Some of you may know my predilection for business books, it’s a hangover from when I sold pre-loved books, and so I was quite chuffed when I was approached to read this book last year. Disclaimer time: I was given the book, my words and my thoughts are my own.

This book is written for the business person in mind, it is short with only one topic and it sticks to this topic so you don’t get side tracked by irrelevancies. It has information and case studies to back it up and is all about making the customer first, no, not the customer is always right but always thinking about how you can make the customer top of mind at every stage of the business. Why should we do this? Because when customers are happy with the business they’ll come back and they’ll refer you to their friends and to their followers (if they have followers) and in this world of social media you’ll find each person’s reach is amplified far more than if they just told their best friends on the phone. Don’t underestimate the power of social media, it can make or break your company and this book will help you understand what is currently the right thing to do.

I thought this tome would also be useful for non-business people as it details some of the tips and tricks businesses should be using nowadays in order to make you want to do business with them. It also explains why you might consider using your Facebook logon to login to outside companies. I always feel it’s because I don’t trust Facebook’s privacy policy but it’s also because when you sign onto a website with Facebook you’re giving the other website access to all of your data and they can then use that for tailoring their deals and ads specifically for you…but hang on, that’s partly the same thing…except it works for Twitter and Gmail as well.

Allwood talks about how companies are more likely to get our business if their social values are aligned with ours. I thought this was perfectly illustrated by this video I came across on Facebook. Android does a lovely job of saying they are against bullies.

The case of British Airways loss of a man’s luggage circulated the web when the owner of the luggage decided to pay for a tweet on Twitter tagging the company. It generated immense publicity and I can only imagine what damage it did to British Airways. As it happened in 2013 I’m assuming they’ve spoken to their staff and procedures have been changed.

There are several other case studies illustrating various points. I found it reasonably well written and quite readable, despite being rather stressed in the leadup to the beginning of uni I had little trouble getting through it. Many of the chapters are quite short so any busy business person would have no trouble reading a chapter at a time.

I’m going to add this to the Australian tag as Allwood’s case studies are from both hemisphere’s: northern and southern. She talks about specific businesses in at least three different continents and as one of them is Australian I’m going to assume she’s in Australia. Not necessarily correct but I’ll make that assumption.