Customer Service

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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Service Delivered: Timeless Change!

Now, when it comes to customer service, home delivery (in keeping with the lyrics of a Peter Allen song) represents something “old,” which has been repurposed through digital technology, “to be new again.”

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Choosing Where to Invest In Customer Experience Innovation: The Art of Tradeoffs

When asked if customers would like to have more exciting products, faster delivery, lower prices, OR friendlier service, the answer is always YES. The challenge of customer experience excellence isn’t whether to improve products, people, process, or technology. The challenge is to identify which product, process or technology improvement will produce the greatest benefits for…

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What are Your UICs? Lessons from American & United Airlines Customer Experience Debacles

I call them UICs (unique industry challenges) and I see them as foundational issues that must be overcome to deliver outstanding customer experiences. Recently, high profile incidents at American Airlines (a confrontation between a flight attendant and a mother with two children as well as another passenger overheard the flight attendant’s behavior concerning the mother’s…

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A Contrarian View on the United Airlines Customer Nightmare (We all have a role to play)

I was going to write a blog about all the missteps involved in the United Airlines customer experience disaster. Then I started seeing an “abundance of critics” rushing out of the woodworks – some of whom clearly have never tried to help a company strike a balance between customer needs and profitability. With all this…

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{Guest Post} Emotional Analysis Of Customer Feedback: The Missing Link

According to Bruce Temkin’s 2016 study, after a positive emotional experience, customers are 15 times more likely to recommend a company. 15 times more likely! That’s a huge difference. Not surprisingly, emotion analysis is receiving a lot of buzz. But do the current solutions deliver on the key question that companies should be asking themselves: How…

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Back with an Apology: Rare Rewards of Service Professionalism

I’ve often made a distinction between service and servitude. Sadly, and all too often, customers treat service providers like they are lesser beings. At the same time, I am disheartened when service providers take little pride in developing the skills necessary to be true service professionals. It is my belief that automation will replace many…

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When The Customer Is Wrong – Should The Business Be Right?

In 1909 Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founder of Selfridge’s department store, is credited with saying, “The customer is always right”. Through the years, a number of my colleagues and I have emphasized that the customer is not always right but they are always the customer. I’ve come to believe that in order to be truly…

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FREE RESOURCES

The Starbucks Experience: Leadership Tips eBook
Elevating Care in Healthcare: Lessons from the UCLA Health System eBook
How to Win Every Customer, Every Time, No Excuses! Article