Love Thy Customer: Creating Delight, Preventing Dissatisfaction, and Pleasing Your Hardest-to-Please Customer - Hardcover

Brinkman, Rick; Kirschner, Dr. Rick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071448020 ISBN 13: 9780071448024

Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education, 2005

Synopsis

Through the bestselling Dealing with People You Can’t Stand, millions of at-their-wits-end readers have trusted Brinkman and Kirschner to provide productive and motivating solutions to effectively working with the full range of their managers’, peers’, and staff member’s difficult behaviors. Since the publication of that book, Brinkman and Kirschner have been in high-demand as companies around the world have invited them to train their employees on how to prevent personnel problems from hurting the bottom line. Now, in an age where being “customer-focused” is a business imperative, companies have been clamoring for Brinkman and Kirschner help them train their front-line employees on how to provide exceptional service, regardless of how badly a customer behaves.

Love Thy Customer will deal exclusively with the interactions and behaviors of service providers with their customers – both external and internal. In Brinkman and Kirschner’s trademark straightforward, but light-hearted and user-friendly style, they will cover specific communication skills and strategies for creating delight in customers, preventing customers from becoming difficult in the first place, and dealing with the full range of difficult behaviors and situations.

Business readers are flocking back to the basics, such as the bestselling, Hug Your Customer. In an age when companies recognize that a key to sustaining long-term growth is delivering exceptional service to build a loyal and ever-widening customer base, Brinkman & Kirschner’s Love Thy Customer will be welcomed by managers responsible for maintaining customer focus, owners of small to medium sized businesses wanting to cultivate a strong service ethic, as well as the front line service providers at their wits end.

About this title

About the Authors

McGraw-Hill authors represent the leading experts in their fields and are dedicated to improving the lives, careers, and interests of readers worldwide

McGraw-Hill authors represent the leading experts in their fields and are dedicated to improving the lives, careers, and interests of readers worldwide

From the Back Cover

"I love thee during working hours/ In the hope of simpler days

I honor thee when counting cost/ Of trouble gained, referral lost..."

To build the truly loyal customer base you need to sustain and grow your business, you need to go beyond mere "customer satisfaction." You've got to shoot for nothing less than customer delight, every time. Love Thy Customer "lets you count the ways" to communicate to your customers that you want to help them fulfill their needs, and make them feel cared for.

With their trademark humor and easy-to-read style, Rick Brinkman and Rick Kirschner, authors of the international bestseller Dealing With People You Can't Stand, rewrite a well-known poem to illustrate the various aspects of customer relationships. Each stanza introduces a new way to avoid the most common causes of communication breakdown and customer dissatisfaction, and help you to reach out to the customer.

From welcoming your customer, understanding his or her needs, and dealing with dissatisfaction, to empowering yourself to function well in every sales situation, Love Thy Customer shows you how to make your service matter to your customer, your business, and to your own sense of professional and personal well-being. Stories of customer service in a wide variety of fields demonstrate behaviors to avoid that can alienate your customer, as well as ways to reach out to customers in every situation. You'll also learn:

• Skills and strategies for quickly winning customers over
• Tactics for avoiding problems and preventing customer dissatisfaction
• Techniques for resolving just about any crisis
• Tested-in-the-trenches techniques for de-clawing your most ornery customers
• Tricks for maintaining customer focus
• Methods for fostering a strong service ethic company-wide

Your guide to providing exceptional service and pleasing even your hardest-to-please customers, every time, Love Thy Customer gives you the tools you need to delight your customers and build a strong and loyal customer base for lasting success.

"Count the ways" to fill your customer's needs

In today's customer-driven marketplace, the first commandment is to "Love Thy Customer." Brinkman and Kirschner explain how you can show your customers "how much do I love thee" in this quick, fun, and illuminating guide to winning customer loyalty.

Using equal parts humor and understanding, Love Thy Customer explains how to personally connect with each customer, demonstrating how the effort of providing a valued service can build a profitable relationship, while satisfying your needs for professional and personal fulfillment in the workplace.

With the help of numerous, real-world scenarios, you'll explore an array of typical customer service situations, learn which behaviors can lead customer dissatisfaction--and you'll learn proven, people-oriented methods for creating delight in every customer, every time, including:

• Strategies for calming customers' anxieties, gaining their trust, and convincing them that you care about their happiness
• Maneuvers for heading off customer dissatisfaction
• Tactics for taking the "cuss" out of even the most ornery customers
• Techniques for quickly defusing any customer crisis
• Ways to keep your people focused on customer satisfaction

Edition details

• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0071448020
• ISBN 13: 9780071448024
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272