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eCustomerServiceWorld.com recommended reads
(NB Check out our Top Ten and our New Books as well!)Browse through and click on a title for a review. 
 | | Competitive Advantage
Author: Michael E. Porter
UK Publisher: Free Press
ISBN: 0743260872
US Publisher: Free Press
ISBN: 0684841460
Quick review: COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE introduces a whole new way of understanding what a firm does. Porter's groundbreaking concept of the value chain disaggregates a company into 'activities', or the discrete functions or processes that represent the elemental building blocks of competitive advantage. Porter's value chain enables managers to isolate the underlying sources of buyer value that will command a premium price, and the reasons why one product or service substitutes for another. He shows how competitive advantage lies not only in activities themselves but in the way activities relate to each other, to supplier activities, and to customer activities. That the phrases 'competitive advantage' and 'sustainable competitive advantage' have become commonplace is testimony to the power of Porter's ideas. buy UK() buy US($)
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| | Competitive Customer Care
Author: Merlin Stone & Laurie Young
UK Publisher: Croner Publications
ISBN: 1855240521
Quick Review: Sub-titled ‘A Guide To Keeping Customers’, this practical book is full of suggestions on how to implement a successful customer service system and thereby improve business efficiency. The book comprehensively specifies the management processes needed to achieve quality service. The authors have a far clearer, less hidebound, view of customer service as a cross-organization discipline than many others who write on this subject. This is not surprising, given the brainpower they bring to bear on the subject: Merlin is the thinking person’s CRM guru and Laurie, last we heard, had sold his stake in the well-respected Blakes Marketing Practice to become a very big cheese at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Links:
Merlin’s listing in our eSpeakers Store
Descriptions of Swallow, Mummert & Berry Consulting (Merlin is a Director at these companies) in the eProducts & Services Store
Merlin’s articles in the eArticles store
Merlin’s Close To The Customer Series of Reports in the Research Reports Section of the eResearch Store
Laurie’s article in benchmarking in our eArticles store buy UK()
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| | Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors
Author: Michael E. Porter
UK Publisher: Free Press
ISBN: 0743260880
US Publisher: Free Press
ISBN: 0684841487
Quick Review: Electrifying in its simplicity - like all great breakthroughs - COMPETITIVE STRATEGY captures the complexity of industry competition in five underlying forces. Author Michael Porter introduces one of the most powerful competitive tools yet developed: his three generic strategies - lowest cost, differentiation, and focus - which bring structure to the task of strategic positioning. COMPETITIVE STRATEGY has filled a void in management thinking. It provides an enduring foundation and grounding point on which all subsequent work can be built. Porter's rich frameworks and deep insights comprise a sophisticated view of competition unsurpassed in the last quarter-century. buy UK() buy US($)
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| | Consumer Insight: How to Use Data and Market Research to Get Closer to Your Customer (Market Research In Practice series)
Author: Merlin Stone , Alison Bond, Bryan Foss
UK Publisher: Kogan Page
ISBN: 0749442921
From the publishers: Published Oct 3 2004 UK, Dec 1 2004 US. Consumer Insight provides market researchers with knowledge of database marketing and Customer Relationship Marketing techniques. It comprehensively covers the classic areas that marketers focus on: knowing who and where your customers are, what they do, what they buy and what they would like to buy. It also explores how customers' thoughts, feelings, objectives and strategies influence their behaviour. The book also explains how companies gain insight into their customers by managing and using their customer data correctly. Packed with the latest models, tools and research, it provides a great opportunity for market researchers to improve their knowledge of database marketing and CRM, and how they relate to market research. Readers will gain an understanding of what customer management actually is, what information is used, and how this information needs to be planned to support customer management. Links:
buy UK (£)
buy US ($)
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| | Continuity Management-Preserving Corporate Knowledge and Productivity When Employees Leave
Author: Hamilton Beazley, Jeremiah Boenisch, David Harden
UK Publisher: Jossey Bass
ISBN: 0471219061
Quick Revierw: "How can I keep knowledge from walking out the door when employees leave?" This pressing question is insightfully answered in Continuity Management. Based on extensive research, this landmark book solves the crucial problem of knowledge loss for managers at any organizational level by describing an effective strategy for preserving knowledge continuity between employee generations. buy UK() buy US($)
