Listen Up!

How to Tune In to Customers and Turn Down the Noise

Karen Mangia

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781119723875
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Customer Relations
• Index: Business

There's one voice that matters more than any other: the voice of the customer.Learn how to fully understandthe number one source of your organization's prosperity, profits, and productivity.Theseactionableinsights will help you to better connect withyour customers and gain anundeniableleadoveryour competition.

ListenUp!: How to TuneInto Customersand Turn Downthe Noise teaches readers how tocreate a customer experience that's built on listening and designed for engagement.Author and Salesforce executive Karen Mangia has created a practical and comprehensiveexamination ofhow best-of-breed companies listen and respond to customer demands—creatinga foundation of customer success, loyalty, and brandevolution.

Listen Up! features discussions about: How to go beyond the survey: bestpractices associated with customer understanding, customer experience, and customer service

• How to move from deep listening todata-based insights intocustomer behavior
• The statistics and stories behind companies, organizations, and even city governmentsthat have created a customer-centric culture
• How powerful new questions can offer a fresh perspective into any customer, anywhere: empowering your customer-facing teams, including sales teams, in the current market
• Winning greater mindshare, andmarket share, with a fresh look at the future of customer service, customer success, and customer satisfaction

Perfect for anyone in a leadership or management role in a customer-facing organization, including sales teams, business development leaders and marketing professionals, Listen Up! belongs on the bookshelves of executives, customer service and successemployees, andleaders whowant to better engage with the one voice that matters most: the voice of the customer.

CHAPTER 1
The Breakdown Before the Breakthrough

I was afraid.

The needle mark in my arm was still fresh, stinging from yet another blood test. My bare feet dangled off the side of the examination table. My purse sat on the floor beside my backpack, unzipped and bursting with unfinished work. I had come here to learn what was wrong, but I didn't know if I could handle the answer. Nearly four years of poking, prodding, testing, and trials had brought me into this too‐bright room with turquoise shelves, where glass jars held tongue depressors and eight‐inch Q‐tips underneath an inspirational poster of an eagle. The long‐haired man in the white lab coat held a manila folder in his hands. The pen in his pocket matched the silver color of his hair. On a single page, just outside of my view, was my fate. My future. My fear.

“We know what's wrong, and this last blood test will confirm it,” my doctor said. He closed the folder and looked straight at me. “And we are going to get this fixed.”

I took a deep breath. I had spent most of my thirties in the middle of a health crisis. I had watched myself gain weight, lose energy, experience symptoms of jaundice and hair loss—all without any answers as to the cause. Strange lumps in my neck were a constant unsolved mystery. The variety of medications that surrounded the sink in my bathroom had only given me new symptoms, adverse reactions, and lots of questions. I wasn't getting better. Nothing worked. So far, five doctors had failed to give me anything close to a concrete diagnosis. But today was different.

On this day, everything changed.

“I've developed a plan of treatment,” Dr. Logan explained to me. “We're going to get your life back. It's going to take some time, but at least we know what we're fighting. And what we need to do to win.”

As the world has faced off against the threat of the coronavirus, I can't help but be reminded of my own personal battle. A mysterious disease had me in its clutches. Luckily for me, it wasn't COVID‐19. But is there any such thing as a “good” health crisis? Is one life‐threatening disease more favorable than another? Unfortunately, life doesn't allow us to choose what we get. We only get to choose how we react.

I was battling against an unseen and unknown foe. Teams of doctors were confused; what they called diagnoses seemed to me to be just guesswork. Dysfunction and disappointment had led me here to a holistic doctor. Dr. Logan was as fluent in ancient Eastern healing as he was in modern medicine. When he found what others couldn't, he gave me my life back.

I wrote about my personal health journey in detail in my first book, Success With Less. Suffice it to say that, as a child, I had somehow contracted pesticide poisoning. Growing up in Southern Indiana, we were always outdoors. I don't know where I encountered the unnamed chemical, but it lay dormant until I entered my thirties. Then the poison woke up with a vengeance.

The journey back to health wasn't easy. At least I knew what I needed to do. I was facing the future with a new understanding. Finally, I had a plan and a path forward.

On that day, I knew I was never going back.

On that day, I discovered the power inside a horrible disease. Sounds strange, doesn't it?

On that day, I discovered how a breakdown can lead to a breakthrough.

As we face the repercussions of COVID‐19, business leaders are wondering what lies ahead. We all are. Organizations have to reevaluate, reconstruct, and reprioritize. How can you care for your company, customers, and employees and find a way forward?

That's where I know I can help: because I've had to battle back from more than one setback. And I've helped thousands of companies around the world do the same.

HOW DO I MANAGE THIS CRISIS?

The first step toward getting back to health was perhaps the most vital. I had to listen—listen to the resources that could help me most. Because, when I knew what I needed to do, the real healing could begin. The doctor had given me great feedback. Now I had to use it.

