Book SummaryRaving Fans, by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Raving Fans

In Raving Fans, management experts Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles argue that successful organizations have one common central focus: providing an excellent customer service experience. And that any type of organization or business that serves people can benefit from these principles to create “Raving Fans.”

Raving Fans is a fable in which a newly hired Area Manager’s plans to focus on quality are upended when told by the President of the company to instead prioritize customer service, which she stresses is the foundation of the business. The ill-equipped Area Manager worries that, like his three predecessors, he will quickly fail at implementing successful customer service strategies and lose his position. Miraculously, his Fairy Godmother appears to teach him the three simple but powerful secrets to deliver outstanding customer service.

(Shortform note: Business fables have become an increasingly popular way to disseminate management principles due to the accessibility of their narratives. Other classics include The Greatest Salesman in the World, The One Minute Manager, and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.)

Happy Customers Are Core to Your Success

According to the authors, whatever work you do, the people you serve are central to your success. Happy customers can share positive reviews with thousands of people. Likewise, disgruntled customers can write terrible reviews, can damage your reputation, and won’t hesitate to abandon you for your competitors. With one click, your customers have the power to make or break you.

The world of business has rapidly evolved since 1993 when Raving Fans was published. Today, the marketplace is saturated with competitors for every type of product and service, and businesses now understand that they have to pay as much attention to their customer experience strategies as they do to their product and service offerings. Further, consumers now have more buying power and higher expectations than they did when Raving Fans was originally released. Consequently, some modern readers have argued that the principles in the book are outdated since consumers do not have to put up with poor service since they can easily move to a competitor.

However, the principles covered in Raving Fans may be more significant today than they were in 1993—due to the increase in competition and consumer buying power, businesses have to work harder to impress customers and stay ahead of the competition. Therefore, creating “Raving Fans” is essential to business survival.

“Satisfied” Customers Won’t Stick Around

Blanchard and Bowles argue that there’s a clear distinction between satisfying your customers and exceeding the expectations of your customers. If you merely seek to satisfy your customers, they’ll only stay with you as long as you’re not worse than the competition. The authors argue that, in contrast, happy customers are likely to:

• Become loyal customers and offer a reliable source of revenue
• Promote your business by becoming brand advocates and help grow your customer base
• Offer feedback and a deeper understanding of their motivations, which will help you to create better products and services
• Test or become early adopters of your latest products and services

According to the authors, businesses that successfully implement customer service experience strategies achieve higher customer retention rates and increased revenues.

Businesses tend to spend more on acquiring new customers than they do on investing in keeping the ones they already have. However, these customer acquisition and retention marketing statistics highlight how costly this approach can be:

• It can cost five times more to acquire a new customer than it can to retain an existing customer.

• The success rate for selling to new customers is 5-20%, whereas the success rate for selling to existing customers is 60-70%.

• A 5% increase in customer retention can yield higher profits ranging from 25-95%.

Clearly, it pays more to invest in making your existing customers happy than it does to acquire new customers.

In this guide, we’ll explore the principles of outstanding customer service in greater detail and make them actionable with a range of exercises to help you transform your customers into enthusiastic fans of your product and company. We’ve deconstructed the book’s three stages into five concrete steps to create an excellent customer service experience:

• Step 1: Define Your Ideal Customer Service Experience
• Step 2: Discover Your Customers’ Ideal Service Experience
• Step 3: Integrate Your Vision With Their Needs
• Step 4: Build Effective Systems to Ensure Consistency
• Step 5: Exceed Customer Expectations

Step 1: Define Your Ideal Customer Service Experience

The first step is to envision the best possible experience that your customers can have with your business. Blanchard and Bowles argue that customer experience is the impression your customers have of your business as a whole. This means that if they have a bad experience during one stage of their interactions with you, their judgment of you will go down regardless of how excellent the rest of your service was. Therefore, a great customer experience comes from providing excellence at every stage of contact.

