Customer Satisfaction Is Worthless, Customer Loyalty Is Priceless: How to Make Customers Love You, Keep Them Coming Back and Tell Everyone They Know

by Jeffrey Gitomer

Nationally syndicated columnist and sales trainer, Jeffrey Gitomer shows you how to convert satisfied customers into loyal customers.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Personal Development, Self Help, Leadership, Buisness

288 pages, Hardcover

First published June 12, 1998

About the author

AUTHOR.
Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The New York Times best sellers The Sales Bible, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Black Book of Connections, and The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude. All of his books have been number one best sellers on Amazon.com, including Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Patterson Principles of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching!, and The Little Teal Book of Trust. Jeffrey’s books have sold millions of copies worldwide.


OVER 100 PRESENTATIONS A YEAR.
Jeffrey gives public and corporate seminars, runs annual sales meetings, and conducts live and Internet training programs on selling, customer loyalty, and personal development.


BIG CORPORATE CUSTOMERS.
Jeffrey's customers include Coca-Cola, D.R. Horton, Caterpillar, BMW, AT&T Wireless, MacGregor Golf, Ferguson Enterprises, Kimpton Hotels, Hilton, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, AmeriPride, NCR, Stewart Title, Comcast Cable, Time Warner Cable, Liberty Mutual Insurance, Principal Financial Group, Wells Fargo Bank, Baptist Health Care, BlueCross BlueShield, Carlsberg, Wausau Insurance, Northwestern Mutual, MetLife, Sports Authority, GlaxoSmithKline, AC Nielsen, IBM, The New York Post, and hundreds of others.


IN FRONT OF MILLIONS OF READERS EVERY WEEK.
Jeffrey's syndicated column, Sales Moves, appears in scores of business journals and newspapers in the United States and Europe, and is read by more than four million people every week.


ON THE INTERNET.
Jeffrey’s WOW! websites, www.gitomer.com and www.trainone.com, get more than 100,000 hits per week from readers and seminar attendees. His state-of-the-art presence on the web and e-commerce ability has set the standard among peers, and has won huge praise and acceptance from his customers.


TRAINONE ONLINE SALES TRAINING.
Online sales training lessons are available at www.trainone.com. The content is pure Jeffrey — fun, pragmatic, real world — and can be immediately implemented. TrainOne's innovation is leading the way in the field of customized e-learning.


SALES CAFFEINE.
Jeffrey's weekly e-zine, Sales Caffeine, is a sales wake-up call delivered every Tuesday morning to more than 500,000 subscribers, free of charge. Sales Caffeine allows Jeffrey to communicate valuable sales information, strategies, and answers to sales professionals on a timely basis. You can subscribe at www.salescaffeine.com.


SALES ASSESSMENT ONLINE.
The world's first customized sales assessment, renamed a "successment," will not only judge your selling skill level in 12 critical areas of sales knowledge, it will give you a diagnostic report that includes 50 mini sales lessons. This amazing sales tool will rate your sales abilities and explain your customized opportunities for sales knowledge growth. This program is aptly named Know Success because you can't know success until you know yourself.


AWARD FOR PRESENTATION EXCELLENCE.
In 1997, Jeffrey was awarded the designation of Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) by the National Speakers Association. The CSP award has been given fewer than 500 times in the past 25 years and is the association's highest earned award.


SPEAKER HALL OF FAME.
In August, 2008, Jeffrey was inducted into the National Speaker Association’s Speaker Hall of Fame. The designation, CPAE (Counsel of Peers Award for Excellence), honors professional speakers who have reached the top echelon of performance excellence. Each candidate must demonstrate mastery in seven categories: originality of material, uniqueness of style, experience, delivery, image, professionalism, and communication. To date, 191 of the world's greatest speakers have been inducted including Ronald Reagan, Art Linkletter, Colin Powell, Norman Vincent Peale, Earl Nightingale, Brian Tracy and Zig Ziglar.

"I give value first. I help other people.

Reviews

[Jim]

A funny story.

I am helping out a company where each employee when they start is given this book to read.

A salesperson when he started was asked by the owner " Do you think you can take care of my customers as described in this book? But before you answer, Understand if you can not, you will have more value to me working for my competitor than you will working for me."

This is why I am reading this book soon.

