People Love You by Jeb Blount

 

The subtitle of this book is “The Real Secret to Delivering Legendary Customer Experiences.”  Well, it turns out that it’s not a secret at all.   But it’s also not what so many of the other business books try to teach you.  Where most other books focus on the mechanics of customer service, this one focuses on the underlying emotional elements inherent in all human relationships.  Research indicates that over 50 percent of a customer experience is about emotions.  You need to get them to love you. 

“Love” is not a term that is often associated with business relationships but it is a term that is used over and over again by customers in describing how they feel about a favorite place/employee.  People value personal and unique experiences.  They want you to listen.  They want you to respond in a genuine, helpful manner.  They don’t want to feel manipulated.   

It is human nature to recognize people who go the extra mile for us.  We forget about our expectations and instead focus on how good we feel.  So although you will do everything in your power to give them what they want, even if you can’t satisfy your customers specific needs at that time, they leave with a good feeling about their experience with you.  And that experience with you reflects on your company.  Common sense?  Maybe.  But common experience?  Not so much. 

This book was written for account managers and customer service professionals but has applications for anyone who deals with other people on the job.  After all, as human beings, aren’t we all in some sort of “customer service?” 

It appears that poet Maya Angelou was right when she said “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 

Read this book and learn more about how to make that feeling a good one. 

Etiquette & Espionage

Etiquette & Espionage. Finishing School Book the First. by Gail Carriger.
Teen Zone New Fiction – Main Level – CARRIGER

This book starts a new series, set in the same world as Carriger’s popular Parasol Protectorate series, but some years earlier. Sophronia Angelina Temminnick, aged 14 or 15, spends most of her time in the stables or taking household machinery apart. She’s horrified when her mother decides to send her to finishing school, packing her off within an hour of hearing of Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. In the carriage, she meets Dimity Ann Plumleigh-Teignmott, also headed to Mademoiselle Geraldine’s, and her younger brother Pillover, who is going to Bunson and Lacroix’s Boys’ Polytechnique. She soon learns that Mademoiselle Geraldine’s is no ordinary finishing school – as is obvious the moment she discovers it’s a school floating above the moors. She will indeed be taught how to curtsey and dance along with the best, but also how to include poison in her budget and discreetly do off with only some of her dinner guests. Right at the beginning, she learns of a missing prototype – an older classmate, Monique, has mislaid it, and both the teachers and some sky pirates are after it. Sophronia sets out to solve the mystery herself with assistance from Dimity, a coal shoveler named Soap with a winning smile and African dark skin under the coal dust, and Vieve, the young cross-dressing daughter of one of the teachers. Those familiar with the earlier series will recognize Sidheag and brief mentions of the Westminster Hive and Connal. There is adventure, humor, and the beginnings of a sweet cross-class interracial romance. Sophronia may be willing to bend societal expectations as far as associating with people of different classes, but Victorian propriety keeps any budding romance at a level appropriate for much younger than today’s teens, and certainly at a level where the romance doesn’t overwhelm the rest of the story. (There’s plenty here to entertain boys, despite the girly cover.) All in all, Carriger does not disappoint. Fans and those wishing to introduce teens or older middle-grade students to the pleasures of steampunk would do well to look into it, as would fans of Ally Carter’s Gallagher Girls series.

Sarah's Key

Sarah's Key 
By Tatiana De Rosnay
CD Book Shelves - Main Level - De Rosnay

What a touching story this is!  In 1942, Jewish families were rounded up in Paris and sent to Auschwitz.  This is the story of Sarah Starzynski, a ten year old girl who escaped alone from the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup.  She had locked her little brother in a cabinet at home as they were ushered out by the police to hide him, thinking they would be back in a few hours, not understanding what was happening. When she escaped, she tried to get back to Paris to let her brother out of the cabinet.  The reader knows what that little girl doesn't, and it is absolutely heartbreaking.

Sarah's story is uncovered by a journalist, Julia Jarmond, fifty years later in 2002.  Julia finds that her family has a connection to Sarah's.  Julia's own story is also told in alternating chapters.   Her marriage is rocky, and she has to decide between her unborn baby and her husband - also heartbreaking and dramatic!

The audio book is read by Polly Stone.  She does a good job of differentiating characters by different voices (from small children to senior adults), and delivers an authentic French accent. I was glad to hear this book rather than read it because I know that her pronunciations were much better than my own would have been.

Highly recommended in all formats!