According to one customer loyalty report, 63% of consumers confirmed they’d consider moving to a competitor after a single bad experience.

However, the impact of a single negative customer experience doesn’t simply end with...

Raving Fans Summary Shortform Introduction

In Raving Fans, management experts Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles argue that successful organizations have one common central focus: providing an excellent customer service experience. And that any type of organization or business that serves people can benefit from these principles to create “Raving Fans.”

Raving Fans is a fable in which a newly hired Area Manager’s plans to focus on quality are upended when told by the President of the company to instead prioritize customer service, which she stresses is the foundation of the business. The ill-equipped Area Manager worries that, like his three predecessors, he will quickly fail at implementing successful customer service strategies and lose his position.

Miraculously, his Fairy Godmother appears to offer guidance and lead him on a path of discovery. The Fairy Godmother introduces the Area Manager to successful business owners, all graduates of “The Raving Fans School,” who teach him the three simple but powerful secrets to deliver outstanding customer service:

• Define Your Ideal Customer Service Experience
• Discover Your Customers’ Ideal Service Experience
• Exceed Customer Expectations

The Area Manager...

Raving Fans Summary Happy Customers Are Core to Your Success

Raving Fans is a fable in which a newly hired Area Manager’s plans to focus on quality are upended when told by the President of the company to instead prioritize successful customer service strategies, the foundation of any strong business. The ill-equipped Area Manager worries that, like his three predecessors, he will quickly fail at this task and lose his position. Miraculously, his Fairy Godmother appears to offer guidance. The first piece of advice his Fairy Godmother offers: businesses need to go beyond merely satisfying their customers and instead focus on how to create “Raving Fans.”

(Shortform note: Business fables have become an increasingly popular way to disseminate management principles due to the accessibility of their narratives. Other classics include The Greatest Salesman in the World, The One Minute Manager, and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.)

According...

Raving Fans Summary Step 1: Define Your Ideal Customer Service Experience

You now understand why it’s important to go beyond simply satisfying your customers by instead implementing ways to delight and impress them. But it can be difficult to know where to start, what to prioritize, and what problems to solve. The first step is to envision the best possible experience that your customers can have with your business.

The Fable: What Does Ideal Customer Service Look Like?

In the fable, the Fairy Godmother takes the Area Manager to a successful department store, owned by a previous student of “The Raving Fans School.” Throughout his visit, the Area Manager receives lavish attention and experiences excellent customer service. For example, the book he wants to buy is out of stock so the customer service attendant purchases the book from another store and gift wraps it for him at no extra cost.

When asked how the store can go to such great lengths to satisfy customers, the store owner explains he created a complete vision of excellent customer service centered on looking after customer needs wherever possible. This vision informs how he interacts with his customers.

(Shortform note: The customer service attendant at the bookstore uses...

Shortform Exercise: Define Your Expectations of Customer Service

Identifying how you perceive and label the service you receive from other businesses will help you to view what your business offers from a customer’s perspective.

Think of a recent time that you were impressed with the customer service you received. Why were you impressed?

Raving Fans Summary Step 2: Discover Your Customers’ Ideal Service Experience

After defining excellent customer service in Step 1, you may assume that you have a clear understanding of what your customers want. But how can you really know what your customers want without asking them? After all, you wouldn’t invest the time and money to release a product or service before testing the market for it.

This next step of the process will allow you to clearly see how you’re currently impacting your customers—are you meeting their expectations or are there things you need to improve? In addition, we’ll focus on understanding the differences between both your external and internal customers: who they are and what their motivations are. Ultimately, you’ll find out what it’ll take to make all of your customers happy.

External vs. Internal Customers

When the authors talk about your customers, they’re not just talking about the people who buy your products or services. Even if you’re a freelancer or sole owner, your business has many internal and external customers or stakeholders.

External customers are the people who see your business as a provider of something they buy. They’re the people that you create your products and services for and bring in...

