800-CEO-READ New Releases

Exceeding Customer Expectations

by Kirk Kazanjian

(Currency Doubleday, 224 Pages)

What’s the secret to wowing your customers while maintaining a loyal and dedicated workforce? No one knows better than Enterprise, the nationnation’s #1 car rental company, Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Drawing upon the secrets time-tested strategies that have propelledhelped Enterprise grow from a single location in St. Louis car dealership into a $9 billion global powerhouse, EXCEEDING CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS reveals how to:

• Actively seek out unsatisfied customers and quickly turn them into loyal fans commit to improving their experience
• Hire smart people and at the bottom, and train them from the ground up
• Develop methods to reduce costs and add value for your customers in every interaction.
• Grow your business by rewarding employees with financial incentives, developing strong partnerships, and focusing on the long term; willing customer loyalty is like running a marathon, not a 100-yard dash
• Thrive during tough economic times by bringing new advantages to the market
• Cultivate a fun and friendly workplace where teamwork rules

In EXCEEDING CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS, noted business author Kirk Kazanjian reveals how your company can consistently outperform and outsmart the competition by following a simple philosophy espoused by Enterprise founder Jack Taylor: “Take care of your customers and employees first, and the profits will follow.” Winning customer loyalty is like running a marathon—not a 100-yard dash. By mastering this principle, Enterprise has earned not only record profits, but also received numerous awards for customer service and gainedearned an enviable reputation as one of the world’s best companies to work for, won countless customer service awards, and enjoyed a nearly unbroken streak of record profits .

EXCEEDING CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS imparts timeless lessons on satisfying both customers and employees that you can put to use right away, no matter what your business or industry.

Leading for Growth

by Raymond P. Davis; Alan Shrader

(Jossey-Bass, 224 Pages)

Book Description
How any business leader can create an atmosphere of competitiveness for exceptional growth

When Ray Davis took over the local 40-person South Umpqua Bank in 1994, many people in the industry poked fun at his insistence that employees answer the phone with a cheery "World's Greatest Bank." Eleven years, $7 billion in assets, and 128 branches (or " bank stores" in Umpqua lingo) later, the moniker seems quite apt. Other banks scratched their heads when Davis sent his tellers to Ritz-Carlton to learn customer service and were intrigued when he hired a cutting-edge design firm to completely re-think retail layout. Now, with a top design award under their belt, a name change (there never was a North Umpqua bank), and a completely new definition of the banking business, Umpqua has become the darling of the entrepreneurial press and a growth powerhouse. The New York Times calls Umpqua "Starbucks with tellers."

Ray Davis (Portland, OR), named by U.S. Banker as one of the 25 most influential people in the financial industry in 2005, is President and CEO of Umpqua Holdings Corporation. Alan Shrader (Moraga, CA) is an experienced writer and editor of business books.

Inside Steve's Brain

by Leander Kahney

(Portfolio, 288 Pages)

Book Description
Steve Jobs has turned his personality traits into a business philosophy. Here’s how he does it.

It’s hard to believe that one man revolutionized computers in the 1970s and ’80s (with the Apple II and the Mac), animated movies in the 1990s (with Pixar), and digital music in the 2000s (with the iPod and iTunes). No wonder some people worship him like a god. On the other hand, stories of his epic tantrums and general bad behavior are legendary. Inside Steve’s Brain cuts through the cult of personality that surrounds Jobs to unearth the secrets to his unbelievable results. It reveals the real Steve Jobs—not his heart or his famous temper, but his mind. So what’s really inside Steve’s brain? According to Leander Kahney, who has covered Jobs since the early 1990s, it’s a fascinating bundle of contradictions.

Jobs is an elitist who thinks most people are bozos—but he makes gadgets so easy to use, a bozo can master them. He’s a mercurial obsessive with a filthy temper—but he forges deep partnerships with creative geniuses like Steve Wozniak, Jonathan Ive, and John Lasseter. He’s a Buddhist and anti-materialist—but he produces mass-market products in Asian factories, and he promotes them with absolute mastery of the crassest medium, advertising.

In short, Jobs has embraced the traits that some consider flaws—narcissism, perfectionism, the desire for total control—to lead Apple and Pixar to triumph against steep odds. And in the process, he has become a self-made billionaire. In Inside Steve’s Brain, Kahney distills the principles that guide Jobs as he launches killer products, attracts fanatically loyal customers, and manages some of the world’s most powerful brands.

