How to win customers and keep them for life

To tell the truth at first I was not very glad, when I heard about this book. But when I opened it and read first 20-30 pages, I understood, that it’s the first really astonishing book about customers I have ever read read in my life. The author, Mr. LeBouef begins by saying, “one of the single greatest keys to long-term business success can be summed up in three simple words: quality customerservice”. I decided to review this book in a way of concentrating my attention on most important places of the book, from my point of view, also comparing them with my own experience and knowledge from real life.
In the first part of the book I found interesting statistics, Mr. LeBouef says that a typical dissatisfied customer will tell 8 to 10 people about the problem. And, that forexample, one in five will tell 20. Or for example that average business spends six times more to attract new customers than it does to keep old ones and 68% of customers quit, because of an attitude of indifference toward the customer by the owner, manager or some employee.
What I also found interesting is something called the Success Syndrome. Mr. LeBoeuf describes the 3 main stages of thisprocess. That was really interesting for me, because that can also happen with business people in real life. For me this kind of information is exactly what I am after. It tells you that you should always control processes inside your mind. “The Success Syndrome is a silent malade. You may not feel the symptoms, but you’ll certainly notice the effects.´´ It is common for successful entrepreneurs tolose track once they are flying high, and before you know it, you will be just another face in the unemployment line.
This book helped me to reorganise some basic knowledge about the process of buying and selling in my mind. For example, concerning advertisements, Mr. LeBoeuf states that satisfied customers are the best source of advertising and marketing. That to me is the absolutetruth, because if we like something we like to speak about it with our friends, relatives, co workers and so on.
Earlier I hadn´t even thought about the importance of customer’s role and the necessity of their satisfaction. But the situation changed rapidly, because of huge competition between the players in the market. Today a customer wants better quality, best service, attention,individual attitude and the best price. “Focus on what the customer wants and needs, help them buy what’s best for them, and make them feel good about it” I think this statement is closely connected with the inner world of every buyer, because each of them feels really good and satisfied, and also very important in the process of buying something. In Colombia, where I am from, customer service is of theutmost importance. All the sales people are genuinely interested in what the customer wants and needs, and they are very patient with every request, no matter how stupid it might be. This is probably just because of the Colombian culture, we like other people and we want to do our jobs as well as we can. On the other hand, I have lived in Spain for almost ten years, and the service culture there isvery different. Spanish sales personnel don´t really care about the customer and they are almost always very rude and impatient. I worked in Spain as a sales person at a beauty shop and I tried to serve all the customers as well as I possibly could, and they all liked me and I made a lot of sales. A lot of the customers specifically asked for me to serve them! That just shows you what goodcustomer service can do.
Another important point described in this book is the emotional part of buying process. A very interesting fact is that people buy emotionally and justify with logic. We can see the same situation nowadays in the mobile phone market. A good example of this is the Apple Iphone. Of course it contains some new features, but technically it isn´t as good as Nokias equivalents....