Customer Service Books

Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service

Ken Blanchard, Sheldon Bowles

Amazon Price: $14.93 List Price: $21.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: William Morrow Amazon Marketplace: 175 new & used starting at $2.90

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Finance
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> Customer Service

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 122 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Your customers are only satisfied because their expectations are so low and because no one else is doing better. Just having satisfied customers isn't good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create Raving Fans."

This, in a nutshell, is the advice given to a new Area Manager on his first day--in an extraordinary business book that will help everyone, in every kind of organization or business, deliver stunning customer service and achieve miraculous bottom-line results.

Written in the parable style of The One Minute Manager, Raving Fans uses a brilliantly simple and charming story to teach how to define a vision, learn what a customer really wants, institute effective systems, and make Raving Fan Service a constant feature--not just another program of the month.

America is in the midst of a service crisis that has left a wake of disillusioned customers from coast to coast. Raving Fans includes startling new tips and innovative techniques that can help anyone create a revolution in any workplace--and turn their customers into raving, spending fans.

Consumer Behavior (8th Edition)

Michael R. Solomon

Amazon Price: $138.66 List Price: $173.33 Usually ships in 1 to 3 weeks By: Prentice Hall Amazon Marketplace: 35 new & used starting at $117.98

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> Customer Service
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Marketing & Sales -> Consumer Behavior

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Very interesting textbook, one of the best I've seen! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

As a marketing major, this consumer behavior textbook has been an asset to my learning so far. Very descriptive with many graphic examples. Uses outside knowledge from today that help the reader to stay alert and interested.

Good Read 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Useful book, includes thinking on both consumer behavior and relevant market strategies. Good read for marketing beginners.

Editorial Review:

Solomon goes beyond the discussion of why people buy things and explores how products, services, and consumption activities contribute to shape people’s social experiences.

Social networking, sensory marketing, illusion of truth effect, interactive mobile marketing, cross-cultural value differences, impression management, doppelganger brand image, red campaign, CSR, low literate consumer, crowdsourcing, and multigenerational marketing.

For marketing professionals to understand the latest trends in consumer behavior.

Consumer Behavior (9th Edition)

Leon Schiffman, Leslie Kanuk

Amazon Price: $138.66 List Price: $173.33 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Prentice Hall Amazon Marketplace: 87 new & used starting at $67.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> Customer Service
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Marketing & Sales -> Marketing -> Research

Editorial Review:

With a strong empirical and market segmentation approach, this book focuses on how the Internet has changed the way people obtain information about potential purchases, giving readers the most up-to-date material on how technology is changing their lives as consumers. The Thirty-two mini-cases help readers learn by applying the theory, drawing on current business news to demonstrate specific consumer behavior concepts.

This edition now includes thirty-two Active Learning mini-cases. A clear consumer decision making model is set out in each chapter to facilitate learning–presented in the first chapter, this model serves as a structural framework for the concepts–the building blocks–examined in the following chapters. The book's final chapter ties all of these concepts together so readers see the interrelationships and relevance of individual concepts to consumer decision-making.

For those studying consumer behavior and/or marketing.

Hot Prospects: The Proven Prospecting System to Ramp Up Your Sales Career

Bill Good

Amazon Price: $18.48 List Price: $28.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Scribner Amazon Marketplace: 26 new & used starting at $14.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Job Hunting & Careers -> Guides
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> Customer Service

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Whatever good or service you're selling, five likely customers are worth a hundred random names. No one can help you find new business by finding those five -- or five hundred, or fifty thousand -- best-qualified customers better than Bill Good.

For over a decade, Bill Good's guide to increasing new business by finding the right prospective customers has been an invaluable resource to people in every imaginable profession involving selling. Now completely revised and updated to include lessons on how email, fax machines, and the Internet can be incorporated into an effective prospecting and selling campaign, it is the most valuable tool a salesperson can own.

Anyone who does any prospecting or selling by phone -- from securities, insurance, and real estate to fund-raising -- knows the frustrations and rejections inherent in "cold calling." Many people come to fear it. But why should this be so? Certainly there are people out there who need and want the product you're selling. If only you could more efficiently generate a list of just those people, weed out the hopeless cases, and launch a simple and highly effective campaign to win them to your side. Prospecting Your Way to Sales Success shows you how to do just that. Bill Good draws on all he's learned from a long, successful career teaching companies and individual entrepreneurs how to create successful prospecting campaigns. He jettisons the stale, old-school, don't-believe-a-customer-who-says-no philosophy for a plan of attack that finds good prospects while quickly screening out unqualified, uninterested customers. From the first contact to the final close, Bill Good will help you design a complete, customized prospecting campaign.