Shortform Exercise: Identify Obstacles in Your Workplace Environment

Your team may face a variety of obstacles that prevent them from performing their best. Identifying these obstacles is the first step towards creating a positive workplace environment.

Think of a recent time when you felt blocked from performing your best at work. (For example, there were too many distractions, or you were unable to find necessary information quickly.) Briefly describe the problem.

Raving Fans Summary Step 3: Integrate Your Vision With Their Needs

Now that you’ve got a clear idea of how you’re currently impacting both your internal and external customers, it’s time to integrate your definition of excellent customer service in response to the feedback you’ve received from your external customers. All of the possibilities for improvements can quickly become overwhelming, so we’ll focus on setting boundaries before we work on refining your vision.

Choose Which Customers You Serve

You’ll discover that there are some things your customers want that will be too difficult to accommodate. The authors recommend that you set boundaries on what you’re willing to offer—it’s more productive to limit yourself by accepting that you can’t please everyone and to instead focus on doing fewer things exceptionally well. The vision you created in Step 1 will be useful in helping you to judge what customer needs you’re willing to...

Shortform Exercise: Build a Customer Persona

Building detailed customer personas for each segment of your customer base helps you to define your customer service experience priorities. In addition, it reminds you to base your decisions on the wants and needs of real people, which enables you to connect to the real customers these personas represent.

Begin by imagining a customer you want to serve. Give them a name. Now, feel free to add as many details as you want: age, job title, location, hobbies, goals, and so on.

Raving Fans Summary Step 4: Build Effective Systems to Ensure Consistency

You now have a clear picture of the customers you want to serve and what type of customer service experience you want to provide. Your feedback from internal customers in Step 2 gave you a clear idea of what you’re currently working with and where improvement is needed. The next step is to create a complete picture of the systems you need to build to bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

The Fable: Create Flexible Systems and Guidelines

In the fable, once the Area Manager collates his feedback and discusses possible improvements with his team, his Fairy Godmother introduces him to the owner of a successful full-service gasoline station. The owner explains that he is consistently able to offer an incredible service thanks to the flexible systems and training procedures he has in place—the systems set the guidelines but also allow his team members to understand how much flexibility they have to act autonomously and better serve his customers.

The Key to Giving Employees Autonomy

The owner of the gas station has hit on one of the key features of companies that stand the test of time. According to the research of Jim Collins and...

Shortform Exercise: Start Small and Build on Your Strengths

Creating new systems and procedures can seem like a daunting task. Start small by determining what systems are currently working and build on your strengths.

Pick a step in your customer journey map that received the most positive feedback.

Raving Fans Summary Step 5: Exceed Customer Expectations

You now have a clear idea of the systems you need to create so that you can move towards achieving your ideal customer service experience. In addition, you understand that you’re more likely to achieve the high standards you’ve defined for yourself if you work on achieving consistency one small step at a time. Now, focus on making continual improvements and remaining flexible so that you can adapt to your customers’ ever-evolving needs. Finally, we’ll define what it means to exceed your customers’ expectations to win customer loyalty.

The Fable: Always Deliver More Than Your Customers Expect

In Raving Fans, the owner of the successful gasoline station explains how to continually surprise and delight your customers: Always deliver more than you promise. To achieve this, you must never think that you have achieved the perfect service. Instead, you must always be focused on making incremental improvements that bring value to your customers.

The Area Manager explains the process of making small, continual improvements to his team. His colleagues embrace creating “Raving Fans” as a core value, and work together to create an excellent service for their customers. As a...

Shortform Exercise: Delight Your Customers in Small Ways

Exceeding expectations doesn’t always mean providing freebies. There are a multitude of small things you can add to your service to keep your customers coming back.

Think of small ways that you can make your service feel more personal. (For example, sending personal emails instead of automated ones, remembering customer preferences, and so on.)