Starbucks and the Alcohol Experience
I just finished an interview to be released soon in QSR magazine. The central question essentially was “has leadership at Starbucks lost their collective minds to introduce alcohol as part of the Starbucks Experience in select markets for the afternoon/evening crowd?” Unlike others who were interviewed for the article, I took the position that this…
Quality Toilet Paper
I am interrupting my usual blog to playfully participate in Bathroom Blog Fest 2010. To keep with the theme of blogging about “bathrooms” and given my customer experience focus, here is an archived blog…. Quality Toilet Paper They could save a small fortune if only they would buy single ply toilet paper …. But single…
How to Deliver Service plus Chocolate!
Having recently consulted or spoken in 6 countries in less than 30 days (ranging from Bolivia to Hong Kong), I keep facing questions that center around the distinction between operationally consistent service and emotionally-engaging customer experiences. While I’m not convinced that these two service approaches need to be mutually exclusive, I do know that without…
5 Categories of Customer Preferences You Should Know
While recently consulting with a client about ways to determine customer preferences, I had a random neuronal firing and from the deep recesses of my brain I recalled the work of Professor Noriaki Kano. In the 1980’s Dr. Kano, known for creating the Kano model, differentiated between 5 groups of customer preferences. As best I…
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…
How to assess the Online or User Experience
Having spent a decade of my life conducting a daily radio talk show in a top US market, I know the importance of engaging listeners with provocative and alluring content. Unfortunately, at times most of us who’ve work in the media have painted an overly negative picture of the world around us, as evidenced by…
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…
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