In this new revised edition, bursting with fresh ideas for incorporating new media and new technologies into his proven campaign strategies, Bill Good has updated a classic and given salespeople everywhere a book they can't afford to live without.

The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth

Fred Reichheld

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harvard Business School Press Amazon Marketplace: 75 new & used starting at $5.67

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> Customer Service
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Management

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 65 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Irritating 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 14 people found this review helpful.

If any of my employees are caught reading this tripe I fire them on the spot. This book is worthless and I think the reasoning behind why is superbly laid out by the other one-star reviews found here; I won't delve further except to say that only the dumbest, most gullible of employee would read this, and even if they were found to be my vice, I'd kick 'em out on the curb. On second thought, maybe I should give this book a five-star review, because it did allow me to easily select which members of my company were fat. And by that I mean uneeded, and certainly unwelcome.

Editorial Review:

CEOs regularly announce ambitious growth targets, then fail to achieve them. The reason? Their growing addiction to bad profits. These corporate steroids boost short-term earnings but alienate customers. They undermine growth by creating legions of detractors—customers who complain loudly about the company and switch to competitors at the earliest opportunity.

Based on extensive research, The Ultimate Question shows how companies can rigorously measure Net Promoter statistics, help managers improve them, and create communities of passionate advocates that stimulate innovation. Vivid stories from leading-edge organizations illustrate the ideas in practice.

Practical and compelling, this is the one book—and the one tool—no growth-minded leader can afford to miss.

The New Gold Standard: 5 Leadership Principles for Creating a Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company

Joseph Michelli

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: McGraw-Hill Amazon Marketplace: 43 new & used starting at $12.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Biography & History -> Company Profiles
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> Customer Service

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Discover the secrets of world-class leadership!

When it comes to refined service and exquisite hospitality, one name stands high above the rest: The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. With ceaseless attention to every luxurious detail, the company has set the bar for creating memorable customer experiences in world-class settings. Now, for the first time, the leadership secrets behind the company's extraordinary success are revealed.

The New Gold Standard takes you on an exclusive tour behind the scenes of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. Granted unprecedented access to the company's executives, staff, and its award-winning Leadership Center training facilities, bestselling author Joseph Michelli explored every level of leadership within the organization. He emerged with the key principles leaders at any company can use to provide a customer experience unlike any other, such as:

• Understanding the ever-evolving needs of customers
• Empowering employees by treating them with the utmost respect
• Anticipating customers' unexpressed needs and concerns
• Developing and conducting an unsurpassed training regimen

Sharing engaging stories from the company's employees--from the corporate office and hotels around the globe--Michelli describes the innovative methods the company uses to create peerless guest experiences and explains how it constantly hones and improves them.

The New Gold Standard weaves practical how-to advice, proven leadership tools, and the wisdom of experts to help you create and embed superior customer-service principles, processes, and practices in your own organization.

Supply Chain Management (3rd Edition)

Sunil Chopra, Peter Meindl

Amazon Price: $125.86 List Price: $157.33 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Prentice Hall Amazon Marketplace: 83 new & used starting at $49.75

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> Customer Service
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Real Estate -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Brilliant Analysis of Three "Key" Interrelationships 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 10 people found this review helpful.

As Sunil Chopra and Peter Meindl explain in their Preface, the purpose of their book is to help those who read it to "develop an understanding of the following key areas and their interrelationships: the strategic role of a supply chain, the key strategic drivers of supply chain performance, and [the] analytical methodologies for supply chain analysis." I think their material will be of greatest interest and value to executives who are now centrally involved in management of larger organizations' supply chains. However, I think their book will also be of substantial benefit to others who are directly or indirectly involved as strategic allies in those supply chains, those who can also help to ensure effective management of them.

Chopra and Meindl carefully organize their material as follows:

Part I: Building a Strategic Framework to Analyze Supply Chains
Part II: Designing the Supply Chain Network
Part III: Planning Demand and Supply in a Supply Chain
Part IV: Planning and Managing Inventories in a Supply Chain
Part V: Designing and Planning Transportation Networks
Part VI: Managing Cross-Functional Drivers in a Supply Chain

I was especially interested in the final part because one of the greatest challenges when establishing and then sustaining an effective supply chain is to take into full account the need to get all participants in proper alignment, especially when cross-functional resources to achieve to achieve mutually-beneficial results. In Part VI, Chopra and Meindl respond to questions such as these:

1. What is the role of sourcing?
2. How to achieve design collaboration?
3. What are the most important "drivers" of pricing and revenue management?
4. What is IT's role?
5. What does effective risk management require?
6. What are the major barriers to effective coordination?
7. How to build strategic partnerships and trust between and among stakeholders?

