Driven to Delight MP3 CD – Unabridged, December 6, 2015

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.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.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.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 makes 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.More interesting now that Steve Cannon has announced his departure from MBUSA as of January 31, 2016

Motavational in nature, this book invigorates the reader to provide great aspects of the Mecedes Benz customer experience to their work place. I highly reccommend this book for a team reading exercise or any sales professional.

If you need to stay competitive, this helps show you how. Organization, culture, strategy, tactics, measurement.Only thing missing is how this fit globally.

I have read all Micheli's previous books and they were very informative and all have practical methods you can implement in your own dealings. This one unfortunately (to me) came across as an advertising copywriting job for MB USA. Most of the book is spent with words praising the ideas of the then MB USA boss (who has since left, unknown if it was his decision or a corporate push). I dealt with Mercedes as a vendor for many years during this time frame of the book and, from my personal experience, the employees did not "buy-in" to this philosophy. Just search Mercedes Benz Manhattan (their company owned dealership/flagship) and see the massive number of customer service complaints and how vehement their customers dislike them. This of course is not the book's fault; but in writing this book that all is rosy it becomes disingenuous at best for Micheli. I'd be interested to see if edits are made if/when another edition is released.

Purchased this as a present for my Father's birthday, and he loved it! He said that he really enjoyed the read and made him fall even further in love with a brand he now has even more respect for.

I tried to get into this book but couldn't. It felt like it was written by MB's marketing department, celebrating how awesome they are and how they have both the best product and best customer experience and how everything is so darn good and awesome that is produced by MB, gosh we are good, yes, we are the best! I read about 40 pages and gave up. There didn't seem to be any story or objective narrator.

The topic of this book is extremely interesting and should be read by people that interact with clients. However the writing is not that great and the quality of the physical book is lacking

This is the first book I read form Michelli and it is one of those books you can grab as a guide to take action in your own business. Great read!

The book is good, not great. The message is interesting but it could have half of its size. It seems the author had a pages minimum goal and tried as hard to reach it.

Tres instructif

Another business book which discusses, very repetitively, institutional cultural change without referring to redundancy, bullying, or finance. The managerial assumption is that people will buy Mercedes-Benz as opposed to Lexus (assuming that the cars are of equal quality) if the staff treat them well. Not if they get good purchase deals, or discounted servicing prices, or if the sales staff know what they are talking about - the cars, that is - rather than read from a list of optional extras while staring at a computer screen, and then try to sell redundant insurance adds-ons. And that the staff can and will learn to go the extra mile without any incentives at the personal or sub-dealer level. It's all possible, if unlikely. To my mind the recent success of MBUSA is due to the cars' quality improving rapidly after the end of the Chrysler tie-in.The author seems to have made a success of writing similar tomes about recently successful corporations. Good luck to him; but I won't be reading another.

Really enjoyed reading this walk through the MBUSA customer experience journey. We are going through a similar journey and this provides a road map as to the core process with some great supporting initiatives. Thoroughly recommend it

Soy fanática del CX y este libro es una best practice para implementar en tu empresa de principio a fin!! Quiero marcar todo el libro por lo valiosos de sus frases/insightsExcelente y 1000% recomendado!