Driven to Delight: Delivering World-Class Customer Experience the Mercedes-Benz Way


Book Description

"A powerful and inspiring look 'inside the tent' of Mercedes-Benz that will help you learn how large companies make big changes in short timespans." --Guy Kawasaki, Chief Evangelist of Canva and author of The Art of the Start 2.0 "I can’t remember having read a more compelling example of how great luxury brands aren’t just made but are nurtured. Driven to Delight offers essential lessons on the direct and undeniable relationship between how much you value and respect your customers and how they reward you for that consideration." --Mike Jackson, Chairman, CEO, and President, AutoNation "Joseph Michelli's latest book is a masterful roadmap for transforming the relationship between leaders, employees, and the customers they serve." --Tom Rath, author of StrengthsFinder 2.0 and Are You Fully Charged? "The revolution in customer care that MBUSA is currently undertaking is rivaled only by the revolution that Mercedes began with the invention of the automobile. Dr. Michelli’s book provides the most comprehensive look at how MBUSA is undertaking and succeeding at this transformative initiative." --Alex Gellert, CEO, Merkley & Partners "Kudos to Steve Cannon and Joseph Michelli. Steve is the rare CEO who is brutally honest—in a public forum—about his own iconic organization’s growing pains. Joseph’s ability to present a compelling case study is unparalleled. If Driven to Delight can’t convince you of the bottom line benefits of balancing service and technology to differentiate from your competition, your days are numbered." --Doug Lipp, international business consultant and bestselling author of Disney U "Once again Joseph Michelli gives us a glimpse into one of the worlds’ great brands and customer experiences. Joseph helps us understand how Mercedes Benz leadership transformed and elevated sales and service experiences. Additionally, he takes the reader on a journey to examine their own organization and determine how to apply these principles and lessons in their own business. This is an important read for leaders who want to grow their businesses, by improving customers’ lives." --Jeanne Bliss, President, CustomerBliss, and bestselling author of Chief Customer Officer 2.0 and I Love You More Than My Dog "Mercedes Benz's story demonstrates the leadership and commitment that's required to transform customer experience within a large organization. The book does a great job of capturing how the company engaged all of its employees and partners on a journey to deliver upon its brand promise, which required much more than just designing great cars." --Bruce Temkin, CCXP, Customer Experience Transformist & Managing Partner, Temkin Group "Most business leaders will tell you how important it is to delight their customers—who wouldn't? But most don't. This is the story of Steve Cannon's journey to take Mercedes Benz from 'good to best'—the diagnosis, the plan, the process design, the management and measurement, but most importantly, the leadership that is making 31,600 people, 99.5 percent of whom don't work for him, WANT to deliver it." --Andrew Robertson, President and CEO, BBDO Worldwide, Inc.




Delight Your Customers


Book Description

Discover the hidden ways to raise your organizations’ customer service experiences from ordinary to extraordinary. If you want to know how strong your company’s customer service is, ask your employees to describe what their work entails. Then pay attention to whether they simply list their duties and tasks or if they speak to the true essence of their job--to create delighted customers who will be less price sensitive, have higher repurchase rates, and enthusiastically recommend the company or brand to others. The latter should be every employee’s highest priority, because when it’s not, your customers are merely the recipients of a transaction, not an experience, and transactions do not make for a lasting impression or inspire loyalty. In Delight Your Customers, customer service expert Steve Curtin makes a compelling case that customer service managers need to shift from monitoring service activities to modeling, recognizing, and reinforcing the behaviors that create happy and returning customers. Things such as: Expressing genuine interest Offering sincere compliments Sharing unique knowledge Conveying authentic enthusiasm Providing pleasant surprises Delivering service heroics when needed Simply based on their own personal experiences, everyone knows that great customer service is rare. So why wouldn’t you want to provide a unique, caring, and beneficial experience for all your customers to rave about with others? With the real-world stories, examples, and strategies shared in Delight Your Customers, you can take the customer service experience you offer from ordinary to extraordinary.




