A high-energy series of pointers for building customer enthusiasm.
A strategy guide for turning casual customers into ardent fans of one’s company.
“Too many businesses fall into the trap of becoming something lots of people ‘sort of’ like instead of intentionally creating an experience the right people can’t stop telling their friends about,” writes Hodak in her colorful nonfiction debut. “Don’t be filler; be unforgettable.” It’s a tall order—and the implicit goal of every marketing book ever written—and she lays out a program for achieving it that’s intimately connected with a phenomenon that most of her readers will have experienced: fandom. Hodak looks at organizations, such as Disneyland, Amazon, and Ritz-Carlton hotels, which have generated “superfans”: customers who, on their own initiative, create other customers. She then attempts to distill how these organizations manage to do this (and are able to continue doing it). By looking at a range of businesses and drawing on the insights of their leaders, she boils down this type of success to its essence: a focus on caring attention to detail. “The quickest way to get someone to care about you and the things you care about,” she writes, “is to demonstrate that you care about them and the things they care about.” Using well-designed graphics and bulleted key points, Hodak effectively takes her readers through the important components of improving their customer relations. Readers may find her organizing mnemonic to be a bit hokey (“SUPER,” with “S” standing for “Start with Your Story,” “U” for “Understand Your Customer’s Story,” and so on), but the concept behind it is conveyed with consistent can-do energy and an appealing lack of pomposity, with relatable personal touches, such as the author’s confession that Rocky IV is her favorite Rocky movie. Her emphasis on the core value of customer service as the key ingredient of superfan creation will likely be of use to many readers.
A high-energy series of pointers for building customer enthusiasm.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781774580783
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Page Two
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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