By Lewis P. Carbone (Financial Times Prentice Hall, July 2004)

Focus on the customer. You've heard it so much, it's practically a cliche; yet too few businesses use the experience of buying a product or service to engage every customer, and the result is first-time customers don't come back. Because businesses have so fundamentally ignored customers' needs, consumers "have become unpredictable free agents: increasingly disappointed, disgruntled, devalued, and ultimately disloyal." To win them back, Carbone, the founder and CEO of the consultancy Experience Engineering Inc., writes with authority about those "clues" -- rational and emotional, human and environmental -- that lead to the cash register, whether the customer realizes it or not. Managers charged with increasing their business -- and who isn't? -- will no doubt enjoy this research-laden tour of the buyer's mind.

BACKSTORY The author has studied the building blocks that constitute customer experience since the 1980s, and his firm has worked with companies such as General Motors, Avis, and Office Depot.

TAKEAWAY A framework to understand customer needs and desires, and to design and implement an experience management system. Most important, as in writing a good mystery novel, you learn how to develop and insert clues into a narrative story that customers follow, from anticipating your products to recollecting them.

WHAT WE LIKED Most business books rise or fall based on their examples. Carbone doesn't disappoint. From his uncle playing music in an early A&P store to how first-class hotels are making high art of toilet-paper folding, the book offers unusual real-world instances of how to turn a simple transaction into a business lovefest. He also delivers stories of companies learning from failure, such as Howard Johnson.

WHAT WE DIDN'T Some readers may find the whole proposition overly simplistic. Though the author's writing style is for the most part crisp and engaging, he peppers the book with jargon such as "experience topography" and "value proposition management" that are really too-fancy ways of saying "put the customer first."

WHAT TO SAY TO SOUND LIKE YOU'VE READ IT In this hypercompetitive age, if you suspect your customers are complaining about you, you're a punch line, or worse, roadkill. Factor experience into your planning or else.