In my case, my soft‐spoken doctor was the voice that brought me to hear what I so desperately needed. Dr. Logan was the voice of reason and understanding—a perspective that proved to be my solution. When it was time to move forward, it was time to listen up. He pointed me toward my own resourcefulness, expanding my knowledge in a way that transformed my lifestyle. And my life.

What seemed impossible, elusive, and hidden was now revealed. Discovered. Expanded.

Have you ever had that moment when you learn something new, and you know you're never going back to the way it was before? That even if you revisit a familiar place, you know it's not the same and neither are you? When I saw the path forward—the path to health—I knew I would never be the same.

Today, as I reflect back on my battle to eliminate this poison, there's one thing I know for certain: what's past has passed. In business as in life, things follow a similar path.

A crisis forces us to pause. To prioritize. To rethink our surroundings and solutions so that we can find a way forward. Have you been there? I think we all have. I think that life has asked us all to pause and prioritize. But how do we do that in a way that's going to lead us back to professional and organizational health so that we don't just survive—rather, we thrive?

You have to listen to the people who can help you most. You have to tune in to the voice that will help you to find your future. I'm not talking about trying out a new doctor or talking to yourself during quarantine.

I'm talking about turning to resources that know what you don't know and that see what you can't see—resources that have exactly what you need (even if it's difficult to hear) during a time of crisis.

Healing begins with listening—listening to your customer.

Your customer wants to know how to find success—hopefully, via your products and services. Leading a remote workforce, driving new customer experiences, and capturing customer success. Your clients want to know how to do these things and many others, as they are striving to find their path to financial health.

I wonder: Do your customers know that they have an expert guide who's invested in their journey? I wrote this book so that they will have just that—so that you can be that guide, and so that you will know, in no uncertain terms, how to listen up more effectively, actively, and deeply than ever before. Because coming out of this crisis demands a new course of action. A treatment plan, if you will, that begins with the way that you treat your customers.

RECOVERY AND RESILIENCE

When I was sick, my mind was writing checks my body couldn't cash. I wondered:

• How do I manage through this crisis, when I don't even know what “manage” means right now or the exact extent of this crisis?
• How do I reprioritize my life?
• What can I keep, what can I discard, and what am I terrified to lose?
• How do I keep up with customer calls, meetings, and the day‐to‐day requirements of life?

Have you been there? As a result of my illness, I was out of energy. But thankfully, I wasn't out of options. And neither are you.

Your customer needs you. Can you hear that?

The products and services your customers need, right now and tomorrow, are waiting for you to discover. Are you listening? The future belongs to those who align and connect in more powerful ways. To hear and respond in ways that others don't. Or won't. Or can't.

SERVING AT A HIGHER LEVEL

Inside this book, you will explore the source of true recovery, resilience, and revenues. You'll take concepts like “customer success,” “live listening,” and “voice of the customer” to a new level—the level of healing, prosperity, and growth. I'll share proven and time‐tested strategies that have helped thousands of companies from Birmingham to Brisbane and back again. We'll look at the strategies of international giants as well as the neighborhood merchants whom you've never heard of—but you will. Along the way, I'll share access to thought leaders who are innovating in the face of adversity.

Each chapter will point you toward practical and tactical advice: ideas that you can implement right away to change your results. These strategies are called “C‐Sparks,” and they are designed to ignite your creativity, innovation, and connection to the one source of wellness in a transformed world.

Together, we will reveal what my doctor gave to me: Clarity. Direction. Guidance. And a new path forward.

THE BREAKDOWN LEADS TO A BREAKTHROUGH

Through these pages and chapters, you'll learn how to ask better questions, take ego out of the conversation, build greater alignment, and add value to your company's bottom line. You will find the changes that you need to make and which your customers crave. Because listening is everyone's job. And the only way forward is together.

When you have a Listen Up! organization, you win as a team—often, as a team of teams. An organization that listens up understands that connecting with customers isn't just the job of a particular division, sector, or service squad. Working remotely can still mean that we're working together. Listening means building a community—a community that can s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• PRAISE FOR LISTEN UP!
• Foreword
• CHAPTER 1: The Breakdown Before the Breakthrough
• CHAPTER 2: Don't Bet on Your Blind Spots
• CHAPTER 3: The Beginner's Mindset
• CHAPTER 4: Big Impact
• CHAPTER 5: When Organizations Are Out of Alignment
• CHAPTER 6: Defining the Digital Divide
• CHAPTER 7: Better Questions, Better Answers
• CHAPTER 8: Got Genius?
• CHAPTER 9: Genius, Revealed
• CHAPTER 10: The Secret Sauce
• CHAPTER 11: Dealing with Disruption
• CHAPTER 12: How to Win
• CHAPTER 13: Moving at the Speed of the Customer
• CHAPTER 14: Look Who's Talking
• CHAPTER 15: Moment of Signal
• About the Author
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• End User License Agreement