Clued In: How to Keep Customers
Coming Back Again and Again by
Lewis Carbone
This Is Great!
Every customer has an experience with a product, service, or brand--good
or bad. But few businesses know how to systematically manage customer
experience, so they lose their best opportunity to leverage the long-term
value of their customer relationships. Now, one of the fields top consultants
shows how to engineer customer experiences from start to finish.
Experience Engineering founder/CEO Lou Carbone draws on the latest
neuroscientific research, explaining how an impressionistic mosaic of
physical and emotional sensations is filtered through the senses,
assembled into a powerful perception, and crystallized into attitudes that
dictate everything from customer satisfaction to long-term loyalty. Next, he
systematically explains how to assess and audit existing customer
experiences, design and implement new ones, and steward them over
time, to ensure consistent excellence and improvement. Increasingly,

customer experience is a business only opportunity for differentiation. This
book gives readers the tools to craft an outstanding customer experience,
no matter what they sell, or to whom it is sold.Readers will leave this book
with a clear and actionable plan for managing the experiences that define
their businesses--and their futures--on a day-to-day basis.
Personal Review: Clued In: How to Keep Customers Coming
Back Again and Again by Lewis Carbone
Warren Buffett once said that price is what is charged for a product or
service but value is what others think it's worth. I thought about that
comment as I began to read Carbone's book. If Buffett's right (and I think
he is), the key to getting customers to come back "again and again" is to
create for them a purchase experience whose importance includes but is
by no means limited to their perception of price relative to value. What
else? Carbone: "The tangible attributes of a product or service have far
less influence on consumer preference than the unconscious sensory and
emotional elements derived from the total experience." He goes on to point
out that creating value around multi-dimensional, well-integrated, and
consciously managed experiences involves connecting with "the
unconscious emotional passions of your customers and in the process,
you'll discover how to differentiate yourself from competitors in ways that
can be almost impossible to copy and commoditize." I agree.
In Part I, Carbone makes a case for experience management and then, in
Part II, explains HOW to do that effectively. In chapters 7-11, he rigorously
examines five separate but interdependent disciplines, devoting a separate
chapter to each. I especially appreciate his provision of basic questions.
For example, here are three which must be answered by application of the
Discipline of Assessing Experience:
1. What potential impact does managing customer experiences represent
for the organization?
2. How is the experiential value currently being created for customers?
3. What resources are available to improve and optimize the way your
organization creates experience value?
The other four Disciplines involve auditing, designing, implementing, and
stewarding experiences. Again, Carbone includes for each a cluster of
"basic" questions to be answered or areas on which to focus. I also
appreciate Carbone's provision of all manner of check-lists, guidelines, and
caveats as well as "Figures" which enable his reader to concentrate on
both core principles of customer experience management and effective
application of them. Throughout the book, he inserts italicized comments
such as these:
"No one competence, discipline, or tool will be a universal silver bullet;
rather it is the experience management counterpart to Disney's coveted

`pixie dust.' It's the innovative blending of numerous perspectives and
competencies that unlocks the full potential of experiential value creation."
(Page 117)
"Designing experiences begins with the customer and ends with the
customer. When clues are aligned with the customer's known desires and
emotional needs, distinctive experiential value is being created. When
they're not in harmony, conflicts occur and the value created is eroded."
(page 190)
"The clues your customers place in the positive zone today may someday
be neutralized, becoming basic expectations that no longer provide
completive advantage but eventually become minimum thresholds to be
met by anyone with ambitions of competing for long-term customer
loyalty." (page 219)
I realize that these three brief excerpts are taken out of context. However,
hopefully, they will help those who read this brief commentary to obtain at
least a sense of what Carbone offers in this book. His customer experience
management program is cohesive, comprehensive, and cost-effective.
That said, I think it would be a fool's errand to try to implement all of it,
either immediately or over an extended period of time. "Getting clued in [to
what is of greatest importance to your customers] is the critical first step.
From that start, you too will begin to harness the kind of relentless energy
that is generated by sensing clues and recognizing their meaning and
importance in the eyes [and hearts] of your customers."
In the Afterword, Carbone confides that he now spends much less time
trying to convince people to accurately measure the experiential value they
create for their customers and much more time explaining how to do it.
How accurate and current are your organization's measurements? Unless
they are both, your organization cannot possibly manage customer
experience, much less increase its value.
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