Customer Experience Limbo – How low can it go?
Dive in – the data is fine! If you want to get a quick pulse on the state of service experiences globally, look no farther than the recently published American Express Global Customer Service Barometer. Beyond painting a woeful picture of tragically dissatisfying service levels, the American Express study shows that much service deteriorates to…
Giraffes are ESSENTIAL to your customer experience!
I ran across a very interesting video blog by Chris Hurn, the CEO and co-founder of Mercantile Capital, so I had my Social Media and IT director, Andrew, post it on our Facebook page. Since I wrote a book about service excellence at the Ritz-Carlton, Chris’ blog post, “Joshie at the Ritz-Carlton: An Extraordinary Customer…
More to Business than Money!
My mother often exhorted me to appreciate that “if I couldn’t say something nice, I shouldn’t say anything at all.” I typically adhere to that motherly wisdom and it has served me well. On this occasion, however, I have to sidestep Mom’s sage input. Spirit Airlines, a low-fare, no-frills, air carrier based out of Ft…
A swing and a miss – wait it’s a home run?
Would you believe me if I told you that a company which experienced a data breach affecting twenty-four million customers was later determined to be one of America’s most highly rated on-line retailers? Well consider yourself told! The story is that of Zappos -the albeit unconventional but world class customer experience provider profiled in my…
Should You Ask for Complaints? Yes, No, Maybe?
During a consulting visit with one of my clients, a senior level leader stated “we don’t hear much negative from our customers.” He then asked an interestingly odd question, “should we be asking for complaints?” Like most questions of this nature, there are no easy answers! However, here were just a few of the highlights…
Giving Back – More than a Marketing Strategy
I’m fairly simple minded when it comes to business. I believe justice ultimately prevails and inevitably companies reap what they sow. So when people insert hidden fees, fail to be transparent in their pricing, or grab for more than what they deserve I assume those behaviors will ultimately be their undoing. Similarly, I contend that…
Service Excellence – A matter of Equality AND Inequality
While George Orwell’s 1945 book Animal Farm was intended to be an allegorical critique of Stalinism, one of the commandments which evolves during the book’s journey has always intrigued me from the perspective of client service and customer experience. That commandment reads as follows: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”…
Don’t Check Your Text! Serve ME
Former Apple & Microsoft executive Linda Stone coined the term “continuous partial attention” to describe the growing phenomena whereby we split attention between multiple sources of interaction such as pulling out our iPhone to check a text message chime instead of continuing to interact with friends or customers. There is something about a phone call, text…
Listen or Write the Obituary
In his outstanding blog post titled The Unexpected Demise of Great Brands, Peter Horan outlines the death or near death experiences of once mighty companies such as Kodak, Sears, Digital Equipment Corporation and Circuit City. Noting that these brands went from “great to gone in less than a generation,” Peter suggests: “These were major companies…
Scoreboard: Company Interests 1 – Customer Needs 0
What a week! Amid a travel filled 5 days of consulting and speeches, I had the good fortune to speak at a conference for a large American Banking Association conference. The timing of my presentation could not have been better (or worse depending upon your perspective) as it followed a scathing op/ed article that was…
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