The Celebrity Experience: A book for anyone in the service industry

I love customer service. I firmly believe that customer service is the new marketing, and that companies that provide great customer service will far surpass those who don't in the coming years. It won't be products that separate the good companies from the great companies; it will be the service those great companies provide that will elevate them to greatness.

I'm constantly on the lookout for examples of great (and not so great) customer service stories. When I happened upon Donna Cutting's The Celebrity Experience: Insider Secrets to Delivering Red Carpet Customer Service, I knew I had struck GOLD! This book is packed with stories about GREAT customer service from the hotel, food and beverage, airline, and so many other industries that if you have a job, this book will have something you can relate to.

The Celebrity Experience: Insider Secrets to Delivering Red Carpet Customer Service is one of my favorite customer service books of all time. Donna Cutting (a.k.a. Gal Morale) does a masterful job of sharing stories about how YOU can do a better job of providing customer service. As a customer service manager in an IT department, this book was very relevant for me, and offered many tips I'll share with my team.

Some of the things Donna shared include:

• Make red-carpet first impressions on new customers
• Give them what they want and earn customers for life
• Generate buzz and positive word-of-mouth by delivering what you promise
• Improve your customer service performance by putting employees first
• Develop the creativity and flexibility to deliver on every customer request
• Succeed by putting your customers' interests ahead of your own

Nothing in this book was rocket science. But everything in this book are things YOU can do if you work in the service industry to provide great customer service for those you serve. The stories are relevant and easy to relate to. The insights Donna provides are priceless! With each section offering ACTION tips you can immediately implement, you can use this book as a guidebook for providing great customer service for your organization.

You don't have to be in the service industry for this book to be relevant to you. Many of the stories shared are things you can relate to if you've ever gotten great customer service. My favorite is the "consider it done" phone at the Gaylord Opryland that Donna discusses in great depth. Donna recounts stories of picking up the phone to "consider it done" and the person on the other end going to great lengths to ensure everything is taken care of to your satisfaction.

Fun stories...actionable tips...and common sense tips make this a book I greatly enjoyed and that I look forward to working with MY team to put these simple but not easy tips into action.

Pick up a copy of The Celebrity Experience: Insider Secrets to Delivering Red Carpet Customer Service today, and learn from the masters of customer service on how customer service can be done RIGHT!

[Phil Gerbyshak is a customer service manager, author, brand guru and speaker who can be found writing lifehacks articles at Make It Great! and productivity and management articles at Slacker Manager, providing insights into customer service, management, self-empowerment and improving your brand. He is a founding member of Joyful Jubilant Learning network, and his appetite for learning about GREAT customer service can never be satisfied.]

Comments

[Donna Cutting]

Phil,

Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed The Celebrity Experience and found it valuable.

The companies (celebrity and otherwise) profiled in the book impressed me so much with their commitment to being extraordinary! My hope is that people will read this book and catch their passion for taking customer service to the level of star treatment.

Thank you again for taking the time to write this review. You've "Made it Great" for me today!

Warmly,
Donna Cutting

[Steve Sherlock]

Thanks Phil. Customer service is a tough and necessary position. I agree that this is not rocket science. While the customer is not always right, they must be treated with respect and you can't get too much more basic that that.

The execution of good customer service is the hard part. All too many stories are told of failures. You hardly hear of the real good ones that occur day in and day out.

[Stephen Hopson]

Phil:

Guess what? I am getting this book in the mail soon! I cannot wait for it. Gal Morale (a.k.a. Donna Cutting) and I have just recently become blogging friends and now we're buddies. She's a delight to converse with. Looks like her "Celebrity" programs are receiving rave reviews. So glad for her.

Thanks for the review Phil. Found out about this thorugh Gal Morale's blog referencing this article.

[Rosa Say]

I need to get Donna’s book Phil; it sounds like a winner, and this has been a frustrating hunt for me: As much as we all want better customer service, great books on it are hard to find. And many of those I have found have annoyed me somewhat, for they are aimed at how managers should be ‘fixing’ people instead of engaging them so that their own aloha bubbles to the surface naturally and customer service happens in a more genuine way —versus being staged. It sounds like this book is written directly to the individual, and I am curious about her action steps.

Also Phil, knowing how much you read, and how emphatically you DO value and train others in customer service, for you to say this is “one of my favorite customer service books of all time” is quite a significant endorsement!

[Rosa Say]

Aloha Phil and JJLers; I have just left the following comment for Donna at her blog, and I thought I would share it here as well, as I had signed it as the managing editor of Joyful Jubilant Learning.
~ Rosa

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Aloha Donna,
Mahalo; thank you for visiting Joyful Jubilant Learning and for leaving your comment there at Phil’s review, and for this pointer here on your own blog. A Love Affair with Books is an annual forum lasting a month’s time, and it is now in its fourth year. Thus, we are now in the second hundred of book titles that we have reviewed: I would like to clarify for your readers that these are not paid reviews, and we do not accept author solicitations or requests by their publishers to review their books; our reviewers are simply asked to share books they have loved and strongly recommend to the rest of our JJL community.

Amazingly in this time of easy RSS notification and internet search capability, —and I think sadly— I can count on only one hand the number of times an author or their representative has come by to say thank you as you did. That alone tells me that you are truly the person to have written a book like this, and I am looking forward to learning more about you and the work you do.

After A Love Affair with Books concludes each year, it has been my practice to match and double the number of books we review in a purchase I make for the libraries of local business colleges in Hawai‘i, from my company, Say Leadership Coaching. This year, I will be sure I include at least a case pack of The Celebrity Experience if not more, and I am now off to Amazon.com to purchase a book for myself.

Mahalo nui loa Donna; thank you for sharing your aloha with us, and for the good work that you do. It is a joy to meet you.
Rosa Say, founder of Say Leadership Coaching, author of Managing with Aloha, and managing editor of Joyful Jubilant Learning

[Donna Cutting]

Rosa,

Thank you for your very kind words. I was honored that Phil chose to review my book, and can't imagine not expressing gratitude.

And now...gratitude to you...for purchasing my book - a copy for yourself and for the libraries. You have completely made my day!

I hope you enjoy it and find value. I will be sure to come back here often.

Thank you!

Warmly,
Donna Cutting

[Phil Gerbyshak]

Donna - Glad to share your wonderful book. Thanks for your thanks. It's VERY appreciated.

Steve - Execution. There's the rub. Now how do we get folks to understand AND execute? Perhaps lost revenue for bad customer service and increased revenues for great customer service will get folks attention? Hope so!

Stephen - VERY cool that you're getting this book too. It's a great one! She'll be at SOBCon too, so she'll be able to meet you and me there (and Steve, and many other JJL'ers too!

Rosa - Engage your employees and build on their natural strengths is truly the ONLY way to get better customer service out of your associates. When disengaged, even the most talented employee will provide bad service. Start with engagement, and you'll hit the heart every time.

And yes, this is definitely one of my favorite customer service books of all time. I love GREAT stories, and this book is full of them.

Rosa - I wonder why more don't pay attention to their own press clippings, especially as we all work SO HARD to get attention. When it's given, we need to say thanks.

Just like Donna - she made it great. Now for others to pay attention...We'll see how that works.

For me...I'm buying books written by folks I have gotten to know and like a bit, so the next book you write Rosa, or that Donna writes, I will buy and devour.