As I was reading the Introduction and First Chapter for Jeanne Bliss’ newest book Chief Customer Officer 2.0 - How to Build Your Customer Growth Engine all I could think was “Wow” or “Oh yeah, that’s so good” or “Nailed it.”
And if you click Introduction and First Chapter you can download a free copy of it, too, and be thinking the same thing.
The Introduction and First Chapter sizzle with these snippets.
- I’ve been doing this work for so long, that sometimes while I’m waxing on, a Chief Customer Officer (CCO) client will ask, “Can you write that down?” I don’t often do that, because my goal in coaching CCOs and leadership teams is for them to find their own united voice. Yes!
- Many things have not changed since I wrote Chief Customer Officer: Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action. Organizations still rely primarily on areas of expertise or silos to run the business. - Sigh
- What has changed is the power that social media has given customers to speak out about their experiences. I am supremely enthused about this forcing function! - YES
- Despite all this activity (giving a false positive of commitment measured by energy expended), we have not embedded new behaviors for how we understand customers’ lives, how we care about their lives, and how we improve their lives. Our work is defined by project plan movement rather than customer life improvement. - Yes. Bolded text is the author’s choice and I concur with her choice.
- Customer-focused actions are one-off reactions to survey results, or to an executive in the field getting direct customer feedback, or to a letter that lands onsomeone’s desk. Information is delivered, the silos react, and the cycle repeats. As a result, the higher purpose of our work, which is to drive growth, is lost. These efforts then fall prey to being perceived as costs without reward - a leap of faith, expensive, deterrents to the “real” work. - This is so true and it always drives me so crazy. I remember so many times sitting in meetings hoping my head didn’t explode as one more executive did not see the connection between customers and our growth.
I like sizzle. A good sizzle is multi-sensory - smell and sound and sight. It whets your appetite for more. That's for food. In a good business book, sizzle comes in copy and data and logic and case studies. At a glance, even in this first sample, Jeanne delivers it.
I grew up in customer service, serving in the frontlines of call center operations. As a result I’m always hungry for good Customer Service stories and anecdotes and data. So, when I read this sizzle, okay my mouth doesn’t water, but a smile creeps up I realize I'm on to something very good. I start to read faster.
Beating this metaphor to death, Jeanne delivers more than sizzle. She delivers mmm-good content with her Five Customer Leadership Competencies and then … wait for it … adds the special seasoning, if you will, stories from great big companies like Walgreens and innovative startups like Zipcar to illustrate each one.
Jeanne’s a great writer. However, these are stories written by the executives themselves. Kinda like having a guest chef stop by and whip up something tasty, only these are guest experts writing in their own words how they created ... beautiful customer experiences and the internal systems to bring everyone one board and sustain it, year after year.
Tasty.
Jeanne promises case studies, data, a toolkit and a workbook. Knowing her, her work, her passion for great customer service, her many happy customers and readers I know she’ll deliver it. Go ahead and download a free copy of her Introduction and First Chapter. Read it. Then give her a shout on Twitter. Or just order it off Amazon and then give her a shout on Twitter. She deserves it and we all deserve better customer service and if we know what that means well we can communicate that to each other and to companies, so’s to help them.
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