Passionate And Profitable: Why Customer Strategies Fail And 10 Steps To Do Them Right!

"I’ve always said that education without execution is just entertainment – and Lior illustrates this beautifully in his book. It is important to learn HOW to implement a successful Customer focus strategy and you need knowledge and process to do it well. Read this book and learn."--Tim Sanders, Author of "Love is The Killer App"
"Lior brings original thought to the world of business, ideas drawn from reality, based on solid observations with the clear objective of helping people make money. Read this and profit."--Jerry Vass, Author of "Soft Selling in A Hard World" and President Vass Consulting
"You might not like this book. It's not filled with easy shortcuts and feel-good platitudes. BUT, when you're ready to walk the walk and not just talk the talk) about treating your customers right and growing your business, Lior's book is a fine place to start down that rarely-followed, very profitable path."--Seth Godin Author, Purple Cow & Free Prize Inside
"Lior Arussy is a true customer advocate. This book is a must-read for anyone who knows that the only sustainable competitive advantage is to create a unique and meaningful customer experience."--Ginger Conlon, Editor-in-Chief, CRM magazine
According to Strativity's 2003 CEM global study, 45% of executives surveyed do not believe they deserve the customer’s loyalty. Following a decade of customer-centric books, the market is in a state of crises with over 50% customer focused projects fail. Passionate and Profitable is a new book that takes a critical look at the state of the companies’ commitment to customers and exposes the fatal mistakes companies make and the lip service they pay to their customers.
Full of examples and statistics, Passionate and Profitable argues that customer strategies success depends on making serious tough choices and not cosmetic works. It is those tough trade offs that will help companies unleash their passion for customers and in return, increase their profitability and sales.

Lior Arussy is the founder and President of Strativity Group, Inc. (StativityGroup.com), which works with both Global 2000 companies as well as emerging businesses around the world. Prior to establishing Strativity Group, Arussy held executive positions at NICE Systems and Hewlett-Packard as well as various start-up companies. He is the author of several publications, including The Experience!: How to Wow Your Customers and Create a Passionate Workplace, as well as more than fifty articles in such international publications as Harvard Business Review. Arussy's syndicated column "Focus: Customer" reaches more than 350,000 readers worldwide every month. He also has a bimonthly column for CRM magazine, is the winner of the CRM Influential Leader 2003 award, and is the author of the course "Developing and Executing Customer-centric Strategy" (American Management Association).

"This is a provocative, thoughtful guidebook for executives who are struggling with the complicated questions that surround today's sophisticated buyers." (Monitor, 3/8/06)
“…clearly laid-out…frequent excellent diagrams to illustrate a point…” (Media Week, 16th August 2005)

Introduction: The Top Ten Crucial Mistakes in Customer Strategies.
The Graveyard of Good Intentions.
Failure Factors.
Chapter 1: Understanding the Fatal Mistakes.
Fatal Mistake 1: Culture of the New.
Fatal Mistake 2: Lipstick on the Pig.
Fatal Mistake 3: Passion Loss.
Fatal Mistake 4: Real Cost of Cost Reduction.
Fatal Mistake 5: Failure to Operationalize.
Fatal Mistake 6: You Get What You Pay For.
Fatal Mistake 7: Management of Change.
Fatal Mistake 8: Lack of Leadership.
Fatal Mistake 9: Unstructured Relationship.
Fatal Mistake 10: Technology Shortcut.
Critical Choices.
Chapter 2: Critical Choice 1: Who Are We, Customer Pleasers or Efficiency Crunchers?
Lack of Definition and Criteria.
Intention to Execution Gap.
Price of Efficiency.
Corporation–Customer Experience Aptitude Survey.
Chapter 3: Critical Choice 2: What Is the Role of the Customer in Our Existence?
Inherent Conflict.
The Efficient Relationship Paradox.
Corporations at a Juncture.
What Customers? The Second Tough Choice.
Congratulations, You Are at Par: The New Four Ps.
Chapter 4: Critical Choice 3: What Defines Our Total Experience?
Customer Strategies and the Art of Customer Experience Management.
Demystifying the Experience.
The Emotional Customer.
Developing the Experience.
Customer Experience Analysis.
Customer Experience Mapping.
Reengineering the Experience Guidelines.
Power to the People: The Difficult Shift.
What Is Your Core Experience?
Chapter 5: Critical Choice 4: What Customers Do We Neglect?
Customer Selection Guidelines.
Characteristics of Desirable and Undesirable Customers.
Customer Role.
Customer Job Description.
Company’s Job Description.
Chapter 6: Critical Choice 5: What Kind of Relationships Do We Seek?
Symbiosis versus Competitive Relationships.
What Is the Essence of a Customer-Desired Relationship?
Different Relationships with Different People.
Segmentation Criteria.
Tailoring the Customer’s Experience.
Chapter 7: Critical Choice 6: How Do We Change Our Organization to Avoid the Silo-Based Customer Trap? How Do We Assume Complete Customer Responsibility?
Managing Across All Touch Points.
Touch Points Analysis Mapping.
Obsession with Tools.
Organization-Focused Customer.
Customer-Focused Organization.
Assembler Keeps the Money.
Chapter 8: Critical Choice 7: Do We Employ Functional Robots or Passionate Evangelists?
Attitude, Not Skill.
Employee Experiences.
Employee Loyalty Leads to Customer Loyalty.
Employment Hierarchy.
Guidelines for Employee Experience Reengineering.
Training Is for Dogs—Education Is for People.
Delight Them: They Are Human Too.
Compensation: Follow the Money Trail.
Chapter 9: Critical Choice 8: Post-Sales Dialogue and Service—Do We Really Care?
Culture of the New.
Taking Customers for Granted.
Four Checkpoints for Delivering True Experiences and Relationships.
Required Tools.
Complete Relationship Account.
Visualizing Value.
Culture of Excellence.
Chapter 10: Critical Choice 9: What Do Our Measurements Say About Us?
Actions, Not Perception.
Measuring Success: The Customer Style.
Measurement Guidelines.
Identifying Business Drivers.
True Assets.
Nurturing Rather Than Managing.
Chapter 11: Critical Choice 10: How Long Do We Milk Our Products?
Consistency Is Boring.
Success Breeds Complacency.
Innovation Compass: “Wow Me Now”.
Chapter 12: The Ultimate Choice: Customer Strategies—A Mutual Lifetime Commitment.
Stop Staring.
Complete View of a Successful Customer Strategy.
Organizational Commitment.
Change the Rules through Amazing Experiences.
Experiences Build Defendable Market Leadership.
Employees Experiences: The Customer Experience Enablers.
The Never-Ending Date.
Appendix: An Open Letter to the Smart Customer.
Index.