THE 10-SECOND CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Unger, the chief experience officer of the American Medical Association, offers a game plan for re-envisioning corporate customer service.

In his nonfiction debut, the author draws heavily on his customer marketing experience as CXO of the AMA, which represents 1.5 million physicians, residents, and medical students in nearly 200 medical societies across the United States. His job entailed growing the association’s membership base through various methods of outreach; he’d previously headed up marketing at job at the Daily Racing Form. He concentrates on the importance of reducing “friction” in the customer experience, the “seamless integration of product, marketing, commerce, and service to acquire and retain customers” and to “quantify the value of customer experience and tie it to business results.” In the modern online world, he stresses, marketing often entails providing consumers with a good experience when interaction with an organization. He’s devised a process for his fellow CXOs to smooth product development and create a “10-second customer journey” that’s nearly free of the “friction” that can result from faulty products, poor customer service, clunky websites, and poor responses to systemic problems. Citing behavioral, attitudinal, conceptual, and demographic elements, Unger’s process seeks to avoid bad product initiatives, and, above all, make interactions between an organization and customers as efficient and pleasant as possible. Over the course of this book, Unger writes with clarity and energy. However, some aspects of his approach may strike readers as troubling in certain contexts. For example, his insistence that product meetings should be at least 50 percent concerned with marketing, for instance, and that “you are always selling” may strike some readers as somewhat alarming when associated with products related to life-and-death issues, as in the medical profession. Still, sales professionals are likely to find the author’s focus on the snags that can bedevil digital interfaces to be valuable and refreshingly direct.

An energetic marketing-focused plan for increasing customer satisfaction.