Domino: How Customer Experience Can Tip Everything in Your Business Toward Better Financial Performance

The author provides a road map for understanding your customers with a needs-based approach which is understandable to any employee. However, the book is not really about customer experience, in theory or application. There are exercises to help the reader better understand customer needs, their purchase decision making process and, to some extent, understanding the kinds of emotions customers are or should be feeling when they purchase your goods.

The title of this book is deceptive. It is more about marketing or a needs-based approach to understanding your customers, rather than about customer experience (see The Experience Economy). For example, there is little or no mention of channels or creating a consistent customer experience pre-and post-purchase. Furthermore, there is little or no analysis of loyalty or what drives the ongoing relationship other than the customer need. The definition of experience is purchase-focused; the author seems to miss the point that customer experience involves more than the purchase. Thus the stated goal of the book to “realize the financial performance reward of a clearly defined and well-understood customer experience” misses the mark.

Is your customer experience making you money? Costing you money? Do you know? Like a line of falling dominos, daily actions across your organization form a sequence of events that, if aligned correctly, build momentum and culminate in what every business wants-outstanding financial performance. Establishing a target customer experience-your front domino-to drive daily decisions within your organization will determine the fluidity of that chain of events, and the level of profit outcome you achieve. Companies that use a target customer experience as their front domino reap the biggest rewards in profitability, growth and sustainability. For the first time, a book about customer experience belongs in the management and finance sections of every bookstore. This how-to volume, rich with practical exercises, provides a tested blueprint for defining the target customer experience and translating it into an actionable strategy that will lead to tangible financial reward.

The book provides some practical information on marketing and exercises for how to understand your customers and their purchase decisions. It is not, however, a book on customer experience or detailed in terms of translating this strategy into better financial performance.