Pretty good, but fails to address the tough questions
This is a useful resource. It gives you a good list of items to improve customer satisfaction and perception. That said, it tends to oversimplify things and fails to address the tough items.
The author suggests good customer relations will lead to lifelong customers. But look at reality. Throughout this country, small businesses have been going under as large entities like Wallmart and Lowes offer better pricing. In Buckingham's view, Bob Johnson the local hardware guy secures lifetime customers with his caring nature, willingness to go the extra mile, and above-average service. Bob does this; he is the one to buy tickets to your kid's fundraiser, and spends 15 minutes telling you how to install a storm drain.
Unfortunately, once Walmart comes to town, Bob's former customers tend to shop there and come to him only for the tough jobs. In Buckingham's world, Walmarts achieve only marginal success as loyal customers reject their impersonal mass market approach; the monumental growth of these megastores which offer limited service but real bargains tells us differently.
The book would have been better had it dealt with the conflict between good pricing and good service, and when and how customers continue (how about a model of the unsentimental customer who continually assesses value, and returns only when that is provided).
So read the book and incorporate this as one perspective, but don't bet the house on it. You might find that competing on price and limiting unprofitable service can be a model that you will sometimes need to use.
Super Serve Clients
Many common sense pieces of advice, nicely organized and clearly spelled out. A great refresher for anyone with experience and excellent primer for those entering any service industry. He reminds us all that its easier, smarter, and more rewarding to keep a client happy than it is to pound the pavement to find a new one. I was suprised and chagrined to realize that some of tips were techniques I knew but had over time forgotten to practice. Highly recommend this book.
An absolute "must" for any businessperson
Customer Once, Client Forever: 12 Tools For Building Lifetime Business Relationships by Richard Buckingham (president of GoalStar Business Strategies working with Fortune 100 companies) is an upbeat business self-help book about how to turn one's customers into clients for life. Filled with concise, economically worded lessons and questions to ponder, each chapter offers a wealth of sound advice on such topics as continually improving oneself, gaining client feedback, and converting good clients into lifetime clients. Customer Once, Client Forever is an absolute "must" for any businessperson from cafe owners to marketing corporations who solicits and depends upon repeat customers!
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