Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Dan’s Biz Bookshelf: The Cult of the Customer

The Cult of the Customer: Create an Amazing Experience that Turns Satisfied Customers into Customer Evangelists

I am a customer service fanatic. I am nuts about great customer service, customer service stories, and most of all, good books about customer service—how to train people to deliver it and how it helps companies surpass their competition.

This is an especially appropriate book because we are in the time of very poor customer service. I am sure this is because of the labor shortage which is certainly causing a dip in customer service. And then, of course, there are the people who are coming to work untrained.

But being the glass-half-full guy that I am, I see this as an opportunity, especially in our business. What better time to improve your customer service while everyone else’s is terrible?

As Shep Hyken points out in this book, a great deal of customer service is the attitude of the people in your company, especially those on the front lines.

One thing to always remember: The better you treat your employees, the better they will treat your customers. (Now there’s a line I’ve written a few thousand times).

Okay let’s get to some of the better tidbits from this amazing book. For example: “Companies who deliver a great customer experience turn their customers into evangelists.”

How would you like to have your customers bragging about you? Telling other people how great you are and that they should be doing business with you?

How would like to have employees who love helping other people, especially their customers?

How would you like your employees to work together to make sure that your customers love working with your company?

Well, it all begins by creating a cult, a good cult, but nevertheless a cult of people who are so focused on delivering great customer service that their spirit is contagious enough to “infect” other people in the company.

“Every organization that deals with customers operates within one of the five clearly definable cults. Unfortunately, most are operating at a level that does not consistently result in amazement.”

By making this statement the author means that just plain good customer service is not enough. Rather, our customer service must be so great that it amazes the customer.

And that means emphasizing what he calls “The Cult of Amazement.”

From the book:

• The cult of amazement results when you consistently deliver moments of magic. That is, habitually provide a series of (at least) above average customer experience.
• To move up the ladder to the cult of amazement, you must engage not only your customers, but everyone in your organization. Including your internal customers, who may never actually meet or speak with your outside customers.
• There is no loyalty without confidence and there is no confidence without consistency.

And one last piece of advice from this book with so many pearls of wisdom when it comes to customer service advice:

“Find underwhelmed customers… and wow them!” And as we all know, there are plenty of underwhelmed customers around these days, so do what he recommends.

And please read this book; if not for your sake, do it for your customers.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group. 

The Cult of the Customer: Create an Amazing Experience that Turns Satisfied Customers into Customer Evangelists

Author: Shep Hyken

Copyright: 2020

Publisher: Sound Wisdom Press

Price: $19.95

Pages: 280 with index