The Bar is High – Are you Letting your Products and Technology Down? [Infographic]
Even though I spend most of my career helping brands meld technology, products, process, and people into optimal customer experiences I must admit I can become “wide-eyed” with the speed and benefits of digital solutions. In my upcoming book about Airbnb (The Airbnb Way, available for pre-order here), I share how to assure that you don’t…
Are you Letting your Products and Technology Down?
Even though I spend most of my career helping brands meld technology, products, process, and people into optimal customer experiences I must admit I can become “wide-eyed” with the speed and benefits of digital solutions. Take Starbucks’ deployment of Microsoft’s Azure technologies for example. Starbucks (a company about which I have written two books The…
When the Customer Experience Goes Awry [Differentiation Through Service Recovery]
Forgive me for sounding braggadocious, but I AM PERFECTLY IMPERFECT! But then again so are you and so is your business. Unfortunately, some leaders either don’t know they are imperfect, or they seek to fool consumers into thinking their businesses are flawless. In those environments, team members read the invisible handwriting on the wall and…
Testing and Learning for Customer Experience Excellence
On any given day I find myself playing the You know you’re old when… game. Here’s how it goes for me on broader social themes, You know you’re old when you have to explain to someone what a pay phone was or when you reflect back on the Sears catalog. From a customer experience perspective, that…
Quickly Before the Year Ends – Deliver Convenience
This is my last blog post for 2018 as I hunker down in the homestretch of writing a book about Airbnb which will be published by McGraw-Hill in 2019. As I’ve been working with Airbnb, I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to focus on customer experience delivery in the context of the burgeoning sharing economy. While there…
Howard Schultz: A Leader, A Teacher, and An Inspiration
As best I can remember I first met Howard Schultz in 2005 during work with Starbucks that led to the publication of my first of two books about the company, The Starbucks Experience. I was on one of the many maze-like floors at Starbucks world headquarters in Seattle (formerly the Sears fulfillment center back in the…
Starbucks Store Closings for Training: Déjà vu and You
As I was writing my blog last week, the news was shifting quickly on the Starbucks debacle in Philadelphia. In fact, when I put the finishing touches on that post, Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson had simply issued an apology and made a promise do a thorough investigation into the situation. Predictions Made and Predictions Overlooked…