Tag: books

Categories
Musings

Great Reading for Summer & Year Round

When I get the chance to play around in the blogosphere, I love to check out what’s on other people’s reading lists.

So I was somewhat surprised to find one on my all-time favorite books – Gordon McKenzie’s Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace – on several lists including From the Marketing Trenches and You Already Know This Stuff.

While it’s not unusual to see the same current popular business books on people’s reading lists, it’s interesting to find a book that was first published ten years ago. (Gordon self-published his book in 1996 before it was picked up by Viking Press two years later.  I initially learned about the book from Gordon whom I had the privilege to meet when he spoke at several AMA conferences in the early-mid ’90s.)

Favorite Cult Classic

I’ve always thought of Gordon’s book as somewhat of a cult classic since not too many people have heard of it.  But it’s one of the first I mention when people ask “what’s your favorite book?”  or “If you were on a deserted island what book(s) would you want with you?”

Orbiting the Giant Hairball is not a book you read just once … it’s one to read & enjoy over and over and over again.

Categories
Customer service Engagement Marketing

Invitation to a Brand Marriage & More

I forgot to mention this in my last post when I told you about Bill McEwen’s book, Married to the Brand.

At the end of the book, readers are offered a complimentary six-month trial subscription to the Gallup Management Journal.  It’s a great way to keep up with the latest in customer- and employee-engagement.

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Your Invitation to a Brand Marriage

If you’re looking for a great business book, I highly recommend Married to the Brand: Why Consumers Bond with Some Brands for Life by Bill McEwen, Gallup Press.  And here’s why.

Insightful

What’s different about this book is that it looks at the emotional connections consumers have with brands from the consumer’s perspective.  McEwen uses the dating-courtship-marriage metaphor effectively without being overly schmaltzy.  He also shares the metrics used to measure both the rational & emotional aspects of “customer engagement.”

The building blocks of brand attachment leading to this type of engagement are based on:

  • “Confidence” – the degree to which consumers believe a company will deliver on its brand promise
  • “Integrity” – the degree to which consumers believe a company stands behind its brand and how it treats customers, especially when there are problems with the firm’s product or service
  • “Pride” – the extent to which consumers feel good about their use of and/or association with a brand
  • “Passion” – the extent to which consumers love (rather than like) a brand.

Making the Case

McEwen draws on extensive Gallup research across a broad range of industries to demonstrate the profitable “payoff of customer engagement.”  The research reinforces the importance of employees who create customer-brand relationships leading to engagement – or disengagement.

According to McEwen: “When it comes to building customer connections, it matters greatly how well the company’s employees are managed … Engaged employees contribute more.  They stay longer, and they’re more productive.  And, of critical importance, they also promote stronger and longer-lasting customer relationships.  Simply put, engaged employees help to produce engage customers.”

Here’s to a long & healthy relationship!

A good read

Well written, Married to the Brand provides substantive content that can easily be read in one or two sittings — my kind of book.  And one you’ll want to add to your business library.

 

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Internal Marketing & Emotional Connections (Part 3)

The final segment in this series builds on my last post with questions that help employees feel connected to an organization through its mission.

In Gallup’s in-depth management study featured in the book First, Break All the Rules, researchers Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman discovered 12 key questions that measure an organization’s strength.  Many of the questions relate directly to employee engagement.  For example:

  • Do I know what is expected of me at work?
  • At work, do I have the opportunity to be what I do best every day?
  • Does my supervisor seem to care about me as a person?
  • At work, do my opinions seem to count?
  • Does the company mission make me feel my job is important?

Employee who can respond positively to these questions are likely to feel a strong connection to their organization (including their co-workers and customers).

Can you feel the love now?

Categories
Marketing

Customer Value Challenge

In my recent post about companies that go after new customers at the possible expense of existing customers, mc (aka Michelangelo Celli of the Cornucopia Group) responded with a comment about maximizing customer value.

It’s a critical concept for any organization, and one that I’ll admit is not always easy to measure.  While some companies have been able to determine their customers’ lifetime value, my guess is more companies are wrestling with how to measure it than actually measuring it.

Considering all the variables involved, quantifying customer value may not be easy (depending on your industry), but don’t let that stop you.  There are some good sources of help out there.

One of them is Driving Customer Equity by Roland Rust, Val Zeithaml & Katherine Lemon.  This book explores the critical “drivers” of customer equity & their metrics: value equity, brand equity, and retention equity.

And in the current issue of Fast Company, Don Peppers & Martha Rogers offer a general formula for their new concept (and book) Return on Customer.

Like I said, measuring customer lifetime value may not be easy, but it is necessary.

Categories
Customer service Engagement Marketing

Happy Employees, Happy Customers

“Happiness in the workplace is a strategic advantage.”

So says Hal Rosenbluth in his book, The Customer Comes Second (2nd edition).  He explains: “Service comes from the heart, and people who feel cared for will care more. Unhappiness results in error, turnover, and other evils.”

I agree with him 1000% … it’s what internal marketing is all about.

Beyond the inherent logic linking employee and customer satisfaction, there’s a lot of research that supports a positive, mutually reinforcing relationship between employees and customers.  (Check out The Service Profit Chain in addition to Rosenbluth’s book.)

But do happy employees = happy customers? (It’s a question I’m often asked in my internal marketing seminars.)

It’s an oversimplification to be sure … but you can’t have one without the other.  Remember, if your employees don’t feel valued, neither will your customers!

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Low Tech Communications (Or “Everything Old is New Again”)

In today’s world of high-tech, constantly “on” communications, I find it fascinating and somewhat amusing to know that some executives are creatively reverting to low-tech forms of communication to reach their employees.

A great example is the “desk drop” cited in Herb Baum’s book, The Transparent Leader.  When he wants to share important information or a new company product with employees, the information is dropped on each person’s desk … a more personal and effective approach than using e-mail.

And in The Cornucopia Group’s e-newsletter, The Loop, I read about a company that implemented a “no e-mail day” once a month to encourage people within the firm to actually talk to each other.  What a concept!