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Clued In: How to Keep Customers Coming Back Again and Again
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Sales rank 241,332
Customers rating (based on 11 reviews)
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Every customer has an experience with a product, service, or brand--good or bad. But few businesses know how to systematically manage customer experience, so they lose their best opportunity to leverage the long-term value of their customer relationships. Now, one of the field's top consultants shows how to engineer customer experiences from start to finish. Experience Engineering founder/CEO Lou Carbone draws on the latest neuroscientific research, explaining how an impressionistic mosaic of physical and emotional sensations is filtered through the senses, assembled into a powerful perception, and crystallized into attitudes that dictate everything from customer satisfaction to long-term loyalty. Next, he systematically explains how to assess and audit existing customer experiences, design and implement new ones, and steward them over time, to ensure consistent excellence and improvement. Increasingly, customer experience is a business' only opportunity for differentiation. This book gives readers the tools to craft an outstanding customer experience, no matter what they sell, or to whom it is sold.Readers will leave this book with a clear and actionable plan for managing the experiences that define their businesses--and their futures--on a day-to-day basis.
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| Publisher | FT Press | | Release date | 05/2004 | | Availability | Usually ships in 24 hours | | Edition | Hardcover |
| | List price | $34.99 | | Our price | $23.09 (you save 34.01%) | | Used price | from $10.56 |
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 This is great!
Not really sure why I bought this book. The title certainly did nothing to reveal what a gem it would turn out to be. I mean..Clued In? It makes sense once you start reading the book but it is certainly somewhat obscure for a business title.
However, it you do manage to get past the cover, you'll find one of the best books on this topic that I"ve ever read. And I've read quite a few.
Author Lewis Carbone clearly knows his stuff and his passion for the topic comes out as you turn over the pages. The book is literally full of insightful case studies and reveals a depth of understanding and practical advice that makes the book truely memorable.
This is not a book to casually flick through, it demands your serious attention. I'll certainly be going back to it again and again. Buy it!
 Great book, but leaves a few essentials out
Lewis Carbone knows his stuff, and it shows in his offering, Clued In. We are going through the process at our company and, although we see the potential and understand what Carbone means by the "customer experience," it still requires a psychologist on staff to help us understand how to go about "mining for clues." In a nutshell, great book, gets everyone on board in seeing the potential for increased bottom line. But mining for clues is an essential part of the process, and Mr. Carbone leaves the reader with a feeling that the process is somehow mystical.
Great guide book for experience management
Building on The Experience Economy, Carbone's book adds significant details and road maps to achieve experience management. Highly readable.
Highly Recommended!
Pull up a chair, sit down and take notes in this virtual boardroom. With insider details gathered from decision-makers at major corporations, author Lewis P. Carbone gives you a close-up look at the business of customer satisfaction. From Howard Johnson to Starbucks, the author provides you-are-there clues about the customer marketing strategies that have fueled high-profile successes and caused major failures. Reading this book is like eavesdropping on top executives. The author enhances corporate scenarios with helpful charts and timelines that apply to all businesses, from mom-and-pop enterprises to major conglomerates. The text is occasionally repetitive, but that drives home important points. We recommend this solid marketing tool to business owners and managers.
The Prohibitive Cost of Being Clueless
Warren Buffett once said that price is what is charged for a product or service but value is what others think it's worth. I thought about that comment as I began to read Carbone's book. If Buffett's right (and I think he is), the key to getting customers to come back "again and again" is to create for them a purchase experience whose importance includes but is by no means limited to their perception of price relative to value. What else? Carbone: "The tangible attributes of a product or service have far less influence on consumer preference than the unconscious sensory and emotional elements derived from the total experience." He goes on to point out that creating value around multi-dimensional, well-integrated, and consciously managed experiences involves connecting with "the unconscious emotional passions of your customers and in the process, you'll discover how to differentiate yourself from competitors in ways that can be almost impossible to copy and commoditize." I agree.
In Part I, Carbone makes a case for experience management and then, in Part II, explains HOW to do that effectively. In chapters 7-11, he rigorously examines five separate but interdependent disciplines, devoting a separate chapter to each. I especially appreciate his provision of basic questions. For example, here are three which must be answered by application of the Discipline of Assessing Experience:
1. What potential impact does managing customer experiences represent for the organization?
2. How is the experiential value currently being created for customers?
3. What resources are available to improve and optimize the way your organization creates experience value?
The other four Disciplines involve auditing, designing, implementing, and stewarding experiences. Again, Carbone includes for each a cluster of "basic" questions to be answered or areas on which to focus. I also appreciate Carbone's provision of all manner of check-lists, guidelines, and caveats as well as "Figures" which enable his reader to concentrate on both core principles of customer experience management and effective application of them. Throughout the book, he inserts italicized comments such as these:
"No one competence, discipline, or tool will be a universal silver bullet; rather it is the experience management counterpart to Disney's coveted `pixie dust.' It's the innovative blending of numerous perspectives and competencies that unlocks the full potential of experiential value creation." (Page 117)
"Designing experiences begins with the customer and ends with the customer. When clues are aligned with the customer's known desires and emotional needs, distinctive experiential value is being created. When they're not in harmony, conflicts occur and the value created is eroded." (page 190)
"The clues your customers place in the positive zone today may someday be neutralized, becoming basic expectations that no longer provide completive advantage but eventually become minimum thresholds to be met by anyone with ambitions of competing for long-term customer loyalty." (page 219)
I realize that these three brief excerpts are taken out of context. However, hopefully, they will help those who read this brief commentary to obtain at least a sense of what Carbone offers in this book. His customer experience management program is cohesive, comprehensive, and cost-effective. That said, I think it would be a fool's errand to try to implement all of it, either immediately or over an extended period of time. "Getting clued in [to what is of greatest importance to your customers] is the critical first step. From that start, you too will begin to harness the kind of relentless energy that is generated by sensing clues and recognizing their meaning and importance in the eyes [and hearts] of your customers."
In the Afterword, Carbone confides that he now spends much less time trying to convince people to accurately measure the experiential value they create for their customers and much more time explaining how to do it. How accurate and current are your organization's measurements? Unless they are both, your organization cannot possibly manage customer experience, much less increase its value.
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