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.

As the service sectors play an increasingly important role in all economies worldwide, service executives and professionals are well advised to recognize two main pathways to achieving sustainable success in services. The first path requires enhancing the strategic differentiation and operational excellence of their service enterprises; the second requires that these executives and their employees develop the knowledge and skills needed to achieve such success. Specifically, this book discusses actionable methodologies needed to generate creative ideas, including deciding on which ones to pursue; on how to justify projects financially; on how to manage the development projects for innovative services; and on how to reach out to customers and offer them superior service support.

The best-selling author of Making Dough examines the simple business philosophy espoused by Enterprise Rent-A-Car, which places an emphasis on both the customer and the employee, and how such principles as customer service, employee rewards, a friendly workplace, and other lessons can be applied to promote profitabililty. 30,000 first printing.

Enterprise Excellence: A Modern Approach to Organizational Change and Leadership using Blended Quality Management prepares students to utilize strategic thinking and Lean Six Sigma (LSS) practices and techniques to improve operations and reduce inefficiencies. Using Six Sigma's DMAIC-define, measure, analyze, improve, control-process, students apply concepts and tools by leading and participating in an actual LSS project. The book is organized so that it walks students, practitioners, and leaders through each step of the LSS DMAIC process through interactive, hands-on modules. In the opening module, students select a project and describe the process, opportunity, and goal (Define). Additional chapters guide students through collecting data and defining metrics (Measure); identifying potential solutions (Analyze); testing theories, piloting solutions, and rolling out solutions (Improve); and monitoring results to assess and maintain the overall gain (Control). The text includes a project guide and a collection of case studies to help students connect critical concepts with practical application. Enterprise Excellence helps students build their understanding of process improvement, practice running a team project, achieve meaningful results, and apply their new skills and tools in real-world projects. The book is an exemplary resource for courses and programs in business and organizational change/management.

"Enterprise Excellence" refers to drawing upon a variety of tools beyond Six Sigma to improve a business. Taking a holistic view of product and process improvement, here is a step-by-step guide to deploying Enterprise Excellence in an organization and integrating the methodologies and tools for business process improvement. This innovative approach covers all aspects of EE and provides practical applications appropriate for multiple levels within an organization. Its lessons apply to a broad range of readers, from graduate students in engineering to entrepreneurs in small businesses, from management to workshops and seminars to front line supervisors.

A categorized compilation of favorite posts from the Evolving Excellence blog, Evolving Excellence: Thoughts on Lean Enterprise Leadership offers different-even outright contradictory-viewpoints that explore various aspects of lean enterprise excellence. In the shared desire to see American manufacturing thrive, authors Kevin Meyer and Bill Waddell have poured their knowledge, opinions, and ideas into their blog for the past two years. Sometimes tongue in cheek, usually provocative, occasionally humorous, but always passionate, they point out the failures of companies, organizations, and individuals in the manufacturing industry while also lauding those that understand true excellence. In Evolving Excellence, you'll find a bevy of different topics including: - Learning from the masters of lean manufacturing - Life, liberty, and the pursuit of manufacturing - The false god of the almighty algorithm - Looking lean vs. being lean - The impending global struggle between workers and management "If you love manufacturing then we hope you're reading Evolving Excellence. It's a must-read for manufacturers and those who dream."-Pat Cleary, Senior Vice President, National Association of Manufacturers "The authors are knowledgeable and they tell it like it is."-Bob Emiliani, author of Shingo Prize winning Better Thinking, Better Results Evolving Excellence also includes a glossary of popular terms and a list of resources to help further your knowledge of excellence in manufacturing. Delve into this amazing collection, and discover the different facets of lean enterprise leadership!

"Quest for the Best is not just a nostalgic look, however, at the age of handcrafted elegance. Marcus gives good advice on how consumers can educate themselves about the best, demand it, and get it. He describes his own experiences with the best in chapters such as "The Things You Love to Touch" and "Bed and Board." Witty, urbane, but always accessible, Marcus is a joy to read."--BOOK JACKET.

The contribution of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is acknowledged as an influential engine to economic growth. However, the biggest challenge faced by these SMEs is the lack of competitive service offerings for their target customers due to unstandardized products and a lack of consumer engagement and strategies. Service Marketing Strategies for Small and Medium Enterprises: Emerging Research and Opportunities is an essential reference source that provides guidelines on how SMEs can achieve sustainability through positive marketing outcomes and effective customer services. Featuring research on the assessment of SMEs’ customer service expectation, listening to customers through qualitative research, service quality model and its marketing implications, integrated marketing communications for SME environments, effective service encounters, and relationship developing strategies for SMEs, this publication provides new models for managers, industry professionals, academicians, and researchers.

Learn how to develop and employ an ontology, the secret weapon for successfully using artificial intelligence to create a powerful competitive advantage in your business. The AI-Powered Enterprise examines two fundamental questions: First, how will the future be different as a result of artificial intelligence? And second, what must companies do to stake their claim on that future? When the Web came along in the mid-90s, it transformed the behavior of customers and remade whole industries. Now, as part of its promise to bring revolutionary change in untold ways to human activity, artificial intelligence--AI--is about to create another complete transformation in how companies create and deliver value to customers. But despite the billions spent so far on bots and other tools, AI continues to stumble. Why can't it magically use all the data organizations generate to make them run faster and better? Because something is missing. AI works only when it understands the soul of the business. An ontology is a holistic digital model of every piece of information that matters to the business, from processes to products to people, and it's what makes the difference between the promise of AI and delivering on that promise. Business leaders who want to catch the AI wave--rather than be crushed by it--need to read The AI-Powered Enterprise. The book is the first to combine a sophisticated explanation of how AI works with a practical approach to applying AI to the problems of business, from customer experience to business operations to product development.

A step-by-step guide to designing and implementing an amazing customer service culture In today's competitive business environment, keeping customers happy is the key to long-term success. But some businesses provide much better customer service than others. It's not always clear what works and what doesn't, and implementing new customer service practices midstream can be a difficult, chaotic task. Business leaders who want to transform their business culture into one of customer service excellence need reliable, proven guidance. Unleashing Excellence gives you practical tools and step-by-step guidance tailored to your company's individual customer service needs. It shows you how to navigate your teams through every step of the implementation process to achieve true customer service excellence. The book covers the training and education of your group, how to measure the quality of your service, how to build a culture of personal accountability, and how to recognize excellence and reward it. Fully revised to include updated information on the latest tools and best practices, as well as the stories and lessons learned from those organizations that have used the process described in the book. Offers proven best practices for designing and implementing an excellent customer service culture Simple format divides content into nine "leadership actions" that guide you through a step-by-step process Shows you how to build a common customer service vision for your entire organization Customer service is vital to the survival of your business. If you want to move your organization's customer service practices from good to great, Unleashing Excellence is the key.