Prescription for Excellence: Leadership Lessons for Creating a World Class Customer Experience from UCLA Health System


Book Description

THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER! “Like any business, a hospital must be true to its core values in order to succeed. ‘Trickle-down values’ start at the top with the best leadership, so that all the stakeholders understand and carry out the institution’s mission. That is the gift that David F einberg has brought to U CLA. I am in awe of his management skills.” —Lynda Resnick, owner of Pom Wonderful, Fiji Water, Teleflora, and Wonderful Pistachios “With clear purpose, unwavering principles, and steadfast leadership, the people at UCLA have established a new bar, a compelling promise, for what healthcare can and should be.” —David M. Lawrence, M.D., former CEO, Kaiser Permanente “An absorbing and educational account of a large institution’s astonishing transformation. The strong, courageous, and focused leadership of David Feinberg and his outstanding team is evident on every page. A tremendous lesson for all large enterprises.” —William E. Simon, Jr., cochairman, William E. Simon & Sons “Most leadership authors describe how to apply common-sense principles. Michelli is a notable exception. He artfully describes the compelling, uncommon leadership practices that transformed UCLA Health System. The resulting lessons are plentiful and powerful for today’s business leader.” —Lee J. Colan, Ph.D., author of Sticking to It: The Art of Adherence About the Book: Joseph Michelli, author of The Starbucks Experience and The New Gold Standard, is among the world’s top authorities on the principles of creating an organizational culture dedicated to service excellence. In these bestselling books, he examines how leading service companies dominate their respective industries with innovative customerexperience strategies. Now, Michelli turns his attention to one of the most complex, controversial, and critical industries—healthcare. In Prescription for Excellence, Michelli provides an inside look at an organization that has become the envy of its industry—and explains how you can dominate your own industry by using the same approach. UCLA Health System is revered worldwide for its top-tier patient/customer care. Great physicians, nurses, researchers, and staff are only part of the equation; UCLA’s overall success is a result of organization-wide collaboration that is driven by leaders with a shared vision of unyielding excellence. Michelli breaks down UCLA’s approach into five simple principles: Commit to Care Leave No Room for Error Make the Best Better Create the Future Service Serves Us From administrative offices to operating rooms to research centers, continued adherence to these five principles has guided UCLA to financial strength, social significance, and sustainability. The best part is that these principles translate to any industry, so you, too, can achieve similar goals. Michelli gives you the tools to adapt UCLA’s ideas, systems, and leadership principles into your own best practices. Whether it is a healthcare organization, a financial institution, or a neighborhood hair salon, good business begins and ends with customer connection. When all workers in an organization focus on providing quality care for those they serve, success inevitably follows. Business is always personal; UCLA’s leadership ensures that this simple truth drives every UCLA employee, every day. Apply the lessons Michelli spells out in Prescription for Excellence to create a system that ensures that your people take business personally, day in and day out.




Demon's Delight


Book Description

In the realm between the living and the undead, between human and immortal, four of today's most thrilling authors explore the delight that ensues when opposites come together in these never-before-published paranormal tales... New York Times bestselling author MaryJanice Davidson challenges a charlatan exorcist with a sexy dead woman-and an unnatural romance. USA Today bestselling author Emma Holly introduces a beautiful scientist to the realm of the Demon World...and an irresistible male she has experimented on. National bestselling author Vickie Taylor throws a hell-bent man into the arms of a beautiful dark angel who is driven by ethereal desires of her own. And national bestselling author Catherine Spangler gives a vampire prostitute a last chance at redemption when an angelic hunk offers her a night of divine lovemaking.




Drive


Book Description

The New York Times bestseller that gives readers a paradigm-shattering new way to think about motivation from the author of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing Most people believe that the best way to motivate is with rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That's a mistake, says Daniel H. Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others). In this provocative and persuasive new book, he asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction-at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world. Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose-and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action in a unique book that will change how we think and transform how we live.




Mindchamps Way, The: How To Turn An Idea Into A Global Movement


Book Description

How do a passion to create an education revolution and the business acumen to fuel rapid and spectacular global expansion co-exist within one organisation?Find out in The MindChamps Way ...In his latest insightful study of strategy and leadership, Joseph Michelli (#1 New York Times & Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author), shares the unique philosophy and the values-driven strategies of a dynamic organization, whose growing presence on the world stage has the potential to fundamentally shape the future of 'individuals, families, communities, countries, and education systems' across the globe.The MindChamps Way demonstrates how combining a strong, 'big-picture' philosophy with a carefully planned and executed business strategy can inspire staff, clients and an unlikely range of interested stakeholders.Read how:




