The One Minute Manager - Raving Fans!: Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service [Paperback]

With a new foreword by Ken Blanchard

A straightforward and snappy guide to successful customer service from the author of the bestselling The One Minute Manager.

Raving Fans, in a nutshell, is the advice given to a new Area Manager on his first day – in an extraordinary business book that will help everyone, in every kind of organisation or business, deliver stunning customer service and achieve miraculous bottom-line results.

Raving Fans is written in the parable style of The One Minute Manager and uses a brilliantly simple and charming story to teach how to define a vision, learn what a customer really wants, institute effective systems, and make Raving Fan Service a constant feature – not just a passing fad.

Business is in the midst of a service crisis that has left millions of disillusioned customers in its wake. Raving Fans includes startling new tips and innovative techniques that can help anyone create a revolution in any workplace – and turn their customers into raving, spending fans.

Told in the parable style of The One Minute Manager, Raving Fans uses a brilliantly simple and charming story to teach listeners how to define vision, learn what a customer really wants, institute effective systems, and make Raving Fan Service a constant feature--not just another program of the month.

America is in the midst of a service crisis that has left a wake of disillusioned customers from coast to coast. Raving Fans includes startling tips and innovative techniques that can help anyone create a revolution in any workplace--and turn their customers into raving, spending fans.

The story of a golfer and his male fairy godmother who guides him through encounters with outstanding service in a variety of business settings is an eloquent parable about customer service. The three-part formula: First, decide on a vision-a level of service that perfectly reflects what you want to give customers. Second, discover the specific needs and expectations of your customers and weave them into your vision of how to serve them. Third, deliver your vision a step at a time, being absolutely consistent before stepping up the service to the next level. Everyone serious about customer relationships should hear this.

Successful organisations have one common central focus: Customers. It doesn’t matter if it’s a business, a professional practice, a hospital or a government agency, success comes to those, and only those, who are obsessed with looking after customers.

This wisdom isn’t a secret. Mission statements, annual reports, posters on the wall, seminars and even television programmes all proclaim the supremacy of customers. But in the words of Shakespeare, this wisdom is "more honoured in the breach than the observance." In fact, generally speaking, customer service, in a word, stinks.

And no wonder. Look at how we’ve been training our managers. When I was in college, we took courses in marketing consumer behaviour. The assumption was that the public was a mindless group of buyers and that with proper advertising and promotion products could be produced en masse and sold to naïve buyers. Unfortunately, as I tour the country speaking, I find too many young managers still think this way. Advertising, product positioning and market share pricing strategies are all important. But when all is said and done, goods aren’t sold; products and services are bought.

Ken Blanchard is the founder and Chairman of The Ken Blanchard Companies. His One Minute Manager series has sold over thirteen million copies and been translated into more than 25 languages. He has also written or co-authored numerous other books, including Gung Ho! , Big Bucks! and Raving Fans.