What Customers Crave: How to Create Relevant and Memorable Experiences at Every Touchpoint

284 Pages·2016·5.03 MB·English

by  Nicholas J. Webb

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WHAT
CUSTOMERS
C R AV E
WHAT
CUSTOMERS
C R A V E
HOW TO CREATE RELEVANT AND MEMORABLE
EXPERIENCES AT EVERY TOUCHPOINT
NICHOLAS J. WEBB
American Management Association
New York • Atlanta • Brussels • Chicago • Mexico City • San Francisco
Shanghai • Tokyo • Toronto • Washington, D.C.
I would like to dedicate this book to my amazing wife,
Michelle, my daughters, Taylor, Madison, and Paige,
and my son, Chase, for their patience with me as I dis-
appeared into this incredible project. I’d like to thank
my identical twin brother, Charles Arthur Webb, for all
his ongoing support, and my best friend, Matti Palo,
M.D., for his enduring friendship and support. Last, I’d
like to thank all the amazing organizations that have
given me access to their businesses and helped me
share their incredible stories with the world.
CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
PART ONE
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE 1
CHAPTER 1: The Advent of “Exceptional” Customer Service 3
CHAPTER 2: Bring Home the Bacon: The Value of Customer Types 27
CHAPTER 3: The Journey to Exceptional
Customer Service Experiences 55
CHAPTER 4: Getting Down to the Nitty-Gritty: Why, Who,
and What 81
CHAPTER 5: Innovating Excellence 105
CHAPTER 6: Innovation: A Collaborative Process 119
PART TWO
MAPPING YOUR CUSTOMER’S JOURNEY 133
CHAPTER 7: The Pre-Touchpoint Moment 135
CHAPTER 8: The First Touchpoint Moment 149
CHAPTER 9: The Core Touchpoint Moment 165
vii
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 10: The Perfect Last Touchpoint Moment 189
CHAPTER 11: The In-Touchpoint Moment 203
CHAPTER 12: Technology and the Future of Customer Experience 217
CHAPTER 13: Your Roadmap to What Customers Crave 227
END NOTES 247
INDEX 249
CONNECT WITH THE AUTHOR 257
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 258
FREE SAMPLE CHAPTER FROM GET SCRAPPY 259
OTHER POPULAR AMACOM TITLES 279
ABOUT AMACOM 281
viii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the incredible
patience and literary skills of my book developer, Karen Lacey.
Karen took my shoebox of unintelligible gibberish and turned it
into a powerful step-by-step manuscript on how to win at cus-
tomer experience. For nearly a year, she sat shotgun as we built a
manuscript designed to serve our readers by providing them with
actionable insights. Ironically, some of the best customer service
I’ve ever received came from the person who helped me write a
book on how to deliver an exceptional customer experience.
Now that’s poetry.
ix
P A R T
O N E
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT
THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
In What Customers Crave, I focus on the current landscape of
customer service—in particular, why it’s so devastatingly differ-
ent from what it was in the pre-connected economy age. In to-
day’s hyper-connected, hypercompetitive business world, old
ways of providing customer service are failing.
As we explore this phenomenon, you will discover how power
has shifted, where it now resides, and what you need to do to take
advantage of this new paradigm. You will learn to identify your
customers by type—rather than through traditional market seg-
mentation. As a business owner, I don’t care about classical mar-
ket segmentation. I don’t care what my customers’ skin color is or
whether they shop at Tiffany or Walmart. What I do care deeply
about, to the depths of my marketing soul, is what they love and
what they hate. In What Customers Crave, my emphasis is on
helping you truly understand your customer types by showing
you how to identify what they love and what they hate. These in-
sights will allow you to create exceptional experiences for all
your customer types, across all touchpoints, and all channels—
digital and non-digital.
WHAT CUSTOMERS CRAVE
I’ll be discussing—and asking you to really lean into—insights
and tools that will help you embrace this new digital world. I will
show you how to delight your customers and how to begin creat-
ing experiences for them—experiences that will turn them into
social media mavens on your behalf.
What I’m asking from you in return is to lean into this infor-
mation and be open to the new ideas and strategies involved be-
cause it’s worth it—plain and simple. Your reward will be a more
successful business, higher profits, and happier customers.
2