Delighting Customers: How to Win and Retain Loyal Customers

Customer satisfaction is no longer a guarantee of loyalty, therefore delighting customers is the goal.

This book provides a comprehensive and practical step-by-step guide to delighting customers and building a world class, customer-driven organization. The authors have unrivalled experience of the strategy, development and implementation of customer satisfaction programmes and of building customer-driven organizations. Their companies - Nortel (Northern Telecom) and Oracle Corporation - are among the world's leading high technology companies.

Delighting Customers is, for most people, a natural and satisfying experience; and a compelling if not mandatory business strategy. If it is that obvious, why do so many organizations continue to get it wrong?

The approach of the book is based on the authors' unique "The Ten Step Approach to Delighting Customers". This approach helps the reader through each stage of a delighting customers' programme. It shows how to lay the groundwork and gain commitment of top management; how to measure what is important to customers; how to make change happen; and above all how to win and retain loyal customers. The book concludes with the secrets of becoming a winner.

"Delighting Customers" draws on the best practices, ideas and comments from over 20 leading organizations from around the world, including British Airways, The Prudential Insurance Company of America, IBM, ICL Europe, Forum, KPMG, Nortel (Northern Telecom) and Oracle Corporation.

Peter Donovan is Assistant Vice President, Customer Satisfaction, Worldwide for Nortel (Northern Telecom) Enterprise Networks based in Dallas, USA. Peter is responsible for the strategy, development and implementation of their global customer satisfaction program and was previously Customer Satisfaction Manager for Europe. He has been involved in the field of customer satisfaction since 1991 and has also held positions with British Telecom, Cable and Wireless and GEC/Plessey Telecommunications (GPT), covering all aspects of the product life cycle from research and development to customer operations. He is actively involved with the leading thinkers in this field and, whilst in Europe, was Chairman of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) working group on customer satisfaction.

Timothy Samler is General Manager, Customer Satisfaction Programmes, Oracle Corporation. He is responsible for customer programmes for Oracle's key customers in Europe. His international experience encompasses high technology, manufacturing, financial services, business process engineering and logistics. Timothy, a British-Canadian, has over 20 years experience leading organizational change both as a senior manager and as a consultant. After 15 years in North America, latterly as the IT Director of a Canadian telecommunications company, he joined KPMG Management Consulting in Europe and in 1993 joined Oracle. Timothy holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master's degree in Business Administraation. He lives near London, England.