Who Speaks for the Customer? Improving Results with a Customer-Centered Framework

 About the Author

Foreword

Preface: Why This Book and How to Use It

Acknowledgments

SECTION 1. THE FOUNDATION FOR A CUSTOMER-DRIVEN BUSINESS

1. The Era of the Customer

2. Who Is Your Customer?

3. Leveraging the Customer Voice

4. The Economics of Customers

5. Understanding the Customer’s Journey

SECTION 2. PUTTING THE CUSTOMER AT THE CENTER OF YOUR BUSINESS

6. Building an Effective Customer Journey

7. Measuring Business Results around Customers

8. Managing Customer Information—Data Analytics and AI

9. Organizing to Ensure a Customer-Centric Focus

10. Aligning Customer Strategy

11. Business Is about People

12. Minimizing Friction That Impacts Customers

13. Customer Operations—Retention, Expansion, and Advocacy

14. Communication—A Fundamental Skill

SECTION 3. WHO SPEAKS FOR THE CUSTOMER?

15. Becoming Customer Centered—Bringing It All Together

Appendices: Examples, Case Studies, and Additional Materials

Glossary Acronyms, Terms, and Definitions

Index

Biography

Irene F. Lefton is a writer, top 100 Customer Success (CS) Strategist, CS Advocate, former VP of Customer Success and Chief Customer Officer who conveys the voice of the customer. She focuses on balancing good customer experience and creating customer value to drive profitable recurring revenue. Her background in economics and business spans many industries and use cases, and she has successfully built and operated multiple global professional services, support, and CS teams in the US, Europe and Asia. Irene demonstrates customer focus in everything she does. She currently leads the Customer Success Leadership Network, a collaborative group of cross-functional executives that network, share ideas and educate others about the importance of centering customers in business. With a degree in Economics and an MBA from the University of NM, Irene has garnered expertise over her career by working around the world, in both large and small companies and has demonstrated success across multiple go to market business models, perpetual and subscription. She is considered to be a thought leader in the Customer Experience/Customer Success space, and she consults to develop and execute strategies that ensure practices and policies are customer centered. Growing up in a small family retail business, Irene actively built her early career in Los Angeles where she held roles in project management at Transamerica Insurance, did consulting and implementation of large-scale government systems at Price Waterhouse, and created IT and logistics infrastructure at a regional grocery wholesaler. She moved to Silicon Valley to lead regional consulting practices at Amdahl and Progress Software and has managed many customer facing teams at other enterprises where she was an early innovator in the emerging field of Customer Success. The latter part of her career was spent wearing multiple executive hats, and honing her customer focused change management, communication, escalation, and facilitation skills. She chose early-stage companies where she navigated the chaos to bring order to customers and created and contributed to successful exits, and acquisitions. Irene’s resiliency and the experience she gained throughout her career provides her with a unique perspective on how to leverage customer input and knowledge and create sustainable and profitable businesses. She understands how to help companies adapt to cultural and generational differences from managing multi-generational global teams and experiencing both subscription and perpetual business models.

"Who Speaks for The Customer? bridges the gap between learning business and understanding the customer. It equips the next generation of business leaders with the essential customer “muscle” needed to build thriving, resilient, and customer-centric companies."

~ Donna Weber, Customer Value Expert and author of Onboarding Matters

"Every CEO wants growth charts that go up and to the right. The secret is: your customers have to achieve their success.  This book makes it clear—and shows you how."

~ Nick Mehta, CEO – Gainsight

"For more than a decade, businesses have been struggling with what Customer Success as should look like in companies and careers. Irene Lefton provides a detailed answer. Who Speaks for The Customer? details both the what, and, more importantly, why. It is required reading for every CS professional and CxO."

~ Mikael Blaisdell, Executive Director, The Customer Success Association