The Customer-Driven Company: Moving from Talk to Action

I have used this book with 3 different customer service teams. In weekly meetings, we review one chapter at a time. It provides an excellent focus for a team. The examples are well defined and this gives credibility to the material.

After reading this book, your should know the importance of treating your customers well:external customers and internal customers. This book is easy to follow with clear structure and concise wording. This book also teach you how to be the customer driven company. Moreover, with the tool kits, you can really move from talk to action. "if you treat your customer good, they will come back, if your treat your products good, they never come back", which mean that to run a success business, you are not only have to produce high quaility products but also treat your Customers well. Check out from this book now to know how to be the customer driven company.

This book is very worthwhile to read. It tells us how important customer is. If a business only concerns about its own product quality without placing a high emphasis on their services to customers, that business will not be able to success.The book is especially useful for businessmen. It provides 7 imperatives for being a customer driven company. There are also toolkits provided which help guiding businessmen how to do in reality.

The last quote in this book says it best, so let's start with that. According to retailing legend Stanley Marcus of Neiman-Marcus: "There are only two things of importance. One is the customer, and the other is the product. If you take care of customers, they come back. If you take care of your product, it doesn't come back. It's just that simple. And it's just that difficult." Richard C. Whiteley, co-founder of The Forum Corporation, a leading consulting group that works with companies on customer-focussed quality issues, has written a readable, relatively basic (that doesn't necessarily translate to simple) book on how to become a customer-driven company. Based on five years of research conducted by his company, the book reviews such maxims as "Saturate your company with the voice of the customer," and "communicate your vision constantly." While there is nothing particularly new about what Whiteley reports, he carefully catalogs the process of determining what customers want and how to give it to them. In so doing, he leads the reader along the customer's path, and provides insightful points to ponder. What's interesting about this book is the duality of the material presented. Of the roughly 300 pages in this book, one-third is an extensive appendix filled with various customer surveys, and explanations of other research tools. Need to create a histogram? No problem, it's in this book, as are explanations on force field analyses, process mapping and tracking and more. While informative as a reference tool, this last third is starkly different from the main text, which covers the message in a basic, quick-read way. In any case, reading both parts will give you a full sense of the customer-driven movement and some how-to's to begin the journey.

Simple, interesting, focused. Whiteley hits at some of the 'sacred cows' of business and challenges managers/leaders to change all that is not in the customers' best interest. Could start a revolution in 'cost-centered', narrow-minded corporations.