Onward

How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul

This week’s book review is Onward by Howard Schultz.

Schultz artfully weaves the story of Starbucks from its humble beginnings, through it’s astronomic growth, it’s desperate decline, and it’s eventual reinvention and re-invigoration. The main focus of the book is the process he led to turn Starbucks back into the customer focused, coffee centered, culture forming icon that it is today. The book is packed with great stories and profound business wisdom.

10 Ways to Provide Sensational Customer Experiences

As technology advances and more and more products and services become commoditized, the only thing that separates one business from another is the customer experience.

Poor customer experience can easily destroy a business . . . If you don’t believe this, just ask United or American Airlines. One ugly incident can destroy the customer loyalty that has taken years to build!

Conversely, exceptional customer service can accelerate a business and its profitability to new heights!

What Experience Does Your Business Provide?

I recently switched things up and gave up my BMW car for the iconic F150 short box 4X4 pickup truck. Aside from the obvious complete change in driving performance and utility, I was taken back by the lack of customer experience offered by Ford in comparison to BMW. For example:

Business Strategy That Actually Works

The book review for this week is Strategy That Works by Paul Leinward and Cesare R. Mainardi

This is a detail oriented, fact rich, research based book that establishes a model for successfully translating business strategy to execution. They have done detailed studies on many companies like Starbucks, CEMEX and Danaher and put them into their “Identity Profile” system. This system defines the company’s value proposition, capabilities system and portfolio of products and services.