Preface

The author begins by bragging on the success of the first edition of this book: it's been translated, was a book club selection, was handed out to employees of a few companies, and has been used in business classes at a local college. As a result, there's been a lot of feedback, which has helped to revise the content.

There's a parallel to authorship and business: that even if you feel your company is doing well, it's important to constantly consider "revisions" to the business to ensure it remains successful, especially in changing times.

There's a nostalgic bit about her childhood in a small southern town in the 1950's, reflecting on the way that the local dime-store manager came to know and serve his customers and the fondness customers felt for local merchants - a model that has not "scaled up" to larger businesses, and perhaps a core reason that public sentiment favors small-and-local and demonizes "big" anything.

As such, the previous edition on this book focused on how large companies could win loyalty by creating that local dime-store experience for their customers. But since then, much has changed, and the focus of retail is no longer the brick-and-mortar outlet, but the Internet retail experience that is taking an ever-increasing share of the shopping dollar. Customers have also become more demanding - they expect not only good value, but also good service, and don't see the need to compromise one for the other.

It's also noted that customers jump ship a lot more frequently. The average company loses 20% to 40% of its customers annually, and the author ascribes this to one thing: delivery of an underwhelming customer experience drives customers to competitors.

This book proposes to suggest "new solutions" to these challenges, but cautions that it's not merely a matter of technology. Customer loyalty is about relationships between companies and their customers, and the reasons that customers are loyal to a firm have not changed much over the years, though the tools have changed and improved. Said another way, technology is not the solution, merely a means by which a solution can be effected.