Driven to Delight

Good book for customer service

Amazing Book.

Driven to Delight, Delivering World-Class Customer Experience the Mercedes-Benz Way by Joseph A. Michelli ©2016 McGraw Hill Education. A must read for any current, future or past Mercedes-Benz owner, as well as Mercedes-Benz dealership employee. This is the story of how the Mercedes-Benz USA, the marketing arm of Mercedes-Benz/Daimler, a German automobile manufacturer, has transformed itself to be customer driven and focused as a company. In today’s high-line automotive world there are a lot of great products and manufacturers to choose from, engineering, technology, styling are all factors, but in the end the real deal-closer is customer service. This book talks about MBUSA’s CEO, Steve Cannon, the American who has headed up the US Marketing arm of the company since 2007, and took over as President and CEO of MBUSA in 2011, and his program of implementation of moving the company from a seller of automobiles, to the next level, a supplier to satisfied customers. Mercedes-Benz feels that providing exceptional and personal service is a hallmark of any leading brand, and with the “Best or Nothing” mantra follows through with that. The book at first seems to be more an homage to Cannon, as it mentions him in glowing terms, time and time again throughout the first half of the book. As you look into the author’s past work, you see similar Management and Marketing books about other companies that he has written, as well as he mentions them quite often in this book. And you get the feeling that this might be the result of being hired by the companies to produce these tomes. Stepping over the self-promotion and the flattery of MBUSA’s CEO Cannon, there are some very interesting case-studies as well as approaches to customer management that the company has developed and some which were discontinued, all laid out in the timeline of the study, as the book progresses. A program that developed, The Concierge Program, where other companies use the Genius title, MBUSA chooses to use the customer and service oriented title of Concierge, which is thought of more as a hospitality service position, than a technical trainer position. Saying that we are here to help the customer, as opposed to telling the customer the company employee is more knowledgeable than you are. Another program, of planning ahead for problematic issues with new models in their “MB Select” Program that came into existence as both the CLA and S-Class models debuted, knowing that there would indeed be issues that needed to be addressed as brand new models came to market, and giving the first responders, the dealership staff, that authority and responsibility to fix the problem and make the customer happy, without the hassle of layers of corporate approval. While the book is more like a first-year marketing student’s required reading, it is an easy read of 263 pages. The stories of success and a few failures goes by quickly with lead up, and responses. While the book does come across as an ego building exercise, it has a number of very interesting examples of programs that have worked and those that were tried and abandoned. The book makes provides a view of how MBUSA has worked hard to become the top seller of luxury automobiles in the USA. For a taste of the book and to see background that is referred to in the book go to http://driventodelight.com/ Available as a download on iTunes for $19.95 and hardcover from $17 to $27 on Amazon. More interesting now that Steve Cannon has announced his departure from MBUSA as of January 31, 2016

Purchased this as a present for my Father's birthday, and he loved it! He said that he really enjoyed the read and made him fall even further in love with a brand he now has even more respect for.

Motavational in nature, this book invigorates the reader to provide great aspects of the Mecedes Benz customer experience to their work place. I highly reccommend this book for a team reading exercise or any sales professional.

Very good, enjoyed the journey. This makes you think and rethink all of your own processes, looking for how each process and customer contact point can be improved. This should be shared with your entire team.

An insightful book that shows the focus and leadership required to make an on going sustainable change in culture and the rewards that effort can deliver.

I have read all Micheli's previous books and they were very informative and all have practical methods you can implement in your own dealings. This one unfortunately (to me) came across as an advertising copywriting job for MB USA. Most of the book is spent with words praising the ideas of the then MB USA boss (who has since left, unknown if it was his decision or a corporate push). I dealt with Mercedes as a vendor for many years during this time frame of the book and, from my personal experience, the employees did not "buy-in" to this philosophy. Just search Mercedes Benz Manhattan (their company owned dealership/flagship) and see the massive number of customer service complaints and how vehement their customers dislike them. This of course is not the book's fault; but in writing this book that all is rosy it becomes disingenuous at best for Micheli. I'd be interested to see if edits are made if/when another edition is released.

Soy fanática del CX y este libro es una best practice para implementar en tu empresa de principio a fin!! Quiero marcar todo el libro por lo valiosos de sus frases/insights Excelente y 1000% recomendado!

Really enjoyed reading this walk through the MBUSA customer experience journey. We are going through a similar journey and this provides a road map as to the core process with some great supporting initiatives. Thoroughly recommend it

The book is good, not great. The message is interesting but it could have half of its size. It seems the author had a pages minimum goal and tried as hard to reach it.

Tres instructif

The Book is a sham. It merely describes what any business would do to provide perfect customer support. It appears Michelli has written this book as a favour to Steve Cannon the CEO of USMB for having given him a job in the program. The style of writing is confused! There are no lucid examples describing how eaxactly anything was done and what actually was the benefit of doing this.