Customer Experience Lessons from South African Informal Townships [Infographic]
This is the second in a three-part series on customer experience lessons I learned from a recent South African trip. Last week, I shared insights gained from the African bush and this installment will feature the truths that emerged from time spent at an informal settlement. While doing a public event in Johannesburg, I met…
Customer Experience Lessons from the African Bush
Every morning I wake up with deep gratitude for the blessings in my life. In the past ten days, for example, I had the extreme honor of working with entrepreneurs in South Africa who are seeking to deliver branded customer experiences that will give their businesses a competitive advantage. Across three days of presentations, I…
Your Customer is Flawed but So Are YOU | The Gentle Side of Cognitive Bias
Dan Ariely, Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and author of the book Predictably Irrational is one of the premier experts on the mental glitches we all share. Dan describes these glitches or cognitive biases as “systematic (non-random) errors in thinking” which depart from a logical course of action. In other words,…
When the Customer Experience Goes Awry [Differentiation Through Service Recovery]
Forgive me for sounding braggadocious, but I AM PERFECTLY IMPERFECT! But then again so are you and so is your business. Unfortunately, some leaders either don’t know they are imperfect, or they seek to fool consumers into thinking their businesses are flawless. In those environments, team members read the invisible handwriting on the wall and…
Customer Experience Research {Infographic}
I was fortunate to be an early adopter of Salesforce’s customer success solutions. It’s not my nature to be the first in the water when it comes to technology, but I was eager to shift from a clunky and expensive CRM to the Salesforce cloud. Through the years, I’ve also been blessed to present on behalf…
Three Keys to Effective Customer Journey Mapping
This the third in what I am planning to be a four-part series on service design, persona-based customer journey mapping, activating customer journey maps, and optimal future experience visioning. Given that we’ve set the framework for service design and persona-based journey mapping in prior posts, I will focus this installment on how to use a customer…
What is Persona-Based Customer Journey Mapping?
Persona-based customer journey mapping helps you understand core customer segments so you can add value to these groups. As promised, this weeks’ blog is a continuation of last week’s post titled Aim Before You Fire. In that post, I shared my thoughts on the importance of immersing yourself in an understanding of the core customer…
Aiming Before You Fire – Patiently Seeking Input to Guide Service Design
Recently I wrote a blog in which I offered my definition of experience design. From my vantage point, experience design is one of the core competencies of human-centric organizations along with human-centric culture, customer listening/understanding, effective change management, and productive use of customer-focused metrics. I am sure I will be addressing all of those topics in…
No Joke! The Role of Humor in Customer Experience
Isn’t it remarkable how things we learn at one point in our life come back to us as welcome gifts later? Early in my career, I wrote a book about helping children develop humor skills (Humor, Play and Laughter – Stress-proofing life with your kids). I became a student on the topic because I wanted…
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