#20: How to Become More Customer-Centric (with Peter Fader, Co-Founder, Author and Keynote Speaker)

In 'Fooled by Randomness', Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses the pervasive influence of chance and randomness in our lives and financial markets. The book argues that humans tend to underestimate the role of luck and overestimate the role of skill, leading to biases such as hindsight bias, survivorship bias, and the narrative fallacy. Taleb emphasizes the importance of recognizing and coping with uncertainty, and he critiques the tendency to seek deterministic explanations for random events. The book is part of Taleb's Incerto series, which also includes 'The Black Swan', 'The Bed of Procrustes', 'Antifragile', and 'Skin in the Game'.

In 'The Loyalty Effect,' Fred Reichheld argues that companies ignoring customer, employee, and investor loyalty face a future of low growth, weak profits, and shortened life expectancy. He presents a framework linking the 'soft' elements of business—loyalty and learning—to the 'hard' science of cash flows and cost/benefit analysis. Reichheld's research shows that loyalty drives profits through its impact on growth, learning, and productivity, and generates a spiritual energy that powers the value creation process. The book outlines eight key elements for building loyalty, including creating a superior customer value proposition, earning customer and employee loyalty, and gaining cost advantages through superior productivity[3][5].

The Black Swan is a landmark book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb that investigates the phenomenon of highly improbable events with massive impacts. These events, termed Black Swans, are unpredictable, have a significant impact, and are rationalized after the fact to appear less random. Taleb argues that humans are hardwired to focus on specifics rather than generalities, leading to a failure to consider what we don’t know. The book delves into cognitive biases, the limitations of mathematical models, and the importance of robustness and antifragility in navigating a world filled with uncertainty. The second edition includes a new essay, 'On Robustness and Fragility,' offering tools to navigate and exploit a Black Swan world.

This book, written by Fred Reichheld and Rob Markey, explains how companies like Apple, American Express, Intuit, and Zappos use the Net Promoter System to build profitable relationships with loyal customers. It emphasizes the importance of delivering a customer experience worthy of loyalty and advocates for a simple P&L accounting approach to customer relationships. The book provides practical advice on using NPS to drive business growth through enhanced loyalty and advocacy.