Driven


Book Description

Shortlisted for the Bressani Literary Prize • A Globe and Mail Book of the Year • A CBC Books Best Canadian Nonfiction of 2021 In conversations with drivers ranging from veterans of foreign wars to Indigenous women protecting one another, Di Cintio explores the borderland of the North American taxi. “The taxi,” writes Marcello Di Cintio, “is a border.” Occupying the space between public and private, a cab brings together people who might otherwise never have met—yet most of us sit in the back and stare at our phones. Nowhere else do people occupy such intimate quarters and share so little. In a series of interviews with drivers, their backgrounds ranging from the Iraqi National Guard, to the Westboro Baptist Church, to an arranged marriage that left one woman stranded in a foreign country with nothing but a suitcase, Driven seeks out those missed conversations, revealing the unknown stories that surround us. Travelling across borders of all kinds, from battlefields and occupied lands to midnight fares and Tim Hortons parking lots, Di Cintio chronicles the many journeys each driver made merely for the privilege to turn on their rooflight. Yet these lives aren’t defined by tragedy or frustration but by ingenuity and generosity, hope and indomitable hard work. From night school and sixteen-hour shifts to schemes for athletic careers and the secret Shakespeare of Dylan’s lyrics, Di Cintio’s subjects share the passions and triumphs that drive them. Like the people encountered in its pages, Driven is an unexpected delight, and that most wondrous of all things: a book that will change the way you see the world around you. A paean to the power of personality and perseverance, it’s a compassionate and joyful tribute to the men and women who take us where we want to go.




Dixieland Delight


Book Description

There is no college ball more passionate and competitive than football in the Southeastern Conference, where seven of the twelve schools boast stadiums bigger than any in the NFL and 6.5 million fans hit the road every year to hoot and holler their teams to victory. In September 2006, popular sports columnist and lifelong University of Tennessee fan Clay Travis set out on his "Dixieland Delight Tour." Without a single map, hotel reservation, or game ticket, he began an 8,000-mile journey through the beating heart of the Southland. As Travis toured the SEC, he immersed himself in the bizarre game-day rituals of the common fan, brazenly dancing with the chancellor's wife at a Vanderbilt frat party, hanging with University of Florida demigod quarterback Tim Tebow, and abandoning himself totally to the ribald intensity and religious fervor of SEC football. Dixieland Delight is Travis's hilarious, loving, irreverent, and endlessly entertaining chronicle of a season of ironic excess in a world that goes a little crazy on football Saturdays.




Customer-Driven Transformation


Book Description

Service design is the activity of utilizing resources and people to build and sustain services that not only meet customers' needs, but also add that little bit of magic or true competitive advantage. In an overcrowded marketplace there is often little opportunity to break away from the pack and influence customer perceptions; Customer-Driven Transformation demonstrates how to use design thinking as a driver for organizational change to translate your vision into compelling services that will delight your customers. How did companies like Netflix, Airbnb and Uber revolutionize industries and win loyal followers? They started here. By thinking about what customers need foremost, you can reinvent your value proposition and deliver services that work. Customer-Driven Transformation shows how to instill an outside-in approach to strategy, moving away from management that's technology, marketing or resource optimization-led, towards being customer-inspired and experimental with innovation. It is a practical guide for any business to lead a transformational programme and use design thinking to change how services are created, ensuring they are expertly designed, elegant in use and advance in customer-mindedness. With ground-breaking case studies from the likes of E.On Energy, Hyundai Motor Company and Bupa, this cutting-edge book will empower companies to take control of customer experience and deliver long-lasting and impactful change. Focusing on one of the hottest management topics, it is an inspiring read for any business leader to understand how to reinvent their value proposition, gain market share and win customers.




A Life of Adventure and Delight


Book Description

A Life of Adventure and Delight delivers eight masterful stories from dazzlingly original and critically acclaimed author Akhil Sharma. Hailed as a storyteller whose fiction is “a glowing work of art” (Wall Street Journal), Akhil Sharma is possessed of a narrative voice “as hypnotic as those found in the pages of Dostoyevsky” (The Nation). In A Life of Adventure and Delight, Sharma delivers eight masterful stories that focus on Indian protagonists at home and abroad and that plunge the reader into the unpredictable workings of the human heart. A young woman in an arranged marriage awakens one day surprised to find herself in love with her husband. A retired divorcé tries to become the perfect partner by reading women’s magazines. A man’s longstanding contempt for his cousin suddenly shifts inward when he witnesses his cousin caring for a sick woman. Tender and darkly comic, the protagonists in A Life of Adventure and Delight deceive themselves and engage in odd behaviors as they navigate how to be good, how to make meaningful relationships, and the strengths and pitfalls of self-interest. Elegantly written and emotionally immediate, the stories provide an intimate, honest assessment of human relationships between mothers and sons, sons and lovers, and husband and wives from a dazzlingly original, critically acclaimed writer.