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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. 
 | | The DNA of Customer Experience: How Emotions Drive Value
Author: Colin Shaw
UK Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 0230500005
In this book, Colin Shaw talks you through the four clusters of emotions that have
been statistically proven, he says, to increase Customer's short term spend and drive or destroy Customer loyalty. These clusters of emotions are also, claims the author, proven to increase or decrease your Net Promoter Score. (Fred Reichheld and Satmetrics’ widely-publicised system for assessing customer advocacy through their ‘One Ultimate Question’). The book claims to reveal a simple way to prove to the accountants how improving your Customer Experience provides substantial financial returns. Now you can "Show them the money!" The author also claims to go one stage further and tell you how to evoke these emotions.
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| | The Dream Society: How The Coming Shift From Information to Imagination Will Transform Your Business
Author: Rolf Jensen
UK Publisher: McGraw-Hill Publishing
ISBN: 0071379681
The Dream Society’s distinguishing characteristic, according to Rolf Jensen, is that in a world of material affluence, much of current work is rendered obsolete by technology, and companies will compete through their myths. The product will be secondary and instead the company with the best story will win. Written by Rolf Jensen, Director of the highly respected academic think-tank The Copenhagen Institute, the book tracks the implications of this observation on corporate and consumer behaviour in the industrialised countries. Companies will become tribes and work will become "hard fun". He writes: "The market for dreams would soon eclipse the market for information-based reality. The market for feelings would eclipse the market for tangible products".” The book has missed reviews from readers on Amazon. It’s in our book store because Tom Peters quotes it a lot at our conferences and that’s good enough for us. buy UK() buy US($)
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| | The E-customer Care Pocketbook
Author: Mike Applegarth, Adrian Guttridge and Keith Posner
UK Publisher: Management Pocketbooks
ISBN: 187047189X
US Publisher:
ISBN:
Quick Review: Forrester Research shows that in 1997 one per cent of customer interactions took place over the Internet. By the year 2003 this figure is predicted to rise to 50 per cent. Customers today are able to contact their suppliers more easily, more frequently, at different times of the day and night and in many more ways than ever before. Often they use a combination of channels, choosing from mail, e-mail, telephone, fax or face-to-face contact. Organizations must ensure that they integrate their communications channels in order to project a single face to the customer.
This book addresses the issues affecting customer service in the digital age. In particular it looks at the implications of e-commerce and the role of call centres. HR issues are dealt with too. The authors conclude that those organizations that can integrate their distribution channels and supporting systems will be the likely winners in customer service. The Pocketbook Series comprises more than 60 titles in the areas of training finance.
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| | The Elephant and the Flea
Author: Charles Handy
UK Publisher: Arrow
ISBN: 0099415658
Quick Review: We are faced with a tug-of-war between our desire for a separate identity and our need for combination. We want to be ourselves, but, to survive in a bigger world, we also need to be part of something bigger. Fleas need elephants, just as elephants need fleas to keep them alert and dancing.‘This applies to my own life story, as I found elephants too imprisoning to my eventual freedom as a flea. But the idea also applies to economies who need both, to business which has to structure itself to allow fleas to co-exist with the elephants, to society which needs to encourage individualism but needs the conformity of the elephant, to education, to religion, to marriage and other relationships, and to all people seeking to structure their lives.’ buy UK() buy US($)
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| | The End of Management and the Rise of Organizational Democracy
Author: Kenneth Cloke & Joan Goldsmith
UK Publisher: Jossey Bass Wiley
ISBN: 078795912X
Quick Review: The End of Management and the Rise of Organizational Democracy calls for a radical set of organizational development initiatives that will combat the destructive forces of globalization, put an end to authoritarian, paternalistic management, and move organizations toward a new "organizational democracy." Kenneth Cloke and Joan Goldsmith detail the practical opportunities, alternatives, and models for these new organizations and challenge leaders to transform their workplace environment into one shaped by a context of values, ethics, and integrity. buy UK() buy US($)
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| | The Essential Drucker
Author: Peter Drucker
UK Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 006093574X
The Essential Drucker comprises twenty-six selections from Drucker’s incredible six decades of pioneering management thinking. Originally this book was suggested to him by his Japanese translator, who created a volume twice the size for the Japanese market. Drucker’s American editor then pared that work down to this Essential volume. The book is a great introduction to Drucker, but draws on only ten of his thirty or so management books.
