Thinking Ahead.
Customer experience, loyalty, and the AI era.
A new post every week — drawn from Joseph's current research and the ideas shaping his presentations.
1139 posts in the archive
Earlier writing.
Page 47 of 57
- Dec 2, 2015
How to Become a Leader in Customer Experience | Driven to Delight
There are leaders, followers, and…well people who just get in the way! Which are you? In business today, it takes leadership to build a business that consistently engages customers. If customers aren’t emotionally connected to your brand, through…
- Dec 2, 2015
How to Become a Leader in Customer Experience | Driven to Delight
There are leaders, followers, and…well people who just get in the way! Which are you? In business today, it takes leadership to build a business that consistently engages customers. If customers aren’t emotionally connected to your brand, through…
- Nov 2, 2015
Win a Starbucks and Zappos Prize Pack from The Michelli Experience
I have a new book about to be released about Mercedes-Benz USA titled Driven to Delight. Since we couldn’t afford to give away a Mercedes-Benz S-Class (sorry!) we created a gift pack with goodies from other brands about which I have written. As…
- Oct 30, 2015
Common Knowledge is Not So Common
I'd just crossed through a sentence I'd written in a training series for the retail team at Godiva. To me, the sentence stated the obvious when it came to the importance of "product knowledge." My internal dialogue went something like, "Who doesn't…
- Oct 16, 2015
Why Businesses Should Embrace Live Chat Software for Sales and Customer Service
Live chat has been an up and coming technology for a number of years now, but its importance was driven home when we saw new research from the online help desk buyers' research firm Software Advice. They found that regardless of the nature of the…
- Sep 14, 2015
The best metrics for getting started with employee engagement {Guest Post}
During the last decade or so, human resource management has been essentially flipped on its head. What was once a decidedly employer-centered market has become one driven by the needs and concerns of the employee. Despite still relatively high…
- Aug 31, 2015
Listening to the Unstated Need
not Customer service is about transactions that fulfill a stated consumer need! Customer experience delivery, however, is more than fulfilling a transactional need. Loyalty-building experiences often involve caring for a customer by doing something…
- Aug 24, 2015
Automated Call Answering Cuts Costs But Also Cuts Customers {Guest Post}
The size of a customer service department is, of course, directly related to the size of the business it is serving. A small company with only a limited number of customers will not have the same demands as a large one serving millions of people.…
- Aug 6, 2015
The Cost of Serving Well
It was such a thought-provoking question. In an interview this week, I was asked, “how much does it cost a business owner to deliver memorable service?” Earlier in the day, I had read about a police officer in Connecticut, Michael Castillo, who was…
- Jul 14, 2015
How great are you?
Ernie Andrus made his coast-to-coast run across the United States when he was only 90 and he is well on his way to doing it again at age 92! In 2013 Ernie, a World War II Navy veteran, set out to break a record for the oldest man to run across…
- Jun 25, 2015
"It's not what you know but..."
According to the old adage that sentence stem ends with “who you know.” On stage and in writing lately I have concluded that the old adage doesn’t tell the whole story. As such I have modified it to say: “It’s not what you know OR who you know. It’s…
- Jun 11, 2015
Seeing through the Eyes of Your Customer
not Having just finished my new book about Mercedes-Benz and given that I recently spent time with Mercedes-Benz dealers at their annual conference in Las Vegas, I took the liberty of modifying a popular children's logic puzzle by inserting a…
- May 21, 2015
Leader of your own Career {Guest Post by Amy Klimek}
The average person will spend over 99,000 hours at work in the course of their lifetime. Knowing that a sizeable portion of your waking life will be spent on the job, it’s important to find something that you enjoy. It’s time to take control of your…
- May 7, 2015
Don't Cry Over Spilled Coffee – Sue!
Nothing is stranger than the truth! In case you missed it, a police officer in North Carolina is suing Starbucks for a spilled cup of FREE coffee. Let me not make light of the fact that the officer purportedly burned himself when the lid popped off…
- Apr 3, 2015
BE PERFECT or BE EXCELLENT: The Art of Getting Real
Sometimes we teach because we have something to share and other times we teach because we have something to learn. This is one of those cases where I am exploring an issue for myself as much as I am addressing it for you. How do we balance all the…
- Feb 17, 2015
Are your property values up? Thank Starbucks
What does brand equity get you? Among other things – happy neighbors! According to recent reports, when a Starbucks opens nearby your property values rise - alot. Before you think this phenomena occurs anytime a multi-national company opens its…
- Jan 20, 2015
Would you have your wedding at Starbucks? Becoming a Beloved Brand
So would you? Would you have your wedding at Starbucks? How about your reception? Lets switch venues, how about at Taco Bell or Subway? While I have never heard of a Taco Bell reception, I have been tracking the phenomena of Starbucks weddings and…
- Dec 17, 2014
Human and Automated: Customer Experience Management at Its Best
According to customer support technology reviews firm Software Advice and research they conducted , manually trying to manage customer relationships and consumer complaints through email and spreadsheets is going the route of rotary-dial phones!…
- Dec 10, 2014
Holiday Relationships – Focusing on More than the Sale
We are in the throes of the frenzied shopping season, so it seems timely that we remind ourselves of several truths about why we should focus more on customer relationships and less on sales: Here's to experiences beyond sales…oops I just spilled my…
- Nov 21, 2014
Wireless Charging at a Starbucks Near You! Partnering in the Removal of Pain/Drain Points
You have seen us. If you are honest you will admit to being one of us. We are the people trying to appear inconspicuous as we feverishly look for an available power outlet to recharge our laptops, tablets, or cellular phones. We are easily located…
Joseph Michelli
Bestselling author of twelve books on Starbucks, Ritz-Carlton, Mercedes-Benz, Zappos, Airbnb, UCLA Health, and One Medical. Top 5 Global CX Thought Leader for ten consecutive years.
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