Description
At age 46, author Zane is a 30-year veteran of the retail bicycle industry. He has been named one of the 30 most influential people in the bicycle industry, and he won the BBB Award of Recognition for Customer Service/Outstanding Business Practices for his work in cementing long-term customer relationships at Zane's Cycles, the largest bike shop in Connecticut. In this inspirational book for business managers and entrepreneurs, he shares important lessons he has learned about customer service. He claims that, no matter what kind of business you run, you should be in the relationship-building and experience-selling business. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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When Chris Zane bought his bicycle shop at age 16, his business struggled until he discovered the secret that catapulted his store into one of the largest in the country. His secret? Provide unbelievable, over the top, excessively generous customer service.Chris Zane isn’t a management consultant or professor preaching a theory of customer service; he’s a hands-on entrepreneur whose customer service approach has yielded enormous success. Zane has become a business celebrity, including being featured in the most recent round of American Express television ads.Featured in the New York Times and in Associated Press articles and bestowed numerous awards for its unique business practices and outstanding customer relations, Zane’s Cycles has produced ideas thought by many to be pie-in-the-sky. But these counterintuitive concepts have proven to be hard-headed and effective. For example, Zane’s offers a trade-in program for families who can turn in bicycles their kids have outgrown for a 100 percent credit toward new ones. Initially thought impossibly generous, this program has proven to be good business. Experience and a clear understanding of the lifetime value of a customer makes this program, and many others Zane’s implements, work.In Reinventing the Wheel, commonly overlooked elements that make a business exceptional are revealed. Zane produces a case study unlike any other—one that shows the importance of investing in customers and employees and how businesses are really selling experiences, not products. His philosophies and tried-and-true methods of guerilla marketing will show entrepreneurs and business owners how to knock out the competition while thriving in any kind of economy and doing good for the community along the way.
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