Want a Free Franchise? A Hypothetical with Real-World Implications
Let’s pretend I gave you a company. Awful nice of me right? Well, maybe not! The company is a chain of video stores. Remember those? If you are old enough to recall the video rental phenomena, the landscape for that industry was dominated by Blockbuster and Hollywood Video, but there were a panoply of local…
What’s Your Signature? The Importance of Defining Brand Moments
When I was asked to do a TEDx talk about a year ago, I keyed in on the message that your brand (be that your individual brand or your corporate brand) is little more than “what people say about you when you are not around.” In keeping with that message, I am excited to be…
Gratitude is a Customer Experience Differentiator
If you are a parent of young children, you probably reminded them of the importance of saying this on Halloween as they went off trick-or-treating. I also suspect your parents taught you that these are two of the three magic words. Yes, I am talking about saying, “Thank you.” Beyond Social Skills – Words Matter…
Small is the New Big: Customer Experience Excellence One Opportunity at a Time
His name is Adolpho Kamisky and though he is not someone I’d heard about in history classes, he truly is a larger than life hero of World War II. From my vantage point, Adolpho has a lot to teach us about the impact we can have on our team members and customers. Beyond the Stereotype…
Not Just Fast: Understanding a Responsive Experience
As a customer experience consultant, I find myself working with leaders across the globe and across business sectors on some very familiar themes; needs fulfillment, customer effort reduction, surprise and delight, etc. Responsiveness One of those bedrock issues in daily consulting includes “responsiveness.” From my worldview, responsiveness is a make or break differentiator in all…
United Airlines: Big Data to the Rescue of the Passenger Experience?
It’s hard to believe it has been seven months since United Airlines faced the first of three monumental customer experience debacles. Here’s a walk down that pothole-riddled memory lane: January 22nd all domestic flights were grounded for 2.5 hours due to a problem with a computer system that provides technical information to pilots. February 8th…
High Trust = Happy Employees = Happy Customers = Happy Shareholders = Happy Leaders
You might say I am on a “trust” kick. In last week’s blog, I highlighted a US decline in social trust (a precipitous drop of 46% points from 1964 to 2016). I also opined on the critical role of trust in strengthening the social contract between businesses and customers. Finally, I asserted that trust begets trust.…
Customer Value: Expanding Across the 12 Standard Forms of Value
Great leaders often ask me to help them create “customer value”, while others ask me to help them create “profit.” For me, the only way to generate sustainable profit is by developing a core competency for customer value creation. Chasing profits is a tiring and stressful endeavor – creating value is an innovative and energizing pursuit.…
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