How to Create Brand Equity
Which is it – wide ties or skinny ties? Bell bottoms or straight legs? I am convinced that if you wait long enough the old will become new again and the out-of-vogue will return to fashionable. Recently, I asked if brand loyalty was dead? In the context of that question I posed data to suggest…
Customer Connections by the Facts Not by Total Nonsense
While researching the book I just completed about elevating the “patient experience” in healthcare, I encountered a powerful quote about the “lemming mentality” of business leadership. In their book entitled “Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense,” Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton note, “Business decisions, as many of our colleagues in business and your own…
How to move customers up the loyalty ladder
I think of customer engagement as a ladder. The lowest rung is simple customer satisfaction, with subsequent ascending rungs be things like “repurchase intent”, “perception of a brand’s integrity” and the highest levels being a “customer’s identification” with a brand or a “sense of loss” should the brand not exist. A recent study by Epsilon…
Customer Loyalty – Dead or Alive?
The “customer experience” blogosphere has served as the forum for a raging debate about whether “customer loyalty” has died and should be long forgotten. I have championed the side of the argument that posits “customer loyalty” is ONLY wounded and will recover. However, my belief in customer loyalty should be looked at through a suspect…
How to Be an Innovator
When the world economy hit a pothole in late 2008, business leaders executed a predictable and in many cases responsible strategy of cost-reduction. While those steps were important, immediate, defensive business strategies in the face of declining revenues, they had to be balanced with the need to invest in customer-focused innovation to position those businesses…
Sex Doesn’t Sell that Well! – How to make real visceral connections with customers
I have long been an admirer of the work of Martin Lindstrom. As you probably know, Martin is a revolutionary thinker in the area of consumer behavior, branding, and neuromarketing. In fact he worked with a group of 20 noted scientists to conduct a 3 year 7 million dollar study that used state-of-the-art brain scanning…
Turning Trends into Customer-Centric Product
Did you ever stumble upon a piece of knowledge that served you well throughout your career? Early on in my professional journey I happened upon a summary of key annual objectives for the board of directors at a hospital where I worked. For some strange reason, I thought to myself that I should try to…
Shakespeare and Business
Hamlet…”To thine own self be true.” I sometimes wonder if leadership experts that I admire, like John Maxwell, ever make business missteps? If they do, what can I learn from them? To my surprise at an international speaking event recently, I was asked a similar question. A lady stood up during a question and answer…
FREE RESOURCES
The Starbucks Experience: Leadership Tips eBook
Elevating Care in Healthcare: Lessons from the UCLA Health System eBook
