Creating Do-It-Yourself Customers: How Great Customer Experiences Build Great Companies

Self-checkout, self-customization, and other co-production efforts are on the rise. But it's a boon to business only if customers do their share. This book proves that by setting appropriate expectations, providing the necessary tools and environment, delivering appropriate rewards, and developing specific knowledge and skill, companies can condition customers to activate their expertise to achieve greater value. As customers become more proficient, they realize the full value of the product offering, while the company benefits from cost reduction, greater employee satisfaction, and deeper customer loyalty. This resourceful book helps readers evaluate the need for customer performance solutions, develop value-added services, devise reward systems, and implement customer performance initiatives. Helping readers interpret customer performance issues, it also enables them to recognize situations where high-tech or human innovation can bolster customer involvement.

Peter C. Honebein, Ph.D., is a business consultant and experience designer. He specializes in designing systems and experiences that launch innovations and improve the performance of employees and customers. Peter has created products such as the DTP Advisor (Broderbund Software), designed a system that tracked the cleanup of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and consulted on the design of more than 40 products, including the system that sequenced the human genome. His industry experience spans advertising, banking, biotechnology, civil engineering, computer hardware, gaming, government, retail, software, telecommunications, and transportation.

Peter is an adjunct professor at Indiana University and the University of Nevada, Reno. He is author of numerous articles and the book Strategies for Effective Customer Education.

Roy F. Cammarano is a business consultant and formerly division president with Premiere Global Services (NYSE: PGI). Additionally, he has led three Inc. 500 companies and was an executive officer and consultant in the publishing, leisure, retail, and consumer product industries.

As a senior executive, Roy specializes in leading high-growth, dynamic environments. He has experience in nearly all operational functions, including creating strategic business and action plans, designing and formalizing systems that support plans, developing and managing human assets, and directing the financial functions of the organization.

Roy has been a contributing editor to Success magazine, was a featured speaker at Inc. magazine's business conferences, and is the author of the award-winning book, Entrepreneurial Transitions