A new breakthrough idea about how to win customer loyalty from Matthew Dixon, the bestselling author of The Challenger Sale

Everyone knows that the best way to create customer loyalty is with service so good, so over the top, that it surprises and delights. But what if everyone is wrong?

In their acclaimed bestseller The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon and his colleagues at CEB busted longstanding myths about sales. Now they've turned to a new vital business subject - customer loyalty - with a book that turns conventional wisdom on its head.

Companies devote untold time and resources trying to dazzle customers. Yet CEB's careful research proves that is wildly overrated: loyalty has a lot more to do with how well companies deliver on their basic promises than on how dazzling the service experience might be. Forget bells and whistles and just solve your customer's problems.

The Effortless Experience lays out the four pillars of a low-effort customer experience, with robust data, in­sights and profiles. Here are tools and templates you can start applying right away to improve service, reduce costs, and ultimately generate the elusive loyalty that the 'dazzle factor' fails to deliver.

The rewards are there for the taking, and the pathway to achieving them is now clearly marked.


'A business detective story, in which cherished truths are systematically investigated-and frequently debunked' -Dan Heath, coauthor of Decisive, Switch, and Made to Stick

Matt Dixon is Executive Director of the Sales & Service Practice at CEB. He is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, and his previous book, The Challenger Sale, was a Wall Street Journal bestseller

Nick Toman is Senior Director of Research for CEB's Sales & Services Practice and is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review.

Rick DeLisi is Senior Director of Advisory Services for CEB's Sales & Service Practice and a noted public speaker and facilitator.

This is what every business book should be like: stuffed with practical advice, wellsupported by research, and written to keep you eagerly flipping the pages. --DAN HEATH, coauthor of Decisive, Switch, and Made to Stick, from the foreword Most current customer support and customer experience improvement programs are merely replays of age-old concepts with some new terminology thrown in. The customer effort research and approach recounted here is different. It is truly the first really novel idea that I've heard--and implemented--in a long time. This is an approach that drives innovative, significant improvement within my teams . . . actions grounded in solid data . . . actions that yield measurable, customer-visible results that we just couldn't achieve via other means. It really has changed the way I think about the support my team delivers. --DAN ROURKE, director of software support, HomeAway, Inc. A must-have for any true customer experience leader's library. Matt, Nick, and Rick are the 'MythBusters' of customer experience, dispelling many commonly held but inaccurate beliefs around the drivers of disloyalty and delight and what will really drive true value to your business. --LYNN HOLMGREN, vice president, customer experience strategy, Frontier Communications If you are looking for one resource to keep on your desk that will bring you back to the right focus for delivering a better customer service, this is that resource. --CHRIS HALE, vice president, reservation services, Hyatt Every business is looking for the secret to creating loyal customers. This book not only builds a compelling case for effortless customer experiences being the key to loyalty, but also provides a clear road map for any business to achieve that goal. It's a must-read! --DEB OLER, vice president and general manager, Grainger Brand, W. W. Grainger What's brilliant about The Effortless Experience is its pragmatism, illustrated by the observation that w

Matt Dixon is Executive Director of the Sales & Service Practice at CEB. He is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, and his previous book, The Challenger Sale, was a Wall Street Journal bestseller.
Nick Toman is Senior Director of Research for CEB's Sales & Services Practice and is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review.
Rick DeLisi is Senior Director of Advisory Services for CEB's Sales & Service Practice and a noted public speaker and facilitator.