Q

uestion: What’s the difference between a satisfied customer and a devoted follower?

Answer: Seventy-five percent of satisfied customers abandon a company for its competitor. A devoted follower is a customer who takes your brand to heart. Authors Chip Bell and John Patterson give you the keys to customers’ hearts in their new book, Take Their Breath Away: How Imaginative Service Creates Devoted Customers (John Wiley & Sons, 2009).

The authors point out that management expert and best-selling author Tom Peters once said,“Customers perceive service in their own idiosyncratic, emotional, irrational, end-of-the-day and totally human terms. Perception is all there is.” Understanding that perception and how to meet those sometimes irrational expectations is the goal of the book.

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