high level of coordination and cooperation among employees? Or do you have a more global competitor structure in which you are constantly bringing in new talent and technological expertise? Are you a mixture of both? Lawler outlines the unique human capital strategy for each approach, shows what it looks like in action, and provides the foundation and tools for creating competitive and innovative organizations.