Customer Service

Holiday Relationships – Focusing on More than the Sale

We are in the throes of the frenzied shopping season, so it seems timely that we remind ourselves of several truths about why we should focus more on customer relationships and less on sales: People want to be viewed as important and unique. (Jumping into a sales process without taking the time to understand the…

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Wireless Charging at a Starbucks Near You! Partnering in the Removal of Pain/Drain Points

You have seen us. If you are honest you will admit to being one of us. We are the people trying to appear inconspicuous as we feverishly look for an available power outlet to recharge our laptops, tablets, or cellular phones. We are easily located in a wide number of locations including airports and Starbucks…

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Segment Your Service Experiences!

Customers aren’t always right and they certainly aren’t equal,  but…customers are always paying the bills! I am stuck by two groups of business leaders – those who treat customers as an after thought to profits or products and those that treat every customer equally.  I have always ascribed to Peter Drucker’s adage that we are…

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Experience Delivery = Quality Products + Service Excellence + Empathy

I am blessed to be attending the gala Singapore Experience Awards as a guest of the Singapore Tourism Board.  I was asked earlier in the year to serve as a judge to help determine the best experience providers in Singapore.  As you likely know, I am a fan of this uniquely special city/state and truly…

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Becoming Known For Service Excellence – Aligning Who You Are With Who You Say You Are

I have often suggested that a measure of a person and of a brand is what people say about you when you are not around. Many customer voices are included throughout my book The Zappos Experience but it seems only fitting, given the innovative use of Twitter at Zappos, to share how some customers “tweet”…

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Exploiting Breast Cancer Awareness Month – Think Authenticity When Doing Cause Marketing

As a person, who lost his wife to a six-year battle with breast cancer the month of October is bitter sweet. I am heartened by so many organizations championing the cause of breast cancer awareness, research, and treatment – the month is awash with television ads, corporate buildings bedecked with large pink ribbons, and businesses…

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To Tattoo or Not to Tattoo? – Starbucks, Ink, & Customer Experience

“Cover your tattoos!” That’s the current policy at Starbucks (and for that matter many other businesses). Partners (the Starbucks term for employees – more on that in my recent book Leading the Starbucks Way) are hired without prejudice for tattoos; they just can’t be visible to customers. Now the company is reconsidering its policy and…

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A Lesson Your Business Could Learn from the Ray Rice Video

I will leave it for others to opine about Ray Rice, his wife, and the NFL. But as a customer experience consultant there are two important business lessons to take from this horrific situation. Assume every customer interaction is being videotaped and appreciate the power of viral video. When I was a kid my dad…

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Renewing Commitment to Customer Experience – A Cost-Saving Approach

In many parts of the US, back to school begins weeks before the first nip of autumn can be felt in the air. It is a season that inspires lifelong learning, seeing things differently, and replacing the antiquated with the fresh. In this spirit of reconsideration and renewal I just read research scientist Peter Kriss’s…

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Walk A Mile In Their Shoes – Mapping Your Customers’ Journey

Sometimes we are too close to something – a process, an idea, a product or service – to see it with true, objective clarity and perspective.  This can be especially (and paradoxically) true when a notion is born from our own brains.  We think we know what it looks, smells and feels like to be…

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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