Bill Thomas & Jeff Tobe 
Anticipate 
Knowing What Customers Need Before They Do

Design and implement the ideal customer focus

Anticipate provides business readers with a practical
how-to approach for taking their customer-supplier
relationship to one that is more sustainable and more mutually
profitable. Much of the discussion on customer experience has
centered on the hospitality or retail industries and has showcased
the discrete techniques organizations use to deliver better service
and create more satisfied customers. Anticipate extends and
integrates those techniques to deliver an end-to-end customer
experience that can be applied in any industry, by any type of
organization. Get proven guidance on how to design and implement a
customer-focused journey that moves beyond the transaction and
satisfied customers, to a relationship and culture that creates and
leverages loyalty – and the profitability that comes with
it.

* Explains proprietary methods–such as the Customer Focus
Maturity Model ® and Value Chain Labs ® –that teach
readers the steps and tools organizations use to create, drive and
optimize their customer focus.

* Authors Bill Thomas and Jeff Tobe have used their 10-point
framework to guide Fortune 500’s, start-ups as well as
non-profits in charting a customer-focused journey that matures,
anticipates and delivers increasing levels of loyalty and
profitability with their customers, and across their broader value
chain.

Anticipate will provide you with field-proven steps,
tools and examples that you’ll use to take your
customer-focused strategy, execution and culture to the ideal
level.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

CHAPTER 1 Strategy–Creating and Destroying Customer Value
1

CHAPTER 2 Doing the Right Things for the Wrong Reasons 17

CHAPTER 3 Not All Customers Are Good Customers 33

CHAPTER 4 When Customers Speak–Who Hears Them? 45

CHAPTER 5 Input Is Vital–But Involvement Multiplies the
Value 59

CHAPTER 6 It Takes Two to Be Engaged 77

CHAPTER 7 Customer Focus Is a Process–Not an Event 101

CHAPTER 8 Culture–The Soft Stuff Is the Hard Stuff 123

CHAPTER 9 Managing Change, Performance, and Talent 151

CHAPTER 10 Leveraging Your Culture and Value Chain 187

Index 209

Über den Autor

BILL THOMAS is founder of Centric Performance, LLC, providing a strategic framework and practical tools to organizations committed to enhancing their customer focus and value chain partnerships. Thomas is the creator of the Customer Focus Maturity Model¯®, the first model to identify both the external and internal stages a company goes through, and techniques they use, to optimize the profitability of their customer/supplier relationships. Thomas has worked with dozens of organizations in their customer focus efforts and has designed and implemented long-term customer focus strategies and processes for many of them.

JEFF TOBE is a Certified Speaking Professional who was chosen as ‚one of the top 15 speakers in North America‘ by readers of Meetings and Conventions magazine. As the founder of Coloring Outside the Lines, Tobe teaches organizations how to think more creatively when it comes to designing and implementing the ideal customer experience. He is a frequent guest on business radio shows and podcasts and has been seen on NBC, Fox News, and local stations across the country.