All Business is Personal – Consistency with a Twist
Dating back to my early work with Starbucks, (reflected in my first book about the global coffee leader titled – The Starbucks Experience), I have been asserting that ALL BUSINESS IS PERSONAL. I often note that the next customer might be your 50th routine interaction of the day but for them, the contact will likely…
How to Benefit from the Voice of Your Employees {Guest Post}
Take a moment to think about your business. Think about the day-to-day tasks and the work that gets done. Consider who it is that is doing most of this work, investing their time and energy into bettering your company. In nearly every case, the answer will be your employees. An employee is an invaluable resource…
It’s Viral, It’s Video Storytelling – Live Visuals Rule
For a period in human history, all we had were spoken words. Later we learned to communicate through written symbols and today it seems the most preferred communication medium is words shared through video. Great customer experience brands are not only “visual storytellers” but they are supporting their customers as those brand loyalists visually communicate…
Lessons for How to Swim in a Blue Ocean from the Girls Auto Clinic
Often entrepreneurs reach out to me to discuss “customer-centricity” and the likely viability of their innovative products or services. To give you a sense of some of the key filters I use to evaluate the probable success of various ideas presented to me, let me offer an example of a small business that I think…
Is Business a Game? Customer Experience Lessons from Gaming
Over the years, as a customer experience consultant, I’ve increasingly become a student of “game theory” and of the “gaming industry.” I sense I am not the only one. For example, Thomas J. Watson the founder of IBM is quoted as once saying that “business is a game.” As you likely know “game theory” is a branch of mathematics that postulates…
Fine-tuning Your Service Expectations and Your Consistent Delivery of Service Behaviors
We’ve all had it happen. As customers, we’ve encountered a service provider who unfortunately chose to attend to something of interest to them instead of attending to our needs. As a result of their self-preoccupation, we were left to feel like we were intruding on their text messaging session, their online purchase, or interrupting their…
Customer Experience Excellence – The Science and the Craft
Every time I develop a customized customer service training tool for a client of mine, I caution that the tool is a “guidebook” for customer service behavior and that no tool can fit every application. As such, a customer service toolkit is only as good as the judgment and skill of the person using it. Additionally, tools…
FREE RESOURCES
The Starbucks Experience: Leadership Tips eBook
Elevating Care in Healthcare: Lessons from the UCLA Health System eBook
