Book Review : Customer Mania

Book Title : Customer Mania

Authors : Ken Blanchard,Jim Ballard & Fred Finch

Publishers : Harper Collins

Price : Rs 195

Book Review #9

Customer Mania is a small but a highly insightful book. I am a big fan of Ken Blanchard and his inspirational One Minute Manager Series. And this time too, he does not fail to inspire.

The book is the authors' account of Yum Restaurant's customer service strategies. Using the story of Yum! Ken Blanchard tries to hammer in some of the critical customer service principles.

I feel little wary about books focusing on a particular company because we cannot predict what will happen to this company in future. There are best selling books that glorified Enron when everything was hunky dory. So I was little skeptical when I started reading this book.

Gladly the message of the book transcended the example. Ken's insights were powerful enough that makes the ' one company ' focus irrelevant.

Customer Mania gives the readers four key principles that will help to build a customer-focused company. The authors firs illustrate the principle and then uses Yum! to give a practical insight. The four principle that this book put forth is as follows

Step one : Set your sights on the right target.

The principle asks the managers to identify the right set of consumers and then focus on the right way to pamper him

Step Two : Treat your customers the right way .

Here the authors stresses on strategies to create Raving Fans rather than ordinary consumers

Step Three : Treat your people the right way .

In a service business, employees are the key to providing world class customer service. The authors give some very important insights into recruiting and retaining the right kind of people.

Step Four : Have the right kind of leadership

I always believed that customer service initiatives will fail without the right kind of leadership. Infact customer service starts from the top.

Customer Mania is a very simple book but yet packed with powerful messages.

A must read for any marketer