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| | Core Personnel and Development
Author: Mick Marchington & Adrian Wilkinson
UK Publisher: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)
ISBN: 0852928084
US Publisher:
ISBN:
Quick Review: This textbook sets out the legal, institutional, national and international contexts within which organisations operate today. It also provides a sound understanding of employee development, relations, resourcing and reward and how these are integrated into wider corporate strategies. The book examines: predicting future staffing requirements and establishing a human resource plan; carrying out the whole recruitment and selection process; developing an appropriate training policy and gaining support for its implementation; handling grievance and disciplinary procedures; and harmonizing reward systems. In this annotated edition, the text has been updated by Dr Malcolm Sargeant who has highlighted areas undergoing legal change. buy UK() buy US($)
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| | Creating a Customer-Centered Culture
Author: Robin Lawton
UK Publisher: William C. Brown
ISBN: 0873891511
This review is from Quentin Wilson at the Missouri Department of Revenue. By helping them switch from a product to a customer-focussed view of their products and services, Robin helped them cut the time taken to apply for and receive a tax refund from 45 days to two. You can bet the ‘customers’ in Missouri were happy about that one:
“With the vast array of performance improvement and customer focus books on the market, readers need to be somewhat selective about what they read. This book should definitely be on any manager's list. The tools described in the book apply to any type of organization, public or private, and at any level of the organization. At the Missouri Department of Revenue, we've used Robin Lawton's customer-centered culture approach as a touchstone for many successful Performance Excellence Teams.”
The only thing worse for a results-oriented leader than not reading this book would be to read it and not put it into action. Unlike so many performance improvement books, the clear guidance is more than matched by the clarity and simplicity of the steps to implementation”. buy UK() buy US($)
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| | Creating competitive Advantage: Give customers a reason to choose you over your competitors
Author: Jaynie L Smith
UK Publisher: Currency
ISBN: 0385517092
We selected this book because some big names have endorsed it, including one who spoke at our North American conference recently. Here’s what two say:
"So many companies think that differentiation is the key to success. It isn't. The key is knowing how to articulate what's different or better about your product. Creating Competitive Advantage is a must-have for any CEO's library."
-- David Neeleman, CEO, JetBlue Airways
"Any book that tells you how to be different from your competitors is worth reading. It's what good strategy is all about. Creating Competitive Advantage is just such a book."
-- Jack Trout, author of Trout on Strategy
buy UK() buy US($)
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| | Creating Customer Evangelists: Profit from Turning Loyal Customers into a Volunteer Sales Force
Author: Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba
UK Publisher: Dearborn Trade Publishing
ISBN: 0793155614
Quick Review: When customers are truly thrilled about their experience with a product or service, they become outspoken "evangelists" for a company. Savvy marketing professionals are discovering that this group of satisfied believers can be leveraged as a potent marketing tool to increase their customer universe. Readers of this book can learn how to develop evangelism marketing strategies to expand and drive sales for a company. To show how solid customer relationships can build and sustain companies through good and rocky times, the authors offer several case studies. These in-depth company profiles provide real-life examples of evangelism marketing at work, including the opportunities and pitfalls of specific campaigns. buy UK() buy US($)
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| | Creating Powerful Brands
Author: Leslie de Chernatony, Malcolm McDonald
UK Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann
ISBN: 0750659807
Quick Review: Professor Leslie de Chernatony (the author) writes: This book is a fusion of ideas which evolved from years of research, consultancy, graduate teaching programmes and management development workshops. We seek to distill the numerous interpretations of "brand" then develop frameworks to help managers and students appreciate how resources can be more effectively used in the brand building process. Many branding frameworks originated in consumer markets, however we have extended the coverage to provide insights about branding service and industrial markets. buy UK() buy US($)
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