Customer Insights

The subscription business model is hot - from software to music to movies to diet programs, investors and public markets want businesses that create recurring payments from unlimited customers. The old sales and marketing methods can handle attracting new customers for growth; however, only in the last five years has a discipline emerged that views growth in relation to retention, not just sales.

The Customer Success Manager has become a critical asset to organizations across the business landscape. As the subscription model has spread from the cloud and SaaS to more sectors of the economy, that pivotal role will only grow in importance. That's because if you want to compete and thrive in this new environment, you need to put the customer at the center of your strategy. You need to recognize you're no longer selling just a product. You're selling an outcome.

Wayne McCulloch has more than 25 years of experience in the software industry — years spent in training, adoption, and customer experience, the building blocks for customer success. Now he’s sharing what he knows as a chief customer officer leading global success functions. In The Seven Pillars of Customer Success, Wayne provides an adaptable framework for building a strong customer success organization.

Based on six years of research, Harvard Business School Professor Thales Teixeira shows how and why industries are disrupted and what established companies can do to respond - as well as what potential start-ups must master if they hope to gain a competitive edge.

More than two generations ago, the venture capital community convinced the entrepreneurial world that writing business plans and raising venture capital constituted the twin centerpieces of entrepreneurial endeavor. They did so for good reasons: the sometimes astonishing returns they've delivered to their investors and the astonishingly large companies that their ecosystem has created. But the vast majority of fast-growing companies never take any venture capital. So where does the money come from to start and grow their companies?

Whether he’s underwriting for an overlord, or wearing a pocket protector in a pocket universe, Tom Stranger has just one policy: providing Quality Customer Service. No alien menace is too menacing, no galactic rift too rifty for the multiverse’s most-trusted Interdimensional Insurance Agent in these three brand-new adventures and two classic escapades.

What are companies like Uber, IKEA, Belgo, and Eurostar doing that makes them so profitable? They know how to scale relationships. But online gurus are lying to you about scaling to hundreds of clients without creating an exceptional customer experience. Ben and I created this book with that in mind. When you feel like there is much more to be done in how you serve your clients, we’ve got you. For a long time, marketers--specifically in the online space--have been making bolder and bolder promises.

If leaders aren't integrating their digital offerings into a philosophy of customer success, they will be defeated in the next decade because technical excellence and other traditional competitive advantages are becoming too easy to imitate. The Customer Success Economy offers examples and specifics of how companies can transform. It addresses the pains of transforming organizational charts, leadership roles, responsibilities, and strategies so the whole company works together in total service to the customer.

The former EVP of Walt Disney World shares indispensible rules for serving customers with consistency, efficiency, creativity, sincerity, and excellence. Lee Cockerell knows that success in business - any business - depends upon winning and keeping customers. In 39 digestible, bite-sized chapters, Lee shares everything he has learned in his 40-plus-year career in the hospitality industry about creating an environment that keeps customers coming back for more. Here, Lee not only shows why the customer always rules, but also the rules for serving customers so well they'll never want to do business with anyone but you.

Customer Data and Privacy: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review will help you understand the tangled interdependencies and complexities and develop strategies that allow your company to be good stewards, collecting, using, and storing customer data responsibly.

Every business knows that the best customer is a happy customer. They return again and again, bring their friends, and deliver tons of free advertising via word of mouth and social media. But in order to grow that loyal base, you must be aware of your customers’ needs. Drawing on the latest research in the exploding field of positive psychology, Columbia Business School marketing professor Bernd Schmitt offers three unique approaches any business can use to turn a casual customer into a committed fan.

These are true stories of winners and losers in the quest for superior service. Who wins? Who loses? It's up to you! Benchmark the best service innovations (Chapter 5: Generating New Ideas). Discover how to keep your customers happy, loyal, and buying more (Chapter 10: Building Up Your Business). Find out who makes the biggest mistakes in service and what you must avoid (Chapter 13: The Infinite Absurdity Awards).

In The Customer Connection: Life Lessons from Behind the Chair, you’ll embark on a transformative journey into the world of a seasoned “hairapist,” where the salon chair becomes a unique vantage point for understanding human nature.