Books look at various aspects of the economic tsunami.
BY RICHARD PACHTER
A boom is coming. In fact, it has already begun. The rising tide of books dealing with ongoing economic catastrophe is building and will undoubtedly crest within the next couple of months. The blame games and finger pointing ought to be a hoot — or at least a cottage industry. This time, we'll look at four attempts to identify and elucidate the root causes of the mess, and in a few weeks, we'll examine several ''where do we go from here'' efforts.
Panic. Michael Lewis. W.W. Norton & Co. 352 pages.
Lewis' compilation of articles and excerpts recounting the 20 years of mischief and malfeasance that preceded the current tsunami of crap (a/k/a ''The Great Recession'') is more fun than it ought to be. Not that it's a comedic yuk-fest, but the writing is quite sharp and a pleasure to read. The content includes contributions from Lewis himself (a master reporter and deft stylist), Dave Barry, Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and James Surowiecki, as well as contemporaneous reports from major newspapers. The text covers crises ranging from the Asian Meltdown, Russian Default and other more mundane — and unnamed — disasters right up to the current mess.
Lewis notes that contributors waived their fees, and all royalties from this book will go to a fund for rebuilding New Orleans, so at least some good will come from all the pain.
House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street. William D. Cohan. Doubleday. 480 pages.
Cohan's previous book, on Lazard Fréres, was excellent, and this one is another exhaustive look inside a major financial institution, Bear Stearns. As with the earlier volume, the author does a superb job of revealing corporate culture and personalities. But this is far from a gossipy beach read. Cohan is a superb and incisive journalist, and his interviews and other research bring clarity and comprehensibility to this complicated and sordid tale. 
Catastrophe: The Story of Bernard L. Madoff, The Man Who Swindled the World. Deborah and Gerald Strober. Phoenix Books. 256 pages.
While this is hardly a rush job or an instant effort, it was clearly composed rather quickly and will almost definitely be superseded by later books on Madoff, possibly by the Strobers themselves. Their narrative is straightforward and cleanly written; requisite pop psychoanalysis and telepathic reconstructions of events are kept to a minimum. Reportage and analysis herein emphasizes the human aspects of the Madoff scandal. The sense of shock and disgust is palpable as they proffer numerous quotes from victims, including Holocaust survivors, as well as depleted donors to charitable and educational institutions. Legal citations and other documents are quoted, too.
Enron and Other Corporate Fiascos: The Corporate Scandal Reader. Edited by Nancy B. Rapoport, Jeffrey D. Van Nie and Bala G. Dharan. Foundation Press. 1254 pages.
If they ever decide to throw the book at Madoff or any of the other financial criminals, this 1,200-page-plus tome is the one I'd heave. This hefty volume — larger than many municipalities' phone directories — is a compendium of experts' writings on the Enron debacle and other malfeasance. Writers are mostly law professors, but there's one ringer — Malcolm Gladwell — whose New Yorker article on Enron is also available online, in case you want to skip this weighty compilation.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Big Boom in Post-Mortem Studies of the Financial Meltdown
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Customer Service books reviewed
As promised...
Customer service isn't just for dealing with complaints.
Two new books show how to use it to strengthen loyalty.
BY RICHARD PACHTER
published 7/28/08 in The Miami Herald
Business is more challenging than ever. Competition, consolidation, inflation and other economic pressures make it difficult for any company to survive, let alone thrive. Adding to that is the ubiquity of the Internet and the shift of power to the consumer, with more choices and the ability to subvert traditional distribution channels in unprecedented ways.
But the number of firms who still conduct business in the traditional manner without taking the Web into consideration is amazing.
Sure, they may have shiny websites, and some provide e-mail addresses for ''feedback,'' but the majority seems to either ignore or minimize the potential benefits of customer interaction. The prevailing notion that ''customer service'' exists only to deal with defective products or unhappy customers is equally odd.
Two new books examine how discontent can often be transformed into opportunity.
Blackshaw, of Nielsen Online, is kind of a guru on customer interaction and invokes a bunch of well-publicized horror stories, including blogger Jeff Jarvis' online counterattack against shoddy treatment by Dell Computer, critic Bob Garfield's similar crusade against Comcast and an AOL user who wasn't allowed to close his account despite numerous requests, so he recorded the interminable and frustrating phone conversation and posted it online. All of these episodes received considerable publicity, much to the embarrassment of the companies involved.
The resulting losses of good will and sales are impossible to quantify. (The author also recounts episodes where companies treated customers well, but those occasions, unfortunately, rarely receive much amount of publicity.)
In addition to the anecdotes, Blackshaw provides suggestions for taking a more proactive stance in dealing with unhappy customers. Given the high cost of branding, marketing and advertising, retaining customers would seem to be more cost-effective than recruiting new ones.
The Internet provides numerous opportunities for companies to develop closer relationships with customers. E-mail, for example is essentially free and one-on-one, even when sent out in bulk, yet few firms understand how to use this interactivity to cultivate positive relationships.
Barlow and Moller have a healthy and somewhat unusual perspective. They view complaints as gifts. Sure, it sounds goofy, but the passion evinced by unhappiness can be an entry point for further dialogue. Like Blackshaw, they recount tales of customers' bad experiences and how the companies responded. It's interesting, of course, to read about these tales of woe, but it's also instructive to see how even a hint of humanity trumps the usual corporate-speak. That's the paradox of high-tech — it allows an unprecedented level of human contact when correctly deployed. But at best, it's only an expression of genuine consideration.
It's not that surprising, though. People generally prefer to be treated well. In his book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell observed that doctors who spend more time and were friendlier with patients were sued less frequently for malpractice than doctors who behaved in a more authoritarian and curt manner. Trust is a function of being treated like a person, which seems to also be good business.
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