The result is this unique book about Steve Jobs that is part biography and part leadership guide, and impossible to put down. It gives you a peek inside Steve’s brain, and might even teach you something about how to build your own culture of innovation.

About the Author
Leander Kahney is news editor for Wired.com and primary author of its popular Cult of Mac blog. He is also the author of two acclaimed books, The Cult of Mac and The Cult of iPod. As a reporter and editor, Kahney has covered Apple for more than a dozen years.

How You Do ... What You Do

by Bob Livingston

(McGraw-Hill, 311 Pages)

Foreword by David Calhoun, Chairman and CEO of the Nielsen Company.

Between the challenges of escalating competition, well-informed clients, and dismal customer service, today's marketplace is becoming more and more crowded. The result is that your clients have more influence and choices than ever before. If you or your organization do not consistently satisfy and surpass their expectations, your clients will take their buying power elsewhere. It's that simple. But by establishing service excellence as your top strategic and cultural priority, you will foster the strong relationships needed to win--and retain--loyal clients.

In this breakthrough book, customer service expert Bob Livingston gives you practical tools for transforming your approach to serving clients by strengthening “how you do what you do.” Whether you're a business leader, a client service executive, a sales manager, or an individual, you can differentiate yourself from competition by adopting Livingston's simple yet proven roadmap for achieving Service Excellence.

In How You Do . . . What You Do, Livingston imparts a clear, step-by-step blueprint for transforming your culture, attitudes, and behaviors by illustrating how to:

-Develop and live your Purpose and Values

-Understand your clients' soft needs, and create plans to satisfy them

-Seek continuous improvement by stimulating creativity and innovation

-Keep your service-oriented culture growing

-Create a passion for Service Excellence

Livingston draws upon a lifetime of experience in which he has achieved measurable success helping many companies shape their service cultures--most notably CROSSMARK, an international consumer products sales and marketing agency, whose remarkable transformation stands out as one of the strongest proof statements for this methodology. Throughout, Livingston benchmarks other great companies renowned for their service excellence, including Accenture, Henry & Horne, ECRM, The Nielsen Company, TBWA\Worldwide, Four Seasons, and many others.

Properly executed, this compelling and inspirational approach to service virtually guarantees the client loyalty that will set you apart from competition, and distinguish you by How You Do . . . What You Do.

Service Scorecard

by Praveen Gupta, Rajesh Tyagi

(FT Press, 300 Pages)

In the U.S., service related activities have become dominant aspects of the economy and currently account for well over 50% of our GNP. The authors' framework eliminates outdated, low-value techniques originally created for manufacturing firms, replacing them with advanced techniques that fully leverage your investments in technology. Tyagi and Gupta begin by explaining why conventional balanced scorecard approaches don't work well for service organizations, discussing issues ranging from the inherent variability of customers, servers, and processes, the crucial importance of engagement, and the unique challenges of service innovation. Next, they introduce a Service Scorecard framework that encompasses the seven key elements of service organization success: Growth, Leadership, Acceleration, Collaboration, Innovation, Execution, and Retention. You'll learn how to set clear performance targets at the function and business level; benchmark performance against best practices; identify improvement opportunities; and capture performance data that offers a leading indicator for financials. Their proven approach is designed for easy understanding and implementation without the need for expensive consultants. Simply put, it offers today's most direct path to measuring performance and optimizing business value in any service organization.

Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000

by Pete Blackshaw

(Doubleday, 208 Pages)

Book Description

In today’s Internet-driven world, customers have more power than ever. Through what interactive marketing expert Pete Blackshaw calls "consumer-generated media"—blogs, social networking pages, message boards, product review sites—even a single disgruntled customer can broadcast his complaints to an audience of millions. Blackshaw shows managers, marketers, and business leaders how to establish and maintain credibility for their brand by being authentic, listening and responding to customers, and forming relationships built on openness, transparency, and trust.

Filled with stories based on his experience working with Fortune 500 brands such as Toyota, Dell, Nike, Sony, General Motors, Unilever, Nestlé, Southwest Airlines, and Bank of America, Blackshaw offers a clear strategy to sustain a competitive advantage by creating enduring, loyal relationships with today’s consumer.