The Amazement Revolution: Seven Customer Service Strategies to Create and Amazing Customer (and Employee) Experience
RATING
This book is about customer service and creating an environment of “amazement” in your organization. The author defines this environment as indoctrinating yourself and your team into “service that is consistently and predictably better than average.”
The book prescribes seven strategies to create this level of customer experience among both external and internal (employees) customers, stressing that successful service starts on the inside and works its way out. These seven strategies are: Provide Membership; Have Serious Fun; Cultivate Partnership; Hire Right; Create a Memorable After-Experience; Build Community; and Walk the Walk. The book contains many examples, to-do lists and exercises. There are also 115 specific practices or “acts” which can be implemented as part of the seven strategies. Amazing customer service isn’t about the product you sell, but how you sell it.
The book is well structured in terms of prescribing 6 strategies for a successful organizational culture, with 115 specific practices or tactics for the strategies. The book concludes with a chapter of “brainstorm worksheets” for team exercises in order to put into action the lessons from the book. There is also a link provided for a workbook the reader can print out as a companion to the book.
The book is at times an oversimplification, focusing on results (through 50 company examples), with less in the way of how to implement the strategies. The book presents a variety of organizations which are doing something right, but there is a lack of analysis as to what these companies have in common in their success. The author provides a list of 115 best practices, which to some will seem obvious. The author is a CSP (certified speaking professional), which makes it a lively read but at times lacking in details.
Customer service isn’t a department–it’s a philosophy that includes every person and aspect of the best and brightest companies. In a tough, competitive, and price-sensitive economy, customer service is one of the most essential tools to separate your business from the competition. In this sequel to the bestseller The Cult of the Customer, Shep Hyken delivers seven powerful strategies that any organization can implement to create greater customer and employee loyalty:
- Membership: What if you treated the people you serve like members instead of customers?
- Serious FUN: What if your employees felt a sense of fulfillment and enjoyment that made them loyal to you and your customers?
Partnership: What if your customers thought of you as a partner rather than just another vendor? - Hiring: What if you could implement innovative hiring processes to support your customer-service mission?
- The After-Experience: What if you could create a memorable, positive experience after someone did business with you?
- Community: What if you could create a community of evangelists–loyal customers who brag about you to their friends and associates?
- Walking the Walk: What if every person in your company didn’t just deliver, but lived and breathed your vision for amazing customer service?
The book will have some helpful applications for business leaders, line managers and employees. There are useful examples of brainstorming exercises for those looking to develop a strategy of organizational culture improvement. Organizational motivational coaches will also find some of the examples (115 practices or acts) as well as the to-do lists instructive. For more on this subject, see Outside In (Senteo review).
The Amazement Revolution provides tools and exercise for evaluating your company and developing a strategy (7 strategies) for implementing change in culture. Compared to the author’s previous Cult of the Customer, this book provides somewhat more in terms of a methodology.
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