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 55 of 57
- Nov 4, 2010
Is you brand CRUD?
I have participated in a number of corporate board meetings lately where brand positioning, brand logos and tag lines have been the desired deliverable. The recurrence of these events serves as a simple reminder of three key axioms: 1) While…
- Nov 2, 2010
In the bottom of the 9th, it comes down to "talent"
Congratulations to the San Francisco Giants for bringing the first World Series pennant to the city by the bay. By all estimations San Francisco lacked the "star power" of other teams in Major League Baseball but what they lacked in "superstardom"…
- Nov 1, 2010
5 Ways Customer Service Should NOT be like Politics
As we come to the end of yet another vicious campaign cycle, I couldn't help thinking about how "would-be public servants" demonstrate the worst of servant leadership. Service should not be like politics, in that service is: 1) about people not…
- Oct 31, 2010
Frightful to Connected
Many businesses are frightfully uninvolved with their customers except when the customer is contemplating a sale or when the client makes a purchase. Here are three tips for moving to a more solid connection with customers that will make your…
- Oct 30, 2010
What would Drucker Do?
Peter Drucker, undoubtedly one of the world's most influential management consultants, would have been 100 years old next month. Drucker died 5 years ago but his advise is much needed today. Drucker's body of work spans 39 books and as such is…
- Oct 29, 2010
Is your service visionary or just your hallucination?
My friend Terry Paulson, author of the Optimism Advantage , says the difference between a vision and a hallucination "is how many people see it." In order for service to be "real," leaders need to create a roadmap for its delivery. At the…
- Oct 28, 2010
Rude and Slow - The plight of service
RightNow’s Customer Experience Impact 2010 report shows that 82 percent of consumers in the U.S. said they’ve stopped doing business with a company because of a poor customer service experience. The main reason for that defection in 73 percent of…
- Oct 26, 2010
Profiting or Perishing through People
Every year the findings from research conducted by Accenture come out the same - 50% customers who defect from a business do so, not because of inferior products, but because of bad service. While working on my new book about Zappos, to be released…
- Oct 26, 2010
Starbucks and the Alcohol Experience
I just finished an interview to be released soon in QSR magazine. The central question essentially was "has leadership at Starbucks lost their collective minds to introduce alcohol as part of the Starbucks Experience in select markets for the…
- Oct 24, 2010
Quality Toilet Paper
I am interrupting my usual blog to playfully participate in Bathroom Blog Fest 2010. To keep with the theme of blogging about "bathrooms" and given my customer experience focus, here is an archived blog.... Quality Toilet Paper They could save a…
- Aug 29, 2010
How to Deliver Service plus Chocolate!
Having recently consulted or spoken in 6 countries in less than 30 days (ranging from Bolivia to Hong Kong), I keep facing questions that center around the distinction between operationally consistent service and emotionally-engaging customer…
- Aug 11, 2010
5 Categories of Customer Preferences You Should Know
While recently consulting with a client about ways to determine customer preferences, I had a random neuronal firing and from the deep recesses of my brain I recalled the work of Professor Noriaki Kano. In the 1980’s Dr. Kano, known for creating the…
- Jul 9, 2010
How to Create Brand Equity
Which is it - wide ties or skinny ties? Bell bottoms or straight legs? I am convinced that if you wait long enough the old will become new again and the out-of-vogue will return to fashionable. Recently, I asked if brand loyalty was dead? In the…
- Jun 25, 2010
Customer Connections by the Facts Not by Total Nonsense
While researching the book I just completed about elevating the “patient experience” in healthcare, I encountered a powerful quote about the “lemming mentality” of business leadership. In their book entitled “ Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and…
- Jun 16, 2010
How to move customers up the loyalty ladder
I think of customer engagement as a ladder. The lowest rung is simple customer satisfaction, with subsequent ascending rungs be things like “repurchase intent”, “perception of a brand’s integrity” and the highest levels being a “customer’s…
- May 26, 2010
How to assess the Online or User Experience
Having spent a decade of my life conducting a daily radio talk show in a top US market, I know the importance of engaging listeners with provocative and alluring content. Unfortunately, at times most of us who’ve work in the media have painted an…
- May 19, 2010
Customer Loyalty - Dead or Alive?
The “customer experience” blogosphere has served as the forum for a raging debate about whether “customer loyalty” has died and should be long forgotten. I have championed the side of the argument that posits “customer loyalty” is ONLY wounded and…
- May 14, 2010
How to Be an Innovator
When the world economy hit a pothole in late 2008, business leaders executed a predictable and in many cases responsible strategy of cost-reduction. While those steps were important, immediate, defensive business strategies in the face of declining…
- May 6, 2010
The Gravity of Customer Experience Enhancement
My first job in organizational development was in healthcare. More than two decades later (I can’t possibly be that old), I appear to have come full-circle as I do a great deal of consulting and training on elevating the patient-experience. This…
- Apr 29, 2010
Sex Doesn't Sell that Well! - How to make real visceral connections with customers
I have long been an admirer of the work of Martin Lindstrom . As you probably know, Martin is a revolutionary thinker in the area of consumer behavior, branding, and neuromarketing. In fact he worked with a group of 20 noted scientists to conduct a…
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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