The highly reliable and insightful Amazon reviewer Donald Mitchell says this: “What the book does contain is a fairly easy to follow series of 26 excerpts from the ten books, organized into three sections: Management, Individual, and Society. These books date back to 1954…This overview will mainly be valuable to managers who have read very little Drucker, since there is essentially no new material in the book. The excerpts are also not connected by any transitions, so there is no additional perspective available from the book's organization.
Here are the sources of the chapters:
The New Realities, Chapters 1 and 26;
Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, Chapters 2, 3, 5, and 18;
Managing for the Future, Chapters 4 and 19;
Management Challenges for the 21st Century, Chapters 6, 15, 21;
Managing in a Time of Great Change, Chapters 7 and 23;
Practice of Management, Chapter 8;
Frontiers of Management, Chapter 9;
Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Chapters 10-12, 20, and 24;
The Effective Executive, Chapters 13, 14, 16, and 17; and
Post-Capitalist Society, Chapters 22 and 25.
If you are not familiar with Professor Drucker, he is generally considered to be the first person to think systematically about what management is and needs to become. He was also the first to identify that we were moving into a knowledge-based society where the focus of work and the ways that work is organized would have to be totally transformed.
His definition of what a business must do is the most often quoted one around: "The purpose of a business is to create a customer." Innovation and marketing are the prime tasks. The book is especially deep in references to his seminal thinking on how to innovate and to operate entrepreneurial businesses. He was also the first twentieth century thinker to see the connection between management of for profit and non-profit organizations, and that both types of organizations are needed in growing numbers for a sound society.”
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| | The Eternal E-customer
Author: Bryan Bergeron MD, Ray Kurzweil
UK Publisher: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company
ISBN: 007136479X
Quick Review: The text helps readers get up to speed on the use of emotionally intelligent interfaces (EII). EIIs are driven by data from previous customer transactions to provide each client with the individual attention they deserve. The book explains how to create the infrastructure needed to support EIIs. buy UK() buy US($)
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| | The Experience Economy
Author: B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore
UK Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
ISBN: 0875848192
Amazon review: With The Experience Economy, Pine & Gilmore explore how successful companies-using goods as props and services as the stage-create experiences that engage customers in an inherently personal way. Why does a cup of coffee cost more at a trendy cafe than it does at the corner diner or when brewed at home? It's the value that the experience holds for the individual that determines the worth of the offering and the work of the business. From online communities to airport parking, the authors draw from a rich and varied mix of examples that showcase businesses in the midst of creating engaging experiences for both consumers and corporate customers. The Experience Economy marks the debut of an insightful, highly original, and yet eminently practical approach for companies to script and stage compelling experiences. In doing so, all workers become actors, intentionally creating specific effects for their customers. And it's the experiences they stage that create memorable-and lasting-impressions that ultimately create transformations within individuals. Make no mistake, say Pine & Gilmore: goods and services are no longer enough. Experiences are the foundation for future economic growth, and The Experience Economy is the playbook from which managers can begin to direct new performances.
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| | The Fifth Discipline
Author: Peter Senge
UK Publisher: Random House Business Books
ISBN: 1905211201
This year (2006 at time of writing) Peter Senge released an updated version of the Fifth Discipline containing 100 new pages in which he admits some of the weaknesses in his original thesis and shares what he’s learnt over fifteen years of thousands of organizations trying, with varying degrees of success, to turn themselves into a learning organization. This is vital stuff for those of us who want to improve how customer service interacts with customers outside and other departments inside. Highly recommended. If you buy it make sure you buy the April 2006 updated version, though, with the extra pages. Phil Dourado buy UK() buy US($)
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| | The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: a Leadership Fable
Author: Patrick Lencioni
UK Publisher: Jossey Bass
ISBN: 0787960756
Quick review:
This text interweaves with the fictional story of a woman who becomes CEO of a struggling, high-profile company with a dysfunctional executive team, an analysis of the five corruptions, diagnostic questions to help readers assess their organizations, and a teamwork model of the action steps to overcome the corruptions.
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