Woo, Wow, and Win: Service Design, Strategy, and the Art of Customer Delight

In this pioneering guide, two business authorities introduce the new discipline of Service Design and reveal why trying new strategies for pleasing customers isn’t enough to differentiate your business—it needs to be designed for service from the ground up.

Woo, Wow, and Win reveals the importance of designing your company around service, and offers clear, practical strategies based on the idea that the design of services is markedly different than manufacturing. Bestselling authors and business experts Thomas A. Stewart and Patricia O’Connell contend that most companies, both digital and brick-and-mortar, B2B or B2C; are not designed for service—to provide an experience that matches a customer’s expectations with every interaction and serves the company’s needs. When customers have more choices than ever before, study after study reveals that it’s the experience that makes the difference. To provide great experiences that keep customers coming back, businesses must design their services with as much care as their products.

Service Design is proactive—it is about delivering on your promise to customers in accordance with your strategy, not about acceding to customer dictates. Woo, Wow, and Win teaches you how to create "Ahhh" moments when the customer makes a positive judgment, and to avoid Ow" moments—when you lose a sale or worse, customer trust.

Whether you’re giving a haircut, selling life insurance, or managing an office building, your customer is as much a part of your business as your employees are. Together, you and customers create a bank of trust; fueled by knowledge of each other’s skills and preferences. This is Customer Capital, the authors explain, and it is jointly owned. But it’s up to you to manage it profitably.

Innovative yet grounded in real world examples, Woo, Wow, and Win is the key strategy for winning customers—and keeping them.

This pioneering guide for business leadership provides a new framework for success, revealing proven strategies to:

• Service Design Framework: Learn to apply the principles of SD2 (Service Design and Delivery) to build service into your company’s foundation, not just paint it on at the end.
• Brand Differentiation: Discover how to design a customer journey that creates unforgettable "Ahhh" moments and avoids trust-destroying "Ow" moments.
• Customer-Centric Strategy: Shift your focus from simply pleasing customers to proactively designing an experience that matches their expectations and advances your strategic goals.
• Design Thinking in Practice: Go beyond theory with a guide grounded in real-world examples from companies like Starbucks, Singapore Airlines, and Apple.
• Customer Capital Growth: Understand the concept of Customer Capital—the bank of trust you create with customers—and learn how to manage it profitably.

Pleasing customers isn’t enough. To delight your customers—to woo, wow, and win them—you must design your service to create memorable, empathetic experiences that meet their expectations and advance your strategy. In Woo, Wow, and Win, bestselling authors and business experts Thomas A. Stewart and Patricia O’Connell reveal the importance of service design for your company. They offer services businesses clear, practical strategies for designing and delivering great customer experiences—a distinctly different exercise than it is in manufacturing. You will learn that

• The design of a service—the experience it creates, the value it delivers—is an essential element of strategy for every business
• Excellence in service needs to be built in, not painted on at the end
• Great service should be free—well-designed service pays for itself and then some
• Service design and delivery is a sustainable, repeatable, and profitable way to differentiate your company and find and serve the right customers

Drawing on deep research and examples from industries as diverse as airlines and brokerages, hospitals and hospitality, consulting and construction, Stewart and O’Connell show how to apply the principles of service design in ways that uniquely fit your strategy. And the authors demonstrate how to use service design to set customers’ expectations—and meet them in every interaction, in every channel, every time.

Woo, Wow, and Win teaches you how to create “Ahhh” moments—when the customer makes a positive judgment—and to avoid “Ow” moments—when you lose a sale or, worse, customer trust. Stewart and O’Connell show how to map and evaluate all your interactions with customers; how to evaluate your ability to design and deliver great experiences; how to build innovation into your business model; and how to align your culture with the strategy and design you have selected.

Whatever your industry, whether you’re giving haircuts, selling life insurance, or managing an office building, your customers are as much a part of your business as your employees are. Woo, Wow, and Win shows you how to enlist them as collaborators in your success—and accelerate your company’s growth and profitability.

Thomas A. Stewart is a bestselling author, an authority on intellectual capital and knowledge management, and an influential thought leader on global management issues and ideas. His books include Intellectual Capital and The Wealth of Knowledge. He is the executive director of the National Center for the Middle Market at the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University and has served as the chief marketing and knowledge officer for Booz & Company, as well as the editor and managing director of Harvard Business Review.

“In a world being reshaped by cloud computing, smart phones, machine learning, and the Internet of things, there are two pervasive themes that cut across all sectors of the world economy: Everything is digital, and everything is a service. Woo, Wow, and Win shows how the discipline of Service Design enables any company to capitalize on these two trends to engage their customers, enlist their employees, and delight their shareholders.” - Geoffrey Moore, author Crossing the Chasm and Zone to Win

“Two pervasive themes cut across all sectors of the world economy: Everything is digital, and everything is a service. Woo, Wow, and Win shows how the discipline of Service Design enables any company to capitalize on these two trends to engage their customers, enlist their employees, and delight their shareholders.” - Geoffrey Moore, author Crossing the Chasm and Zone to Win

“Anyone who wants to get or keep customers would do well to heed the advice in these smart, incisive pages. Service design is an idea whose time has come.” - Marshall Goldsmith, executive leadership coach and author, Triggers and What Got You Here Won't Get You There

“Here is a long overdue manual for using the cohesiveness and power of design thinking to optimize every interaction your business has with its customers. You’ll not only understand why Service Design is as important as product design--you’ll have a new perspective on what makes a company unique.” - Beth Comstock, Vice Chair, GE

This is the book that service business executives have been waiting for. Woo, Wow, and Win shows how to make the connection between strategic opportunity, business design, and customer satisfaction. The principles of service design are the pathway to a more profitable future--and happier customers. - Ram Charan, advisor to CEOs and boards, author of The Attackers Advantage.

“Woo, Wow, and Win is a roadmap for success in a landscape being rapidly transformed by technology and entrepreneurship. ” - Steve Case, Chairman and CEO of Revolution, author of The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur's Vision of the Future

“Tom Stewart’s and Patricia O’Connell’s exceptional book is a convincing testimony to the power of having service strategies that are as unique and differentiated as product strategies. It provides deep insights into how you can develop your customers and retain them with superior service. It’s a must read!” - Bill George, Senior Fellow at Harvard Business School, former Chair & CEO of Medtronic, and author of Discover Your True North

“It’s impossible to operate a successful business without mastering your service design, and it’s difficult to master without this book. There is tremendous wisdom and clarity in its pages, making a complex subject both inspiring and immediately useful. Woo, Wow, and Win is an essential, urgent read.” - Stan Slap, New York Times bestselling author of Under the Hood and Bury My Heart at Conference Room B