Make customer-centricity tangible, sustainable, and real by implementing structural and systemic changes to the DNA of your company.
Businesses need to do more than sell to customers - they need to help them live their best lives. This superior experience is what customers expect and deserve from companies and it’s possible to deliver just that with the framework provided in The Customer Excellence Enterprise: A Playbook for Creating Customers for Life. An enlightening and pragmatic guide, The Customer Excellence Enterprise is for everyone who needs to elevate the customer experience to a fundamental revenue accelerator and value driver. With this fresh perspective on customer-centricity, companies can address the persistent disconnect between their customer-first claims and an often disappointing reality.
Wayne Simmons and Tom DeWitt are practitioners and professors of customer excellence. Wayne is a leader in customer excellence and customer experience management at Pfizer, the Fortune 50 global leader in health care and life sciences. Tom is the founder of CXM@MSU, an industry-facing entity designed to advance customer experience management thought and practice, and the founder and architect of North America’s first master’s degree in Customer Experience Management (CXM) at the Broad College of Business, Michigan State University.
Together, they expertly frame the complexities of consistently delivering a superior customer experience at enterprise and global scale and provide a compelling case for urgency for companies to take the journey to become a Customer Excellence Enterprise (CXE).
Outlining the leadership, organizational, operational, and commercial facets essential for sustained success, The Customer Excellence Enterprise is a comprehensive playbook for any company seeking to differentiate deeply from competitors and win preferred positions in the hearts and minds of today’s discerning customers.
With insights into how companies can become structurally and systemically predisposed to deliver exceptional experiences, the authors draw on real-world practice and examples from customer experience “outliers”―companies renowned for consistently improving their customers' lives. Readers will also find:
- Practical strategies for building a case for urgency and mobilizing all levels of the enterprise to deliver tangible results.
- Winning methods to build deep emotional connections that lead to lifelong customer relationships.
- Insights into the habits and ways of working from customer experience industry outliers.
The Customer Excellence Enterprise: A Playbook for Creating Customers for Life is a must-have for the boards of directors, C-Suite executives, line of business leaders and managers, marketers, sales teams, product leaders, human resources, customer experience, operations and other customer-facing professionals tasked with answering pressing questions like, Why are exceptional customer experiences still so rare? and If customers are truly the most valuable of corporate assets, why are they consistently being treated so poorly? This book serves as an invaluable tool and urgent call to action for anyone committed to elevating how customers are viewed, treated, and valued - the keys to creating customers for life.
Table of Contents
Prologue xi
About the Authors xiii
Introduction 1
A Renewed Sense of Corporate Purpose 1
The Growth Opportunity of Our Time 2
Solving the Paradox of Customer Centricity 3
Reigniting a Reverence for Customers 4
A Very Different Type of Company 5
Becoming Better Versions of Themselves 5
Part I Helpfulness as an Organizing Principle 9
Chapter 1 A Case for Urgency 11
The Logical Case: Meet Your Hyper- Empowered Customers 12
The Financial Case: The Leaky Bucket Syndrome 19
The Emotional Case: The End of Wow! 22
Chapter Takeaways: A Fork in the Road 27
Chapter 2 Missing the Mark with Customers 29
Customer Centricity to the Rescue? 29
Creating Illusions of Loyalty 31
Treating Customer Centricity as a Sideshow 32
The Persistent Prevalence of Customer Pain 35
Chapter Takeaways: Navigating Intricate Terrain 36
Chapter 3 The Customers- for- Life Imperative 39
Highly Coveted and Extremely Valuable 40
The Incentive: The CX Value Premium 41
The Shift: Experiential Commerce 44
The Reminder: All Stakeholders Matter 47
The Obligation: The Customer’s Right to Reverence 48
The Invitation: Welcome to My Life 50
A Distinction That Is Earned, Never Given 54
Chapter Takeaways: Reconciling an Ideological Disconnect 55
Chapter 4 Helpfulness as the Hero 57
Helpfulness: The New TQM 59
A New Primary Job to Be Done 61
The Psychology of Helpfulness 62
A Means to Overcome Positivity Bias 63
The First Factor Among Equals 65
Chapter Takeaways: Harness the Helpfulness Halo 66
Chapter 5 The Preference Payoff 69
Becoming the Go-To Choice for Customers 70
Chapter Takeaways: Creating Positive Vibes 81
Chapter 6 Introducing the Customer Excellence Enterprise 83
Introducing the Customer Excellence Enterprise (CXE) 84
Excellence in the Engine Room 87
The New Standard of Business 90
Core Attributes of the CXE 92
Chapter Takeaways: Value Creation for All 103
Part II Helpfulness as an Operating System 105
Chapter 7 Reprogramming Leadership DNA 109
Objective: Leaders Become the Principal Advocates for Customers 110
Chapter Takeaways: Setting the Tone at the Top 132
Chapter 8 Resequencing Organizational DNA 135
Objective: Make Customer Outcomes a Shared Accountability 136
Chapter Takeaways: Make Customer Excellence an Organizational Habit 158
Chapter 9 Rewiring Operational DNA 161
Objective: Modernize the Experience Delivery Factory 162
Chapter Takeaways: Intervene through Improvements and Innovations 192
Chapter 10 Reimagining Commercial DNA 195
Objective: Deliver Excellence across the Customer Life Cycle 196
Chapter Takeaways: Establish a Win- Win Proposition with Customers 227
Chapter 11 Meeting Customers Where They Are 229
Objective: Improve the Lives of as Many Humans as Possible 230
Bringing Customer Excellence to Citizen Experiences: Doing Better for Citizens 230
Making Health Care Experiences More Human: From Compliance to Empathy 233
Bringing Customer Excellence to the Fan Experience: Creating Memorable Moments 237
Contributing to the Collective Well-Being 243
Chapter Takeaways: There are No Free Passes 244
Chapter 12 Getting Started: The Case for Urgency 245
Objective: Identify and Overcome Barriers to Change 246
Resistance to Change: A Cautionary Tale 248
Where to Start the Journey? 249
Crafting the Case for Urgency 249
Chapter Takeaways: A Journey Worth Taking 254
Epilogue 255
References 257
Further Reading 261
Acknowledgments 265
Index 267
