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Hug Your Customer: The Proven Way to Personalize Sales and Achieve Astounding Results (Hardcover)
by Jack Mitchell
| Category:
Sales, Customer service, Corporate excellence, Entrepreneurship |
| Market price: ¥ 228.00
MSL price:
¥ 208.00
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
An excellent guide to consistently winning business by differentiating in the customer service. |
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Author: Jack Mitchell
Publisher: Hyperion; 1st edition
Pub. in: June, 2003
ISBN: 1401300340
Pages: 302
Measurements: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.0 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00011
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- MSL Picks -
Hug Your Customers: The Proven Way To Personalize Sales And Achieve Astounding Results by Jack Mitchell is a great book for entrepreneurs who operate service businesses and, especially, for business owners who operate retail operations.
Jack Mitchell is co-owner and CEO of Mitchells/Richards, the upper-end clothing retailer. Today, Mitchells/Richards sells $65 million in apparel annually. Mitchells/Richards dresses many Fortune 500 executives. However, the store began as a modest family business, started by Jack's dad in 1958.
Mitchell writes: "When the store opened, there were a few dozen shirts, some socks, a couple of sweaters, and a few ties. Plus, exactly three Doncaster suits, the brand Dad created for the store, priced at $65 apiece. A size 40 banker's stripe. A 42 navy blue. And a 42 charcoal gray... Nowadays we stock over three thousand suits-for men and women."
Mitchell credits his family store's success to making the store a home, where customers feel welcome.
Mitchell says his parents: "...understood that customers wanted five things more than they wanted a great location or enormous inventory:
1. A friendly greeting
2. Personal interest
3. A business that makes them feel special
4. A 'no problem' attitude
5. Forward thinking
Mitchell says that to be successful in the service industry, you must build a customer centric organization-one that hugs the customer. It's not enough to have satisfied customers. You need extremely satisfied customers.
Mitchell writes: "When you have strong relationships, customers will do more of their buying from you. They'll refer other customers. They'll communicate with you better and tell you what they like and what they don't like, in turn making your business more efficient and effective."
Mitchell points out that hugging is difficult to quantify, and many companies ignore customer satisfaction and customer profiling altogether. While inventory is recorded on the balance sheet, Mitchell tells us that a company's greatest asset-repeat customers-doesn't appear on any financial statements.
Further, while companies invest significant amounts in computer systems, they rarely develop computer systems that support a hugging culture.
Mitchell writes: "What's amazing is that although personal relationships are absolutely crucial to any company's success, they are rarely tracked by any system. Hotels don't know who likes queen-sized beds and who wants extra pillows. Airlines don't know who prefers aisle seats and who prefers the window."
Mitchell is a big fan of profiling customers to provide more personal service. He likes his sales associates to know which customers like M&M's and what nicknames they prefer.
With over 115,000 customers, knowing personal information about each customer is nearly impossible without a database to support this information. When a customer visits Mitchells/Richards, the customer's sales associate can pull up the customer information easily allowing the associate to recall information about the individual.
Hug Your Customers also contains solid advice about running a family business. (From quoting Peter Hupalo, USA)
Target readers:
Managers, business owners, entrepreneurs, sales and service professionals, trainers, and MBAs.
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Jack Mitchell is the CEO of Mitchells/Richards, two of the most successful clothing stores in the business. He and his wife, Linda, live in Wilton, Connecticut, where they raise their four sons.
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From the Publisher:
Once a customer, always a friend-that is the simple philosophy behind Mitchells/Richards, two of the most successful clothing stores in the nation - and that is why Jack Mitchell, his family, and associates inspire the enduring loyalty and admiration of his customers, including today's top CEOs. Jack's two stores, Richards in Greenwich, Connecticut, and Mitchells in Westport, Connecticut, suit up discerning customers from across the country. Now for the first time, Jack Mitchell shares the secrets of his family's innovative merchandising and management approach in his book Hug Your Customers. It's a deceptively simple but winning approach to customer service-that a relationship is at the heart of every transaction. Jack Mitchells' business philosophy is based on 'hugs' - personal touches such as knowing every customer's name and clothing preferences or handing out free coffee and newspapers on the commuter train platform. Complete with anecdotes that exemplify outstanding customer service, Hug Your Customers shows how any business can adapt this hugging philosophy to attract great staff, lower marketing costs, and maintain higher gross margins and long-term revenues. At a time when customer service has become the difference between success and failure, Hug Your Customers shows how Jack's one-of-a-kind philosophy brings winning results.
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This book is about one particular family's philosophy of selling. For 3 generations, my family has been dressing men and women in Fairfield and Westchester, where a high concentration of top executives live and increasingly work. Our stores are less than an hour by train from New York's Grand Central Station, but we are told we're a world apart in terms of the care, time, and attention we devote to each and every customer. My parents started the business in 1958 in a former plumbing supply store with bare-bones inventory of 3 suits and all the free coffee you could drink. My mother would make coffee for customers in the same pot she used to make breakfast at home, so she made sure to bring the pot home with her at the end of the day for a good scrubbing. That first year, they did $50,000 worth of sales and were thrilled.
Nowadays, we have 2 stores in Connecticut, Mitchells and Richards. We do in excess of $65 million a year, and we are all thrilled to be selling suits and dresses one at a time and hugging customers. We achieve this volume in Westport, a town of just 28,000 people, and in nearby Greenwich, which has about 60,000. Roughly every other household is a customer in our system, because at some point we gave them a very pleasant and memorable shopping experience – a hug or two that made them come back for more. We’ve been told by others that we're one of the most successful – if not the most successful – high-end clothing businesses of our size in the country, and maybe in the world. It's not because of our product, it's not because of our prices – other stores have great product at the same prices – it's because of how we personally treat customers.
Years ago, everything was transaction-based. The interaction with the customer began and ended with the transaction. Say the customer bought 3 suits, 6 white shirts, and a couple of ties, one striped and one solid. You had no complaints. That was a nice sale, and you earned a nice commission. End of discussion. You had no idea what the person was going to do with those suits and shirts, and it wasn’t that you didn't care, you just didn't have the mindset to ask the customer.
Today it's not enough to make a sale. We have to ask the customer what he is using those 3 new suits for, and then we can decode that into what type suit, fabric, color, and model is right for him. Often we know a lot more than he does about what he should wear in the business or social setting to look and feel great… Today you have to listen in order to understand the customer's needs, and that means developing a personal relationship with them.
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| View all 14 comments |
Esquire, USA
<2006-12-21 00:00>
Simple but winning approach to customer service. |
James M. Kilts (Chairman of the Board and CEO, The Gillette Company), USA
<2006-12-21 00:00>
Jack Mitchell writes with wisdom, experience, and passion…His insights apply to the Fortune 500 as much as they do the neighborhood stores. |
Seymour Sternberg (CEO, New York Life Insurance), USA
<2006-12-21 00:00>
Required reading for anyone who manages a business where customer service counts. |
Larry Bossidy (former CEO, Honeywell International Inc.), USA
<2006-12-21 00:00>
Hug Your Customers can change your attitude and outlook while helping you become more successful. A must read! |
View all 14 comments |
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