Many readers (I among them) will also appreciate the provision of a "Summary of Learning Objectives" and "Discussion Questions" at the conclusion of each of the 17 chapters. Credit Chopra and Meindl with fully achieving their objectives when they set out to write this book: To help their readers to understand the strategic role of a supply chain, the key strategic drivers of supply chain performance, and the analytic methodologies for supply chain analysis.

Bravo!

Editorial Review:

This book brings together the strategic role of the supply chain, key strategic drivers of supply chain performance, and the underlying tools and techniques for supply chain analysis. Students are able to articulate the strategic importance of supply chain thinking and support their ideas with evidence that can be built using models.

Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic: Inside One of the Worlds Most Admired Service Organizations

Leonard L. Berry, Kent D. Seltman

Amazon Price: $18.45 List Price: $27.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: McGraw-Hill Amazon Marketplace: 26 new & used starting at $17.11

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> Customer Service
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Management

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic reveals for the first time how this complex service organization fosters a culture that exceeds customer expectations and earns deep loyalty from both customers and employees. Service business authority Leonard Berry and Mayo Clinic marketing administrator Kent Seltman explain how the Clinic implements and maintains its strategy, adheres to its management system, executes its care model, and embraces new knowledge - invaluable lessons for managers and service providers of all industries.

Drs. Berry and Seltman had the rare opportunity to study Mayo Clinic's service culture and systems from the inside by conducting personal interviews with leaders, clinicians, staff, and patients, as well as observing hundreds of clinician-patient interactions. The result is a book about how the Clinic's business concept produces stellar clinical results, organizational efficiency, and interpersonal service.

By examining the operating principles that guide every management decision at this legendary healthcare institution, the authors

• Demonstrate how a great service brand evolves from the core values that nourish and protect it
• Extrapolate instructive business lessons that apply outside healthcare
• Illustrate the benefits of pooling talent and encouraging teamwork
• Relate historical events and perspectives to the present-day Mayo Clinic
• Share inspiring stories from staff and patients

An innovative analysis of this exemplary institution, Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic presents a proven prescription for creating sustainable service excellence in any organization.

Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless: How to Make Them Love You, Keep You Coming Back, and Tell Everyone They Know

Jeffrey Gitomer

Amazon Price: $19.80 List Price: $30.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Bard Press Amazon Marketplace: 84 new & used starting at $7.96

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> Customer Service
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Management

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 77 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

To longtime sales and customer-service pro Jeffrey Gitomer, boasting about a near-perfect customer-satisfaction rating of 97.5 percent is a major mistake. "That means 2.5 percent of your customers are mad and they're telling everyone. And 97.5 percent of your customers will shop anyplace the next time they go to market for your product or service." Based on a philosophy that's been developed through his syndicated business columns and the more than 150 seminars that he gives each year to companies such as Radisson, Sony, NationsBank, and Time Warner Cable, the book outlines his formula for making customers so faithful they "will fight before they switch--and they will proactively refer people to buy from you." Regularly employing oversized type in screaming bold fonts to grab the reader's attention, Gitomer breathlessly recounts his start-to-finish approach to becoming "memorable" to consumers along with illustrative tales of his own encounters with particularly egregious examples of poor service. All of this is bolstered by an ongoing sampling of his inspirational quips and a variety of self-evaluating quizzes designed to pinpoint individual strengths and weaknesses. Take a deep breath, read it straight through, and prepare to delight thy customer! --Howard Rothman

Services Marketing

Valarie A. Zeithaml, Mary Jo Bitner, Dwayne D. Gremler

Amazon Price: $128.60 Usually ships in 24 hours By: McGraw-Hill/Irwin Amazon Marketplace: 64 new & used starting at $50.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> Customer Service
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Marketing & Sales -> Marketing -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Great Book 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 8 people found this review helpful.

As a former student of Dr. Bitner, her course and this book made up the foundation that the Services Marketing and Management MBA program at Arizona State Uni. built from. It's an extensive review of how customers are the most important part to a service oriented business, and to neglect them at any touch point is a service failure.
This book will outline the process by which any company, be it real or virtual, can develop world class service.
This book and the SMM program at Arizona State University are highly recommended.

Editorial Review:

Services Marketing, 4/e, by Zeithaml and Bitner provides a comprehensive review and analysis of services marketing issues, practice, and strategy. Utilizing the GAPS Model of Service Quality as an organizing framework the structure of the text offers part openers that sequentially build the model gap by gap. Each part of the book includes multiple chapters with strategies for understanding and closing the critical gaps. Customer behavior, expectations, and perceptions are discussed early in the text to form the basis for understanding services marketing strategy and the managerial content, in the rest of the text, is framed by the GAPS model. Additionally, the authors continue to refine conceptual frameworks for developing effective services marketing strategy and have incorporated more coverage of the use of technology and business-to-business applications in this edition.