The Customer Delight Principle

This book presents techniques to move your customers beyond mere satisfaction. At every point of contact, global competition today is fierce, and customers who are merely satisfied with your company's products or services will soon be lured away by your competition. "The Customer Delight Principle" reveals how today's leading marketers consistently retain and grow their customer bases by moving beyond satisfaction to discover and fill each customer's unseen yet essential needs. Comprehensive in scope yet focused in treatment, this book reveals how to dramatically increase your organization's positive customer experiences, virtually eliminate the negative, and drive your customers to new levels of repeat purchasing, loyalty, and sheer delight.Praise for "The Customer Delight Principle": 'Customer satisfaction should no longer be the goal of a service organization. In the new economy, what matters is customer retention and the bottom line. "The Customer Delight Principle" shows us how' - Patrick Zacchea, Vice President, Van Kampen Funds. 'Keiningham and Vavra raise the aspirations for customer satisfaction for all with the perspective of achieving customer delight. The concept is explained clearly using brand experiences almost all of us have surely had' - George Stalk, Senior Vice President, The Boston Consulting Group, Editor, "Breaking Compromises". "'The Customer Delight Principle" is a provocative and compelling read' - Ross Goodwin, Corporate Customer Loyalty Manager, Hewlett-Packard Company.'Numerous studies have shown that anywhere from 60 per cent to 85 per cent of customers who switch firms would have been classified as satisfied according to conventional analytic procedures. With "The Customer Delight Principle" we hope to alert the business community to the pitfalls of managing for improved satisfaction. Organizations that understand our principles and manage accordingly will succeed' - From the Preface.In today's Web-shopping, brand-hopping, global competitive environment, customers expect satisfaction. But too often, inconsistencies and inaccuracies in customer satisfaction measurement programs lead managers to blame themselves - as opposed to poor underlying models - for failure to promote positive changes and improved results. "The Customer Delight Principle" presents a step-by-step program for taking your company further up the customer satisfaction continuum, from a reliance on the satisfaction -maintaining characteristics that customers increasingly take for granted to a focus on unexpected, customer delight-creating attributes.Renowned customer retention consultants and thought leaders Timothy Keiningham and Terry Vavra unveil a customer delight principle based not on wishful thinking and outdated research but instead on current real-world findings that include: Perceived costs of negative outcomes to a customer, and how they far outweigh the perceived benefit from expected outcomes; the nonlinear relationship between perceived performance and customer satisfaction, in which customer attitude changes follow a classic diminishing-returns model; and, case studies of FedEx Customer Critical, Toys 'R' Us, Mercedes-Benz USA, and others on determining the 'delight-creating' attributes of a product or service, then concentrating performance-improvement efforts in those areas. Satisfied customers are good for business success - just not good enough.Follow the steps outlined in "The Customer Delight Principle" to construct an innovative customer delight program for your own company, one designed to drive repeat purchasing and customer loyalty, along with bottom-line profit and value growth.

Table of Contents:
9. The Case of Toys R Us A Well-Worn Toy New Game, New Rules Fixing a Broken Toy The Discoveries Creating Delight The Payoff Summary 10. The Case of Mercedes-Benz USA The Company The Vision Starts Building a Mission Statement Creating a Customer-Focused Support Center The Client Care Center Responding to Client Feedback Modeling the Relationship Is It Worth It? Summary 11. The Delight Epiphany The Dimensions of Success Accountability Scope Creating Delight Your First Steps 3. Shaky Foundations Houses Built on Sand Smile Surveys Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics Can't Get Real Does This Mean What I Think It Means? Is This Significant? The Problem with Numbers Summary 4. Cracking the Code The Rosetta Stone Decoding Delight Delight Progression Interface 1: Perceived Performance Leads to Customer Satisfaction Delight Progression Interface 2: Customer Satisfaction Leads to Customer Retention Delight Progression Interface 3: Customer Retention Leads to Profitability Summary 5. The Role of Employees Employees: The Frontline Employee Capability Employee Productivity Focus First on Customers Summary 6. The New Business Reality Reality Check Waves of Change The Productivity Turnaround Redefining Quality Thinking Positively Managing Outside-In Updating Our Marketing Strategies A Return to Ethics Modernizing the Marketing Plan Winning in the New Economy Summary 7. Voices of Experience The Gap Between Desire and Reality Learning from the Best Keeping Score 8. The Case of Roche Diagnostics Systems Establishing Measures Establishing Benchmarks and Setting Goals Preparing Roche for Change First Steps Amplifying the Voice of the Customer A Process Improvement Example Did It Pay Off? Summary 1. Satisfaction Guaranteed King of the Road Road Kill The Siren's Call The Uncertainty Principle An Implementation Problem Not a Straight Line Summary 2. Zone Defense Pain, Satisfaction and Delight Perception Versus Reality Can't Get No Satisfaction States of Satisfaction Delight Uncertainty and Choice The Role of Expectations The Impact of Competition Satisfaction-Maintenance vs. Delight-Creating Attributes Summary

About the Author :
Timothy Keiningham is senior vice president at Marketing Metrics, Inc., a global research and consulting firm that specializes in customer satisfaction measurement, customer retention program design and execution, marketing research services, and training seminars. He is the author of Return On Quality and Service Marketing. Terry Vavra, Ph.D., is the cofounder and president of Marketing Metrics, Inc. A world-renowned authority in customer retention strategies, Dr. Vavra has designed retention programs for leading international companies including Digital Equipment, GTE, and IBM Consulting Companies. He is the author of Aftermarketing and Improving Your Measurement of Customer Satisfaction, and has written numerous articles for Journal of Marketing Research, Journaling of Marketing, Marketing News, and other professional publications.