The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty by Rick DeLisi

The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty Reviews

• 
  Cindy (BKind2Books)

  Solid advice on customer service, but by the end I found myself kind of oversold. The basic premise - that customer service these days is about making it easy vs making it 'delightful' - is good and the author backs it with solid examples and studies. But I think that the book focused more on the customer 'call center' model and less on face-to-face / customer service driven areas. He does not make this applicable to the restaurant / corner pharmacy / grocery store and that's where much of this is sorely needed. Still there were a few good take-aways, even if it wasn't easy to dig them out. Perhaps the author needed to take a little of his own advice.
• 
  Adam Clark

  One of the more solid business books I've read this year. The data-based conclusions are really eye-opening. I believe this is will be considered one of the best business books on customer service and customer engagement to be written in the past 5-10 years. If you don't read this, you will have a big gap in your understanding of customer service and the reality of customer loyalty.
• 
  Chrisman

  I'm glad that it was for bookclub, because the value of this book for me was in the discussions I had with coworkers about applying these thoughts and ideas to other domains, or to things that are specific to what we do.
  
  I 100% agree with the underlying principle, but don't think I would have gotten as much out of it on my own.
• 
  Keith Greywood

  Essential reading for those in business, especially managers, marketers and those involved with customer service. Want loyal customers? Reduce the effort of the customer at every touchpoint.
  
  #effortlessread
• 
  Angela Lam

  The essence of the book is this: customer service doesn’t drive loyalty, and it’s more important to reduce customer effort.
  
  This is probably the best book I've read on customer service because:
  1. It's backed by hard data
  2. It's clearly structured with clear research findings + practical how-to tips and examples (even though this is a relatively new approach so the strategies/examples are not always very robust. there's still a load of practical stuff that can be used immediately by any company)
  3. As a business owner and customer, I can really identify with the recommendations in the book. Every other CS book tells me fluffy stuff like why it's important to "wow" the customer and "go the extra mile"....the findings in this book rings true for me and I agree that as a customer, I sometimes just want things to be smooth and effortless .
  
  BUT I feel that the bulk of the book's research and examples are focused on CS in the context of SERVICE RECOVERY, i.e. when customers contact you to resolve an issue. For people looking at service from a broader perspective, i.e. crafting a service experience as part of a wider USP, this book does NOT address it.
  
  Because of that, I should've given the book 4*
  But because it's soooohard to find really good CS books (and because the ideas were really useful), I'm giving it 5*
  
  The book starts with 4 surprising research findings:
  • It doesn’t pay to delight customers. Customers whose expectations were exceeded were only marginally more loyal than those whose expectations were met.
  • Satisfaction doesn’t predict loyalty.
  • Customer service interactions are 4x more likely to drive disloyalty than loyalty. [This is linked to my observation above that "CS" in this book seems to be used interchangeably with call-center services]
  • Out of 5 main drivers of disloyalty, 4 had to do with customers' perceived effort to get their issue resolved. So, a key to reducing disloyalty is to reduce customer effort.
  
  The rest of the book address how to go about creating and implementing an effortless experience.
  It talks about the 4 pillars for reducing customer effort
  • Make self-service easy and sticky
  • Minimize repeat calls with “next issue avoidance”
  • Reduce customers' perceived effort.
  • Give reps more control over customer interactions.
  
  Each of these 4 pillars came with really good tips/insights which I feel are the best part of the book
  This is followed by a bunch of less impressive/comprehensive points about implementation. Granted, the authors caveat that the whole concept of an effortless expreinece is still relatively new so there aren't that many proven implementation frameworks yet.
  
  Still, I'd highly recommend this for any one with responsibilities in customer service, business development or even sales and marketing.
  
  Book summary at:
  https://readingraphics.com/book-summa...
• 
  Sara

  Insightful book based on the premise that the idea of “delighting the customer” is a fool’s errand for most organizations to chase. The truth is most users of your product don’t want to have to reach out for help or to troubleshoot; they just want it to work. This book covers strategies to diagnose where you are inflicting high amounts of customer effort and what you can do to reduce it. Enjoyed this book!
• 
  Alaeddin Hallak

  This is some truly groundbreaking stuff in thinking about customer loyalty and customer experience! Backed by extensive research from all around the world, the author effectively make the case of reducing customer effort in order to mitigate customer disloyalty. They emphasize that this is not the latest fad in customer service, but a complete cultural shift that, when executed right, can have great impact on an organization's bottom line. Highly recommend this book for anyone involved in customer service, product design, or even intending on starting their own business.
• 
  Brian Nicholson

  The Effortless Experience provides solid research supporting the pursuit of reducing customer effort as a way to drive loyalty. Much of the research and advice is focused on customer service, although reducing customer effort applies more broadly than that (as at least one chapter addresses). The authors make a good case for using CES (customer effort score) as a way to measure transactional relationship data, even if your company is already using something like NPS (net promoter score) for measuring overall relationship data.
• 
  Daryl

  There was a lot of good information in this book, though it wound up being a bit drier than I had expected after reading the first few pages. It's obviously not for everybody. I'd recommend it for most anybody who's in the position of trying to figure out how to make products easier to use and support. I don't think I'm likely to run out and insist that my company shift its quality metrics to a Customer Effort Score system (what the book touts), but there were many things in the book that did make me think "we should do that."
• 
  Tim

  Depending on your wants and needs this book might be everything you need in the moment (or more), or not so much. In my case, I found it extremely valuable in regards to a current problem where FCR is an issue. We won't be moving away from that metric but I think we will improve our scores (and performance).
• 
  Theodore Kinni

  Love the thesis here: Forget about delighting customers. If you want their business, make it effortless for them to give it to you. Simple and smart!
• 
  Ana Claudia Santos-Cortez

  The only reason I ain’t giving this book a 5-star rating is because I’m confident it didn’t explore the full potential of assessing experience in a more broad range of services and products. It focuses on contact center strategy and operations - which I absolutely understand since that was the forum assessed in the groups selected for the research - but two or three chapters extrapolating how such learnings could impact strategy in product companies would be the cherry on top of the cake.
  I’m just sorry to not seeing more examples like the Apple stores one.
  
