Reinventing the Wheel
The Science of Creating Lifetime Customers
By: Chris Zane
Published: March 8, 2011
Format: Hardcover, 240 pages
ISBN-10: 9781935618157
ISBN-13: 978-1935618157
Publisher: BenBella Books
"Rather than obsessing over textbook concepts like inventory turns or the cost of goods sold, all I had to do was think about how to make our customers think good things about us. That customer sentiment would be the determining factor in whether we would ultimately be successful or not", writes entrepreneur, speaker, customer service expert, and Founder and President of Zane's Cycles, Chris Zane, in his business transformational and customer satisfaction building book Reinventing the Wheel: The Science of Creating Lifetime Customers. The author describes how the real objective of any business is not selling products or services, but is rather about selling customer experiences.
Chris Zane understands that the real competitive advantage for a business is creating a superior customer experience through providing the finest customer service imaginable. While many business people concentrate on having the lowest prices, cutting costs, and other complex aspects of business operations, Chris Zane offers over the top customer service as the true difference maker. To achieve the greatest customer service, and the resulting lifelong customer value and referral benefits, the business person must first determine the real nature of their product and service line. For Chris Zane, simply selling a product is not what the customer is buying. In the view of the customer, they are purchasing a good experience. By changing the focus to that of what the customer values, a company will become more successful in every way.
Chris Zane (photo left) doesn't simply believe in meeting the expectations of the customer. Instead, he supports over-exceeding even the highest ideals of the customer. The shift in thinking from selling, and placing the emphasis on building trusting customer relationships, Chris Zane runs counter to the standard business concept of maximizing short term profits. Instead, by providing a strong wow factor, Chris Zane provides evidence that the business will benefit many times over in the long term. A few of Chris Zane's business practices offer that wow factor to customers:
* Find the emotional connection to the customer
* End nickel and diming customers for every service
* Walk the walk and stand by your word and policies
* Trade in, trade up where customers have the opportunity to trade up
* Build unconditional trusting relationships with customers
* Expand the circle of customers
* Become involved in the community
* Become a leader in environmental causes
For me, the power of the book is how Chris Zane combines his strong theoretical concepts for creating superior customer experiences with his real world experience with his cycling shop business. The author not only suggests values and ideals, but lives them as well. Very often, business people will champion customer service as a key source of competitive advantage, but will fail to follow through on that promise. Chris Zane not only talks the talk, but rides that bike as well.
This book could just as easily be considered a treatise on the lifetime, and even inter-generational value of building and strengthening trusting customer relationships. There is much literature, and many books about customer relationships as key to long term success, but this book offers real life examples and proof of the power and sheer joy of those same relationships. This gem of a book is a treat for anyone who believes strongly in relationship and trust building as the basic foundations of business success.
I highly recommend the customer relationship focused book Reinventing the Wheel: The Science of Creating Lifetime Customers by Chris Zane, to anyone seeking a practical, and hands on approach to developing lifelong, trust filled customer relationships built on over-delivery of the best possible customer service. Anyone can meet the expectations of a customer. Chris Zane demonstrates the courage to go far beyond those expectations, and creating the ultimate service based industry, through a clear understanding of knowing the true reason for the company's very existence.
Read the essential and indispensable customer service book Reinventing the Wheel: The Science of Creating Lifetime Customers by Chris Zane, and discover the value of understanding your company's real purpose, how to establish and continually improve superior customer service, and the lifetime value and mutual benefit of trusting lifelong customer relationships. This book will change the very way that you do business in your company.
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