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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. 
 | | Re-imagine!
Author: Tom Peters
UK Publisher: DK Publishing
ISBN: 078949647X
Quick Review: More than just a how-to book for the 21st Century, Re-imagine! is a call to arms -- a passionate wake-up call for the business world, educators, and society as a whole. Focusing on how the business climate has changed, this inspirational book outlines how the new world of business works, explores radical ways of overcoming outdated, traditional company values, and embraces an aggressive strategy that empowers talent and brand-driven organizations where everyone has a voice. buy UK() buy US($)
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| | Reinventing Strategy Using Strategic Learning to Create and Sustain Breakthrough Performance
Author: Willie Pietersen
UK Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0471061905
Quick Review: Reinventing Strategy is a practical, systematic guide to creating an adaptive enterprise, showing how companies around the world are using the Strategic Learning approach to consistently out think, out manoeuvre, and out perform their competition. As Willie Pietersen explains, companies that aspire to long-term success must develop and implement strategy as part of a continuous four-step cycle-Learn, Focus, Align, Execute-and he offers dozens of provocative anecdotes and case studies, illustrating how to implement it at every level of an organization. buy UK() buy US($)
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| | Relationship Marketing - Dialogue and Networks in the E-commerce Era
Author: Richard Varey
UK Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Ltd
ISBN: 0470843411
Quick Review: This title explores the growing concept of relationship marketing, defined as the process of creating, maintaining, and enhancing strong, value-laden relationships with customers and other stakeholders. Relationship Marketing explores the concept in theory and practice for use in the e-commerce era. The book offers an understanding of relationship marketing as a business strategy within a framework that integrates marketing, e-commerce, corporate communications, and knowledge management. buy UK() buy US($)
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| | Resistance is useless
Author: Geoff Burch
UK Publisher: Headline Books
ISBN: 0747243964
Customer Comments:
From: William Hadley whadley@aspects.net from Essex, England , 16 November, 1999
It will make you laugh and cringe…I can see many of my own faults in what he describes. He gets across in a readable and funny way the art of good selling and customer care. The chapters are short enough to dip into and I never read this book with out laughing.
From: dneath@purplenet.co.uk , 23 October 1999
Read it on a plane or a train and the person in the seat next to you will wonder what you are on. You do not need to be in 'customer care' or sales to read this, but it will certainly make you think about your own experiences and methods. Serious points put over in a very humorous way. buy UK()
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| | Resizing the Organization -- Managing Layoffs, Divestitures, and Closings - Maximizing Gain While Minimizing Pain
Author: Kenneth De Meuse and Mitchell Lee Marks, Editors
UK Publisher: Jossey Bass Wiley
ISBN: 0787958913
Quick ReviewL This text presents scholarly insight into resizing - a broad-based term that most accurately reflects the organization of the 21st century and its goal of becoming agile, flexible and proactive. It supports the implementation of reductions-in-force, divestitures and plant/office closings in a manner that contributes to the achievement of strategic and financial objectives. The volume editors show executives how to re-evaluate their initial decision to downsize, or, if downsizing occurs, implement activities in an effective fashion. buy UK() buy US($)
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| | Results: Keep What's Good, Fix What's Wrong, and Unlock Great Performance (Hardcover)
Author: Gary L. Neilson & Bruce A. Pasternack
UK Publisher: Crown Business
ISBN: 1400098394
Robert Morris, Amazon Reviewer: Obviously, all human effort produces results, including no change of the status quo. What Neilson and Pasternack are talking about are efforts which sustain what is both effective and efficient, repair or eliminate what isn't, and thereby result in ("unlock") great performance. They identify four separate but interdependent "building blocks" (decision rights, information, motivators, and structure) on which to establish a program to achieve whatever the desirable results may be. Perhaps to manage growth. Perhaps to rightsize. Perhaps to introduce a new product or service and/or to penetrate a new market.
In Chapters One through Nine, they examine several different types of organizations:
Passive-Aggressive: "Everyone Agrees But Nothing Changes"
Fits-and-Starts: "Let 1,000 Flowers Bloom"
Outgrown: "The Good Old Days Meet a Brave New World"
Overmanaged: "We're from Corporate and We're Here to Help"
Just-in-Time: "Succeeding by the Skin of Our Teeth"
Military Precision: "Flying in Formation"
Each of the first six types has specific characteristics, most (if not all) of which are perversions of what would otherwise be desirable. For example, most executives would agree that an organization's operations should be disciplined, consistent, and lean; also, that there should be a well-defined chain of command. However, in a Military Precision organization, there can be serious problems which result from "command and control" management which discourages (if not punishes) principled dissent and individual initiative. Almost everyone involved awaits "orders" to be followed without question or hesitation. As I read Chapter Eight in which Neilson and Pasternack discuss the Military Precision organization, it struck me that it could run off independent thinkers and develop within those who remain a passive-aggressive attitude which results in subversive behavior. However, there are at least some organizations on which the appropriate emphasis should be on everyone knowing his or her role and implements it diligently, producing fluid and consistent execution of its policies and procedures.
As Neilson and Pasternack suggest, "7-Eleven exemplifies the Military Precision organization because it is top-down with a twist. It takes its direction from above, but its intelligence lies in the field...and it recognizes that. it's an organization bent on providing a consistent, quality customer experience to the thousands, often millions, that pass through its doors every day."