A Small Death in the Great Glen

A Small Death in the Great Glen
by A.D. Scott
Adult Mysteries - SCOTT

One of the joys of reading is being transported to another place and experiencing other people's lives, and A.D. Scott's mystery takes the reader to a small town in Scotland during the 1950s. In the aftermath of World War II, the town's residents are busy getting on with daily life and coping with the changes that the war has brought to their corner of Scotland.

The local newspaper recently imported a new editor with modern ideas. One of those modern ideas includes hiring a female reporter, Joann Ross. Joann was hired to cover the garden club, the school play and other cultural events, but when her daughters' classmate is found dead in the river, Joann and her family become involved in a murder investigation. Joann discovers that she's stronger than she knows as she and her fellow journalists at the Highland Gazette uncover the hidden lives in their small town.

Readers who like Ruth Rendel, Peter Robinson, R.D. Wingfield, P.J. Parrish, or Edna Buchanan will enjoy mysteries by A.D. Scott. The story of Joann Ross and her fellow journalists at the Highland Gazette continues in A Double Death on the Black Isle.


The Raven Boys

The Raven Boys. Book 1 of the Raven Cycle. Read by Will Patton. by Maggie Stiefvater
Teen Zone CD Books – Main Level – STIEFVATER
Teen Zone New Fiction – Main Level - STIEFVATER

I loved Steifvater’s Wolves of Mercy Fall series, and couldn’t wait to read this one, higher on the adventure and so far a bit lower on the romance than that series.

"There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark's Eve," Neeve said. "Either you're his true love . . . or you killed him."

Sixteen-year-old Blue Sargent has grown up the only non-psychic in a family of psychic women, but with the unique ability to strengthen other people’s psychic powers. The “family” includes an assortment of aunts by blood and friendship, including Blue’s newly-arrived half-aunt Neeve. Every psychic Blue has ever met has told Blue that if she ever kisses her true love, he will die. So Blue has made rules for herself: stay away from boys, because boys are trouble. Even more, stay away from Aglionby Academy boys, because they are even worse. But this year, things start to change. At the Death Watch in a ruined church on St. Mark’s Eve, there just to help Neeve see the spirits of the future dead as they walk by, Blue sees the shadowy spirit of a boy, whom she can tell by the raven on his sweater is an Aglionby boy, and who says his name is Gansey. Soon, they meet in person, and Blue is integrated into the small team of his friends, despite her distrust of his family money, good looks, and charisma. (Go Blue! Way to not be instantly swept off your feet by money with a handsome face!) Instead, she’s drawn to one of Gansey’s other friends, Adam, a quiet boy whose accent in unguarded moments reveals him to be a local (poor) boy, unlike the usual wealthy Raven Boys. The other two boys in the group include the angry, shaved-head Ronan (featured on the cover of the second book) and shy and “smudgy” Noah. They are all bound together by Gansey’s passionate quest to find the ley line he believes runs through Henrietta, which he believes will lead him to the sleeping Welsh king Glendower.

There are all sorts of mystical elements in this book: ley lines, magic rituals, tarot cards, trees that speak Latin, old cars (ok, those are less mystical for me), which delighted me. But there’s also a whole lot of real truth, as well, in the power of love in Blue’s family and the sturdy bonds of friendship, forged quickly in the intensity of their quest. All of the major characters – with the notable and clearly purposeful exception of Neeve – have clearly relatable back-stories and non-magical issues. I couldn’t help loving both Adam and Gansey; the brutally honest Ronan, as my love says, we respect without liking. I loved the male friendships, the late nights helping a friend in trouble as often or more as the late nights over gelato or pizza. While this is only the beginning of the story, and Blue is still very tentative about any romance, the love triangle of Blue and Adam or Gansey is clear from the very beginning, and it’s the best love triangle I’ve read in a very long time. It’s not angsty or forced, but just a group of friends with excellent potential, either one of whom could be very good with Blue.

Will Patton, the narrator, has a gravelly Southern voice which at first struck me as odd, considering that our first-introduced character is a teen girl. However, he proved himself excellently versatile, giving convincing voices to the wide array of male and female characters spanning a range of ages in the story. I’m far from an expert in Virginia accents, but people were described as having a variety of them in the book, and they were there to hear. That is one of my favorite aspects of audio books, as I’m liable to think any character in my own accent unless I concentrate on it or it’s mentioned – hearing the individual voices makes the characters come that much more alive. This audio book also includes Maggie Stiefvater’s original theme music for the book, played at the beginning and end, and performed by herself and her friends. It is haunting and atmospheric and makes me wish I could get a whole soundtrack for the book to listen to. Altogether, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and am anxiously waiting for book two, the Dream Thieves, due out in September.