At Your Service

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Customer Service Recommendations

Competencies: customer service, sales

Who benefits: all level of employees in sales and customer service positions

Consultant Usage: recommended for sales and customer service management consultants; highly recommended for sales and customer service trainers

What’s it about? Today I would like to review two books in the interrelated fields of sales and customer service.  One is a difficult read and concept oriented.  The other is a just released reader friendly book by an old favorite author.

The Hard Read: Don’t be put off by the challenge of a more difficult read.  The concepts presented here are often overlooked, but should never be forgotten.  Two Professor of Business at the Columbia Business School, Columbia University, are the authors. The book is Managing Customers as Investments: The Strategic Value of Customers in the Long Run.

The authors essentially bypass the age-old question of “Is the customer always right?”  They argue “Who cares?”.  The question should be “How valuable is the customer?”  What is the value of the customer to company?  They approach a marketing question with a finance view, where cash is king.  They see the customer as a marketing investment which must be recovered to be profitable.  This runs counter to the 3 Cs, STP, and 4 Ps taught in most marketing classes (want to know what the initials stand for – read the book!).

One example cited to support their model was a study of US banks that “…only 30% of a typical bank’s customers were profitable over the long run.  In other words, 70% of customers destroyed value!”

For the really astute reader, their arguments don’t look at the ethical dilemmas of who to leave in, who to leave out.  In simple terms, what is good for the company may be bad, or even a disaster for the nation (see all forms of insurance). 

Still, the logic has a lot of merit.  They proceed to identify four types of customers with the amusing names of: Star Customers, Vulnerable Customers, Lost Cause Customers and Free Riders. 

They suggest wide variance in how you treat customers in each of these four groups.  Whatever else, it makes sense to understand these four groups and the sales and service strategies associated with each. 

The Easy Read: A new book out this past June is by old favorite Chip Bell and sidekick John Patterson .  Chip’s books are always fast reads, informal and entertaining.  

The book with the somewhat lengthy title is Wired and Dangerous: How Your Customers Have Changed and What to Do About It. 

The authors focus on the employees who have direct contact with customers.  Chip and John maintain that customers are harder than ever to please.  This era of customers sound almost like the 7 Dwarfs: Picky, Fickle, Vocal, Wired, and Vain

These customers have very little tolerance for error and are ready to spread the word quickly over the internet when things go wrong. If you don’t have great customer service you will get burned by bloggers and viral videos (see UAL and guitar).  As always, they maintain the Front Line puts the Company at risk. 

This book is not a panacea.  It focuses on only one aspect of customer service, albeit a crucial one.  But if I were the boss, I would have every first and second line sales and/or customer service employee read this book and then meet with their manager for a coaching discussion.  Good stuff.

Catch you later.  

[tags]sales, customer service, sales management, customer service management, envisia, envisia learning, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.