Capturing Loyalty: How to Measure, Generate, and Profit from Highly Satisfied Customers

Written by two highly successful business coaches and management consultants, this book explains how to improve profitability by focusing on turning a business's already satisfied customers into highly satisfied customers by removing their sense of risk. The authors also provide a fail-safe method for identifying the risks inherent in your business. Every business owner or manager knows that creating satisfied customers is key to establishing customer loyalty and building a business. But many are applying the wrong strategy in trying to achieve customer loyalty: instead of focusing on consistent execution of the company's value proposition on a day-to-day basis, they waste their efforts constantly chasing after new customers or trying to address every complaint. Using research to demonstrate how striving to turn merely satisfied customers into highly satisfied customers significantly affects loyalty behaviors and in turn boosts profits, Capturing Loyalty lays out a new approach to a very old problem. Additionally, it presents a blueprint for identifying the perceived risks to consumers inherent in your business—many of which are not readily apparent to the casual or even invested observer—and explains how to minimize those risks. Authors Larson and McClellan explain why trying to ensure 100% customer satisfaction is not the path to achieving customer loyalty, and that the reality is that customer dissatisfaction is rarely the result of an error a business has made—two concepts that many initially find counterintuitive. You'll learn how to offer your company's products and services in a manner that creates highly satisfied customers, understand the true value and vast economic benefits of having highly satisfied customers, and see why highly satisfied customers are actually cheaper to serve than others. The book presents a clear and comprehensive plan for creating a loyalty initiative suitable to your business and cascading it through your entire organization, from the C-suite to the line employees.

Table of Contents:
Foreword by Maxine Clark Preface: Consistency-Based vs. Delight-Based Customer Loyalty Acknowledgements Chapter 1 Blinded by Delight: The Truth about Customer Loyalty Chapter 2 Less Risk Means More Customer Profits Chapter 3 Risks Lurk Everywhere Chapter 4 Eliminate the Risks That Matter Most Chapter 5 Making the Case for Making Things Easy Chapter 6 Visionary Leaders Create the Imperative Chapter 7 Informal Leaders Move Mountains from the Middle Chapter 8 Products Must Fulfill Customer Expectations Chapter 9 Always Keep Your Promises, Always Chapter 10 Frontline Employees: Satisfaction's Ambassadors Chapter 11 Supervisory Staff: Evangelists of Risk-Free Relationships Chapter 12 Systems That (Em)power the Loyalty Mandate Chapter 13 Stories to Reinforce What Matters to Customers Chapter 14 The Train Wreck of Customer Loyalty Programs Chapter 15 Customer Loyalty: An Institutional Imperative Postscript Notes Index

About the Author :
John A. Larson is the senior partner at John Larson and Company, a firm specializing in helping clients increase their growth and profitability by improving the loyalty of the customers they serve. Bennett E. McClellan is the chief catalytic officer of NBM Research. He is an academic, author, executive coach, and management consultant with a global practice.

Review :
Research is current and well-explained. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals. Solid advice for businesses of all sizes. Through research and success stories, Capturing Loyalty offers a new approach to a very old problem, and advances the field significantly for the first time in a decade.