Driven to Delight, Delivering World-Class Customer Experience the Mercedes-Benz Way by Joseph A. Michelli ©2016 McGraw Hill Education.

Driven to Delight in
hardcover.

Driven to Delight, Delivering World-Class Customer Experience the Mercedes-Benz Way by Joseph A. Michelli ©2016 McGraw Hill Education.

A must read for any current, future or past Mercedes-Benz owner, as well as Mercedes-Benz dealership employee. This is the story of how the Mercedes-Benz USA, the marketing arm of Mercedes-Benz/Daimler, a German automobile manufacturer, has transformed itself to be customer driven and focused as a company. In today’s high-line automotive world there are a lot of great products and manufacturers to choose from, engineering, technology, styling are all factors, but in the end the real deal-closer is customer service.

This book talks about MBUSA’s CEO, Steve Cannon, the American who has headed up the US Marketing arm of the company since 2007, and took over as President and CEO of MBUSA in 2011, and his program of implementation of moving the company from a seller of automobiles, to the next level, a supplier to satisfied customers. Mercedes-Benz feels that providing exceptional and personal service is a hallmark of any leading brand, and with the “Best or Nothing” mantra follows through with that.

Each chapter has a list of key ideas

The book at first seems to be more an homage to Cannon, as it mentions him in glowing terms, time and time again throughout the first half of the book. As you look into the author’s past work, you see similar Management and Marketing books about other companies that he has written, as well as he mentions them quite often in this book. And you get the feeling that this might be the result of being hired by the companies to produce these tomes. Stepping over the self-promotion and the flattery of MBUSA’s CEO Cannon, there are some very interesting case-studies as well as approaches to customer management that the company has developed and some which were discontinued, all laid out in the timeline of the study, as the book progresses.

Few illustrations, but interesting,
those that are included

A program that developed, The Concierge Program, where other companies use the Genius title, MBUSA chooses to use the customer and service oriented title of Concierge, which is thought of more as a hospitality service position, than a technical trainer position. Saying that we are here to help the customer, as opposed to telling the customer the company employee is more knowledgeable than you are. Another program, of planning ahead for problematic issues with new models in their “MB Select” Program that came into existence as both the CLA and S-Class models debuted, knowing that there would indeed be issues that needed to be addressed as brand new models came to market, and giving the first responders, the dealership staff, that authority and responsibility to fix the problem and make the customer happy, without the hassle of layers of corporate approval.

Driven to Delight, available
in hardcover as well as an
iTunes download.

While the book is more like a first-year marketing student’s required reading, it is an easy read of 263 pages. The stories of success and a few failures goes by quickly with lead up, and responses. While the book does come across as an ego building exercise, it has a number of very interesting examples of programs that have worked and those that were tried and abandoned. The book provides a view of how MBUSA has worked hard to become the top seller of luxury automobiles in the USA.

For a taste of the book and to see background that is referred to in the book go to http://driventodelight.com/  Available as a download on iTunes for $19.95 and hardcover from $17 to $27 on Amazon.

                                                                                  - William West Hopper