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…
Taking a Bold Stand for Service Excellence – How about you?
Raise your hand if you think service and convenience stores are opposing concepts. You can put your hand down now, since this is a blog and I can’t see you. My general impression has always been that convenience stores sell….well convenience and commodities. But my perception was challenged by a fairly recent strategic course adjustment…
Middle Child Customer Experience Syndrome
Ever since Sigmund Freud’s time, psychologists like Alfred Adler have written about the role of birth order and personality. Subsequently, researchers have even defined a cluster of behaviors which they dub the “middle child syndrome.” While I am not here to argue the merits of the label (in fact, recent data calls the concept somewhat…