Customer Experience For Dummies Paperback – November 17, 2014

I purchased this book because my company assigned me to write blog posts for the author. I passed it on to my husband who manages a music store. He has found it to be very helpful.

This a great book. Roy Barnes is very inspirational lays out the case to focus on custmer experience.

Interesting books gives you ideas of what to focus and how to develop.

If you are in the trenches of customer service you have a two edged sword. The vast majority of people are kind and considerate. Unfortunately the one rotten apple spoiling the bunch rule applies here. They are the gut wrenchers. Sometimes they have a valid complaint, and then again, sometimes they are there just to steal something from you. A psychologist once told me, "Some people first make you feel guilty about something, and then they manipulate you to do something that you would not normally do, and that is ugly as hell."So when I read through Customer Experience for Dummies I was ready to rekindle my desire to have a great customer experience. I have 100% ratings in my business. My heart wants to walk away from customer service though because of the few. In the mail order book by Julian Simon he says, "I can't emphasize enough sell business to business rather than retail." My friend has been working at Macy's for a decade and he is in the untenable position of having to deal with people face to face.With all of that being said you can understand my pre-conceived bias and better be able to understand my review on this book. If I was in a corporate environment, and had a customer service team I would make this book required reading. It is Harvard level science applied to the customer experience. He goes into things that most of us never even think about.The first chapter I read was about handling an angry customer. Do you know what desserts is spelled backwards? You got it S T R E S S E D. :-) I am more focused on the psychological and physical impact customer service has on the representative. This book doesn't cover that. It is geared toward achieving the highest level of customer satisfaction. It leaves no stone unturned.For the tone of the book, let me provide a few headers... "Integrating Your Customer Experience Metrics into Your Governance Model." "Aligning Employee Performance with the Customer Experience Intent Statement." "Assembling a solid redesign team." "I Declare! Developing Your Customer Experience Intent Statement."So you can see this is an in depth treatise on all things related to customer experience. I was surprised to see this in a Dummies books, which I like by the way.I love what Ken Blanchard, the author of the "One Minute Manager" taught me. He said the company pyramid should be turned upside down. Instead of the president of the company getting the most amount of attention, and then the vice president next etc. on down the line with the customer coming in last, it should be the other way around. The single most important part of any company is the customer. If you are going to build a formidable force in the business world, this book is a must read. Highly recommended.

Customer Experience for Dummies is a good reference tool for managing customer experience as the ultimate competitive advantage. This book is all about designing, monitoring and controlling customer experience. Readers will learn about what customer experience is, why it matters, the essential steps to controlling it as well as retaining it. This book is primarily geared towards those in management but the principles and best principles presented would also apply to everyone.The book is divided into five parts:1) What is Customer Experience - defining the basis, financial impact, customer experience killers and ailment diagnosis2) Creating Awesome Customer Experience - dealing with customers, identifying intent, mapping customers journey, designing experience3) Essential Enabling Elements - managing touchpoints, customer feedback, building knowledge base, building customer experience team4) Making it Stick - creating customer-centric culture, measuring performance and metrics, prioritizing initiatives, projects and programs5) The Part of Tens - ten ways to improve experience delivery, ten key qualities, ten tools to track performanceThis book covers a broad spectrum of customer experience from the design to delivery as well as retaining it using performance metrics. It helps readers develop customer experience as a business culture rather than the responsibility of a few. Similar to other books in the For Dummies series, this book is written in a friendly, easy-to-read style free of jargon and managerial language. Reads can easily pick out sections and parts of the book relevant to them like a reference tool, without losing much context and flow. If you intent to develop a competitive edge by gaining, engaging and retaining customers with positive experiences, you owe it to yourself to read this book.

The chapters of the book were not consistent with the table of content. As shown in the images above chapter 6 came after chapter 3 and chapter 5 came after chapter 6.