The (Really) Satisfied Customer

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Customers Control the Economy – And You Damn Well Better Get Used to It

Competencies: customer service, sales management

Who benefits: middle and senior management

Consultant Usage: excellent resource for organizational consulting on business practices, sales management, customer service and some financial planning

What’s it about? Somehow when the words “customer service” are mentioned, many or most of us think about the people who interact directly with the customer.   As consumers this is natural.  I know that when I go into a store or have a telephone contact (something I try to avoid like the plague), the person I am talking to Is The Company.  My opinion of the Organization rests in the hands of that person I am communicating with.

We tend to forget that the customer service representative or the sales representative is the product of a long line of strategies and decisions that finally filter down to where the action is.  Executives at the top bet the Company on employees at the bottom.  As Schultz (from “Hogan’s Heroes”) would say, “Verrrry interesting.”!

Today I am reviewing a book aimed at the Top.  The author is a big picture kind of guy.  Very Big Picture.  He is Claes Fornell, a Professor of Business Management at the University of Michigan.  But he has also turned his research into very profitable side businesses.  He is the inventor of the American Customer Satisfaction Index and founder of a company by the same name.  He examines the impact of customer satisfaction on profitability, stock returns, GDP growth, consumer spending growth, the economy, and corporate management.  You want the pulse of the customer, he’s your guy!

His book, The Satisfied Customer: Winners and Losers in the Battle for Buyer Preference, was first published in November of 2007.  There is lots of really good stuff to think about in this book.  But here is what I wilI remember:

“Investors make money from companies that increase their profits.  Future profits, in a global economy where there is a lot of buyer choice, come from satisfied customers.”

“(H)ow primitive many companies efforts are (regarding financial value of customers) … Almost nobody used modern measurement technology.”

He then goes on to say that based on his Index (which is widely distributed and use), he forecasts that customers are just about ready to quit and take their wallets home. 

A few months later his prediction came true and nearly four years later we are still wallowing in a shaking economy.  And the customer still sits at home.

He has many twists to old customer service myths.  Anyone at any level who sees herself as a business leader would do well to devour this book.  He is a Prophet of Profits.

Catch you later.

[tags]customer service, customers, service economy, sales management,  claes fornell, american customer satisfaction index, acsi, 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.