  A very insightful book with representative data on what makes customers more loyal to a company considering both its product and service provided by front line agents.
  
  Language and presentation can easily be understood by professionals that do not work, yet, directly in customer experience or service, as the authors put effort in explaining complex concepts as simple ones.
  
  Personally I’ve learned from the book a few ideas on how to challenge my own management work and I’m confident others will take insights as well.
• 
  Eduardo Xavier

  When it comes to customer services, you're going to hear a lot about delight customer. Mathew Dixon present his empirical quantitative research showing numbers that would change out vision about this and focus on customer engagement by mitigating risk of disloyalty. He explores and explain numbers and services scenarios, describing what irritates customers, take our attention to he calls the Next Issue Avoidance, which is about being proactive, taking measures understand people, treat them with principles and positive languages. He delves into experience engineering which reminds something between of being proactive and persuasive. He shows off techniques to do that, also samples and good framework to start anew.
  I really enjoy this work because of my context at moment, it has a kind of general view but also present a practical path in order to fit as guidance.
  I do recommend to any who never had to deal about build a customer service yet.
  
• 
  Jacek Bartczak

  This is the 3rd book written by M. Dixon:
  - "The Challenger Sale" was about changing how potential clients view his problem,
  - "The Challenger Customer" was about helping the client dealing with his customer buying process,
  - "The Effortless Experience" is about reducing effort connection with product/service.
  
  The book about customer service. About that kind of customer service who deals with inquiries like "my internet connection is not working" or "I cannot log in to my account" - rather simple repeatable issues. 
  
  Some thoughts are applicable in "deeper" customer service as well - wherever some kind of relationship between company and client / potential client appears:
  - delight your customers ---> reduce effort connected with your product/service,
  - "No, it is not possible" ---> "in your case, the best option is...",
  - "be nice" ---> find a way to help your client,
  - "solve customer issue" ---> help client avoids next issue.
  
  
• 
  Chad Horenfeldt

  Essential reading for anyone in customer support. I came away with it having ideas for the overall customer success function. I believe there is too much emphasis placed on delighting the customer then trying to get the outcomes that drive real value. “Delight” only goes so far. I found the book to have tactical approaches that make compete sense. This isn’t an easy read but they do try by adding great examples. The book also ties the concepts together well at the end. The last chapter helps you think about how to apply these concepts beyond the call center.
  
  I would also give this to your support managers as well.
• 
  Mike Trigg

  I'd put this up there with Matthew Dixon's previous book, the Challenger Sale. This book is equally thought provoking and disruptive to conventional wisdom for customer service leaders as the Challenger Sale was to sales leaders. Though probably not as interesting as a general business book, The Effortless Experience presents a new and compelling way of thinking about how to drive customer loyalty by minimizing the "effort" (measured by "Customer Effort Score") it requires to do business with your company. Great read for anyone responsible for customer service/support/success/experience in their organization.
• 
  Stephanie Alexis

  As someone who is new to the philosophy of reducing customer effort, The Effortless Experience was such a valuable read. I appreciate how the authors used concrete statistics, real-life case studies, and plain language to explain the value of focusing reducing effort and helping customers serve themselves. Highly recommended to those entering the customer service industry and want to make a difference for the organization they're working with.
• 
  JP

  Backed by a plenitude of research and experience, this book is on its own a worthy response to the belief that a culture of delighting clients is the secret to business success. The authors show how making experiences easier is what is a actually paramount. The also show how framing the expectations around the experience can help, even in cases where it's hard or impossible to further improve the experience itself.
• 
  Nathan

  The premise of the book, that minimizing customer effort is key to building loyalty, is a sound one. Certainly, the book makes you stop and reevaluate assumptions concerning customer service.
  
  My one complaint is that it focuses almost exclusively on call centres. Yet, the information contained is fairly easily extrapolated, so I still recommend this book to those looking to increase their level of customer loyalty and service.
• 
  Justin Melloni

  We picked up this book because we are setting up a Customer Support Portal and thought it might help. It gave some good insight, but it seems more like it is oriented to people running a Call Center. It was a little longwinded in trying to get to it's point which is that you want to give the customer a low effort experience. Overall, it was an alright read.
• 
  Tyler Dick

  Definitely a good read if you are working or managing a Support center. It gives a counter-argument to the idea of "delighting" customers. The best way we can delight a customer is by making their interaction as easy as possible rather than investing in what we do or say to those customers. Definitely a great idea, with some very valuable lessons.
• 
  Calin

  I couldn't finish it. It's not that I don't agree with what the authors write or the theories presentated in the book. It was just painful to go through; is not friendly written and it takes a lot of pages to get to the point. I felt I'm wasting my time and my concentration was flying away that's why after half way point I just gave up.