As for the Resilient organization, which Neilson and Pasternack describe as the "healthiest" of all, it also has several organizational traits which include entertaining the inconceivable ("seeing" what isn't yet...but could be); building a culture of commitment and accountability; "moving the goal post...every three years" at least; at all times and in every way demonstrating the "courage of its convictions"; recovering from adversity and then moving on; thinking horizontally (i.e. rather than in terms of hierarchies); Self-correcting (i.e. having mechanisms which identify small problems before they become major crises; listening to complainers to identify patterns and trends of dissatisfaction enterprise-wide; linking motivators to what is most important; and realizing any "success" is transient ("a little paranoia is good for you"). I presume to add one point: Today's Resilient organization can very quickly become one of the other seven. That is to say, each of the ten positive traits which Neilson and Pasternack identify, if taken to an extreme, defining characteristics of an "unhealthy" organization.
According to Neilson and Pasternack, the symptoms of a Passive Aggressive organization include smiles which conceal dissent, "shopping for decisions" (i.e. seeking until finding decisions preferable to those of one's supervisors); hoarding of resources which creates a "Bermuda Triangle" of information flow; "mixed message motivators" which create confusion and dissonance; and widespread use of the CYO strategy in anticipation of unfavorable consequences. These symptoms obviously suggest often deeply submerged feelings of dissatisfaction and perhaps even hostility.
What makes this volume so informative, indeed valuable is the fact that Neilson and Pasternack identify all manner of causes of dysfunctional organizations, suggest how those causes can be avoided or eliminated, and then explain what a "healthy" organization is but also how to establish and then sustain one. It occurs to me that most organizations proceed through phases during any one of which they exemplify one of the seven types. Therefore, some of the attributes of one type (e.g. Passive-Aggressive) should be replaced by some of those of another (e.g. Military Precision). It remains for decision-makers to understand which of the seven types best describes their organization and then, guided and informed by what Neilson and Pasternack provide in this volume, make whatever corrective or preventive adjustments may be necessary. buy UK() buy US($)
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| | Return On Customer: Creating Maximum Value From Your Scarcest Resource
Author: Don Peppers & Martha Rogers
UK Publisher: Cyan Books
ISBN: 1904879349
US Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0385510306
The pioneers of One to One as a business strategy bring us a new work on how to fill the current gap in business measurement. From the book jacket: “…While you may believe in your heart that a particular decision creates shareholder value, there’s no financial metric currently available to tell you how much shareholder value you actually created, or even whether you created any at all. But Return on Customer (sm) can help you. Return on Customer is a breakthrough financial metric that can quantify the actual shareholder value you are creating (or, possibly, destroying) with your various business actions and initiatives.” Return on Customer is a registered service mark of Peppers & Rogers Group, a division of Carlson Marketing Group, Inc. buy UK() buy US($)
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| | Rising Tide: Lessons from 165 Years of Brand Building at Procter and Gamble
Author: Davis Dyer and Frederick Dalzell
UK Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
ISBN: 1591391474
Quick Review: Authors Davis Dyer, Frederick Dalzell, and Rowena Olegario were granted unprecedented access to P&G's corporate archives and exclusive interviews with key executives and employees. They describe the introduction and evolution of such household brands as Ivory, Tide, Crest, and Pampers and illustrate how P&G learned to satisfy consumers and compete in markets all over the world. They also recount insightful lessons about product innovation, global expansion, leadership transformation, business reinvention, and brand building. buy UK() buy US($)
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| | Rudolph Giuliani
Author: Leadership
UK Publisher: Time Warner Paper Backs
ISBN: 0751533335
US Publisher: Miramax Books
ISBN: 0786868414
An Amazon reviewer writes: It seems everybody on Earth has either written a leadership book (e.g., Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Michael Dell, the Who-Moved-My-Cheese Guy) or had one written about them (e.g., Ghingis Khan, Jesus, Blue's Clues). So it's awfully presumptuous, our great admiration for his last months of leadership as NYC's mayor notwithstanding, for Rudy Giuliani to call his leadership book LEADERSHIP.
But what is Rudy Giuliani if not presumptuous, audacious, in-your-face? And, in the final analysis, the book delivers. Big time. There is great advice here, as there is in most books about leadership and management, but the richness of Giuliani's book is the texture, illustrating the points with fascinating "inside" stories from a career that merited giving this kind of advice even if he had not become "our Churchill" after September 11.
In fact, one of the great joys of this book, and a great piece of information to remember, is that Giuliani started writing this book well before the events of 9-11. Our lasting image of him is as a universally loved leader and stateman who transcended politics, but Rudy didn't GET to that position by accident. He knew when to fight, when to coddle, when to get tough, when to mend fences, when to take an unpopular position, when to take risks. He was an incredibly effective, though controversial, prosecutor, and an incredibly effective, though controversial, mayor. This book tells you all the stories, and shows you why he was so successful. Absolutely, the September 11 stuff is gripping, maybe the best material we can get our hands on about the event. But this was no quickie project designed to capitalize on the mayor's strength during that crisis.
This book was a long time coming, as was Giuliani's performance when the eyes of the world were on him. There is just so much great information, so many great stories, so much good advice, that you'll simultaneously find yourself rushing to take it in, and slowing down to make it last.
-Michael Craig
buy UK() buy US($)
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| | Running an Effective Help Desk
Author: Barbara Czegel
UK Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Ltd
ISBN: 0471248169
Quick Review: Many companies have implemented traditional Help Desk Operations. If clients have a computer problem, they pick up the phone and either log in the problem via voice mail or immediately reach a Help Desk Operator. This book aims to guide the Help Desk department through each step of setting up both a traditional and web-related Help Desk. The book contains ready-to-use templates in both Word and HTML formats for many different Help Desk projects. buy UK() buy US($)
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