[Jamie Latshaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book as part of working towards a promotion within my company. While the style of the book was great (story telling, large font, tons of examples), the only conclusion I kept coming to was that Gitomer was a spoiled brat that stamped his foot when something didn't go his way until someone made it right. That is NOT how you get "good customer service". As much as I understand my job is to help and assist you when there is a problem, I will not put up with your temper tantrum. Grow up. Gitomer also only seemed to view "good customer service" as when he was being given something free, such as the limo that picked him and his wife up at the airport with complimentary champagne and strawberries in the backseat. Was that extremely courteous of the hotel to do? YES. Would it have ruined your vacation had they not provided you with something? NO. To a real person in the every day world, that is not the case. While I did find several take aways from the novel that I can provide to my colleagues, Gitomer as a person ruined this concept of a novel for me.

[Mercer Smith · Rating 1 out of 5]

Does this author have an editor? He directly quotes HIMSELF, with attribution, throughout the book. The formatting is horrifying. Why do all of the numbered lists end in a .5? Just use whole numbers.

While he does tell people what he believes the tenets of support should be, he fails to give them any “why” besides “customers pay your paycheck.” The excerpts in the book written by others are markedly better quality than the book as a whole.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will be purchasing a copy. Though the book has been out for a while, it still has some very practical ideas in it that I'm going to work on implementing in my company.

[Rachel Allene · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you enjoy reading the repetitive rants of a bratty customer, you'll have the time of your life with this.

Is zero stars an option?

God. It should be.

[Megan Curtis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Another book written by a mediocre white man shouting at us.

About 1 chapter in, I had to double check that this wasn't written by Dave Ramsey. The tone of voice and constant regurgitation of the same points just more boldly, sure seemed like it was a Dave Ramsey book. At first glance, the quirky font choices seemed interesting, but 5 mins in, it was just hard to read. It's apparent the author didn't have much to say, but need to book to look bigger so increased the font to a ludicrous size. While I agree that customer loyalty is important, we have a marketplace filled with entitled customers who think it's okay to scream and throw fits to get their way. I won't run a business in any way that contributes to that nonsense. I won't normalize adult tantrums. Save your money and skip this book.

[Timothy Aulph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great information; especially, the 12 methods to deliver outstanding customer service. Seems like common sense but can be overlooked if not careful or if taken for granted. Also, a customer may be satisfied with your service, but, that doesn't mean they are loyal!

Other things that stood out:
(1) Earn loyalty by delivering memorable service consistently
(2) Your customer is more important than your boss; without loyalty, you could get fired by your real boss - the customer!
(3) Be extraordinary; have "Wow" moments!
(4) Don't ever cite company policy to a customer or list reasons why you cannot help - take responsibility, stay engaged, and solve the problem!

[Daniel Tolson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Something your competition will never have

My customers all know they are in sales, the most successful tell me they serve and don’t sell. Using the strategies in this book, I’ll be able to move my customers from sales into specialists in customer loyalty.

Jeffrey, thank you for sharing this epic content. It is going to be a lot of fun implementing it.

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the first sales/business books that I read when I got into sales. It is still on my shelf as a quick reference. I like the bite-size lessons because you can pick up the book, learn something, then put it down without requiring the building that so many other books in the genre do.

[Vignesh Kumar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Read

Valuable advice on how to treat customers and how it will change the business, A recommended read for all the customer centric businesses out there.

[Nancy Bridges · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read for anyone in a customer service position.

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, i gotta say this book is quite the un-orthodoxed type. i'm sure glad i read it. Jeffrey has laid this book out very easy to read, i managed to finish it in about 2-3 days.. which is quite fast for me. He goes on to talk about the epidemic of bad customer service all around this planet. and how easy it is to start improving it, and as you go on to read this book, you find that jefrey has a knack for thinking outside of the box, something we as human beings tend not to do, we like to get use to things and then we develop tunnel vision and think that "one way is the only way of doing things"

But that's not what you'll get here, quite unconventional. He talks about all little things we can do to improve our service, and even states that an angry customer is an opportunity to create a loyal customer. truly great material, one of the most simplest books i've ever read. but still one of the most useful to this date. i will surely be looking forward to reading more of his work

Hope my review helped you out, please feel free to write me at [email protected]

[Oscar Romero · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely a must for anyone that would want to not only learn what to do but also learn how to do it. Jeffrey did an amazing job at bringing up everything about how to take care of our customers and, better yet--what exactly is a customer.

