Matthew Dixon

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.… (mais)

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."… (mais)

A great counterpoint/extension of the consultative/solutions sales process from Neil Rackham's SPIN Selling (among others). The fundamental insight: customers don't merely want you to question them about problems they already know (at best, you can show you know as much as they do) -- they want you to bring actual insights to them, relevant to their problems. "Teach (the customer about something relevant), Tailor (to make the process both relevant to the customer and to your own solutions), Take control (utilize "constructive tension" to make solving this problem urgent.)

In general, I like moving toward extremes -- low friction order-taking for most sales, and true value-add sales for the high end; none of the gated-by-a-piece-of-meat-in-a-suit zero-value-add sales rep to sell a product. Challenger sale is another tool to support delivering actual value.

(Audible audiobook)… (mais)