Table of Contents
Foreword ix
Chapter 1 Technology Drives the Customer Experience Movement 1
Where Technology Meets Humanity 3
Are Your Customers Assets? Or Obstacles? 6
Defining the "Customer Experience" 8
Customer Experience in a Diagram 10
What Kind of Customer Experience Are You Capable of Delivering? 13
Chapter 2 Customers Just Want Their Problems Solved 17
Take the Friction Out of Your Customer Experience 18
The Best Customer Experience Is NO Customer Experience 20
Are You Making It Hard for Customers to Buy From You? 23
Treating Different Customers Differently 26
The Real Implications of the 80-20 Rule 29
Chapter 3 Every Customer's Experience Is Personal 31
Different Customers Have Different Needs 32
In Customer Relationships, Context Is King 36
Service or Cost? You Decide 39
Relationships Will Be Required 41
Four Steps to Managing Customer Relationships 43
Brands Aren't the Same as Customer Relationships 46
What Honeybees Teach Us About the Customer Experience 48
What Do Your Friends Think? 51
Chapter 4 Eliminate the Friction in Your Customer Experience 55
The Shoe Salesman's Secret Motivation 56
Four Attributes of a Frictionless Customer Experience 58
Delivering a Reliable Customer Experience 60
Price Is What You Pay. Value Is What You Get 63
Avoiding Death by Procurement: Four Strategies 65
Chapter 5 Deliver a Customer Experience That's Relevant to Each Customer 69
Don't Run Your Business on the Goldfish Principle 70
Five Types of Customers by Their Value 72
What Does It Mean to Be "Relevant" to a Customer? 75
Four Technologies to Make the Contact Center Experience Relevant 79
Are Your Biggest Customers Your Biggest Losers? 82
Customer Loyalty: Is It a Behavior? Or an Attitude? 85
Improve Customer Loyalty by Recruiting Loyal Customers 87
That Old-Time Customer Loyalty Feeling 89
Chapter 6 Seek Out Customer Feedback 91
#EpicFail: Are You Hearing Enough Complaints? 92
Customer Experience Is a High-Wire Act, Customer Service Is the Net 94
Tapping Into the Hidden Value of Complainers 98
Changing the Definition of "Integrated Marketing" 101
Is Your Customer Survey Really Useful? 103
Non-Invasive Voice-of-Customer Feedback 105
Chapter 7 Personalize the Customer Experience 107
Loyalize Customers by Remembering Their Needs 108
Dealing with Customer Variability 110
Customized Pricing? How to Do It Trustably 113
Improve the Experience by Not Giving Customers Choices 117
Use Interactions to Maximize Customer Insight 119
Mass-Customizing the Customer Experience 121
Chapter 8 Earn Your Customers' Trust 125
What Does it Mean to be "Trustable?" 126
The Rapidly Evolving Trustability Opportunity 128
Trustability Is the New Black 131
Gross Incompetence Implies Bad Intentions 133
Five Requirements for Being Trustable 136
Chapter 9 Let Your Humanity Shine Through 139
Frictionless First, Then Delightful 140
Make Your Customer Laugh Once in a While 143
Delight Customers With Your Humanity 145
Customer Experience: It's All Relative 148
Putting Humanity into Your Company's Mobile App 150
Chapter 10 It Won't Be Easy 153
"The More I Buy, the Worse They Treat Me" 154
Three Reasons Why Customer Transformations Fail 156
Do You Allow Employees to Use Common Sense? 159
Four Types of Customer Experience to Plan For 161
Dealing With the Alignment Problem 164
The Alignment Problem Up Close and Personal 167
Six Leadership Behaviors for a Customer-Centric Transformation 169
Chapter 11 There's Real Money to Be Made 173
How to Pay For a Better Customer Experience 174
Customers Create Two Kinds of Value 176
How Do You Build the Business Case for a Good Customer Experience? 178
Measuring the ROI of a Frictionless Customer Experience 181
The Business Benefit of Being Trustable 184
Chapter 12 How Much Is Customer Loyalty Really Worth? 187
Customer Retention Should Never Be Your Only Goal 188
When Are Loyalty Programs a Waste of Money? 191
Loyalty Programs Provide "Longitudinal Insight" 194
Five Best Practices for Loyalty Programs 197
Chapter 13 Life in the Frictionless Fast Lane 201
The Consumer of the Future Will Be an Algorithm 202
If I Ran a Brick-and-Mortar Retailer 204
The Twilight of the Corporate Call Center 207
Turn Customer Frustration Into Opportunity 210
At-Home Reps Can Improve Your Health 213
Chapter 14 Caution: Good Intentions Required 215
Knowledgeable Customers Create More Value 216
Influencing the Influences 218
The Smothering Downside of Personalization 220
How to Avoid Being Smothered by a Personalized World 223
The Competitive Advantage of Trustability 226
Transformational Leadership for the E-Social World 228
Technology's Lesson: Be Apple, Not AOL 231
Endnotes 235