I think, deep inside, we really tend to lose focus as to what a customer is and how we treat them. And it takes a wake-up call to not only make you reflect about what we do, but to make us change for the better. The proof will be when your customers let out that quite unique expression: "wow". That is what we need to focus on--how to make customers say "wow" after receiving our customer service.

Jeffrey does have a way with words. You will not get bored with this book, it is very funny as well. A very strong recommendation for everyone that runs a business, and even if you don't, if you read this book, you will definitely be very much prepared to provide the best customer service possible....ever.

[Lee Ragans · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book on sales... remember that. It has some general customer service application but if you are not in sales or work for a company that sells things many of the lessons are not appropriate for you. The score is my rating for me not a reflection of the Author's work. I do not believe in grading other authors. I hate people who think their score is a chance to grade me.

I will give the author one knock... the whole .5 thing. if he wants to list 12 things, he lists 1 to 11.5. As I write this I ponder that I remember it so it must have worked.

Again, if you are in sales read this and do it. If you are in customer service ou can read it and get something out of it. If you are in neither, you have no reason to read this.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was largely a miss for me. Some of it seems outdated, some of it seems common sense, some of it is tests and evaluations, and a large chunk is personal anecdotes. The things that really stuck with me is chapter 6, regarding 'friendliness' (relational marketing), and some things later in in the book that deal with both personal and company attitude as a whole.

Also, the book is laid out like it was designed by a 6th grader with severe ADHD. Between multiple changes in font sizes, font styles, bold, italics, and paragraph styles (all on the same page), the book was a literal head ache to read.

There were some nuggets of wisdom, but overall a lot of fluff to wade through to get to them.

[Crystal Otto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Customer Satisfaction is Worthless is a book I look at often and reference in conversations with business owners, marketing professionals, and those involved in strategic planning for organizations. I wouldn't go so far as to call this the 'bible', but it's a book you must read if you're looking to grow a customer service based business. After all, who wants to be satisfied ??? Don't we all want more than that for ourselves? Why wouldn't we want that for our customers as well?

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must read book! The author is a little redundant at times but he's totally spot on with his observations and suggestions. He illustrates the importance of customer loyalty, how businesses are failing to gain loyalty, and what we as individuals can do to create loyalty. I felt very positive and empowered after reading this book; and I have already begun to use some of the techniques suggested.

[Allyson Stallman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the only book of his that I found beneficial. I've always stood by going above and beyond for the customer and making their experience memorable. Memorable is what results in a sale.

THIS is the book you need to read if you want to increase your sales. Forget Gitomer's Little Rainbow Collection.

[D · Rating 3 out of 5]

I outlined this book for my boss.

It was extremely repetitive and could have been cut and diced into a concise essay. There are good lessons, but the lessons seemed to repeat themselves in every chapter.

[GE · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are in the customer service industry, then this book is written for you.

Gitomer, in his typically forward manner, breaks down the components of why "customer satisfaction" has failed. And he then builds a case for why "customer loyalty" is the only way to run a business.

[Jana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an easy read, told in short example, real world tactic format. The best part is that it provides minor changes to daily activities which can make a big difference. Smart real world advice in self improvement.

[Marc Bowers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone with a business or working in customer service should read this. This book is priceless for providing advice on how to build customer loyalty and stop worrying about just satisfying a customer.

Hurry up and take advantage of this book before the competition does!

[Erica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Invaluable and the perfect guide to those who need information quick and easy for a variety of audiences! Points are made clearly and succinctly in a way that those unfamiliar with the psychology behind customer service can quickly digest. A+

[Britt · Rating 5 out of 5]

While relevant to everyday marketing this book is heavily guided towards hospitality services. I don't find this a fault, but I would like to see a bit more variety. Definitely a worth-while read for anyone who wants to not only be floating and relevant, but to impress in today's marketplace.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was quick to read and fun. Had a lot of cool graphics and attempted interactivity. There were tests to take to determine your attitude. Basically can be summed up as do unto others and the customer IS your paycheck.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book - anyone in the service industry should read this book!

[Suzy Prybell · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was mostly read. I would've finished it if the author didn't repeat himself nearly every other sentence. I got the gist though. Really, just read the title and you get the idea.

[Jen Mcpherson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everyone who works in a customer driven industry(and don't we all?) needs to read this.

[S Rich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book on giving WOW customer service.
Excellent strategies to utilize on a daily basis.

[April · Rating 2 out of 5]

Have to read for work....

Still reading..... obviously I'm not real interested in this book!