The Starbucks Experience

What do you think of the Starbucks decision to serve alcohol?

The QSR magazine article I referenced in a blog last week was published today. Check it out, https://bit.ly/aREEKX share it with others, and offer your opinion about Starbuck’s decision to serve alcohol

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Is you brand CRUD?

I have participated in a number of corporate board meetings lately where brand positioning, brand logos and tag lines have been the desired deliverable.  The recurrence of these events serves as a simple reminder of three key axioms: 1) While branding is essential, brands are only as good as the experiences that fulfill or fail…

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5 Ways Customer Service Should NOT be like Politics

As we come to the end of yet another vicious campaign cycle, I couldn’t help thinking about how “would-be public servants” demonstrate the worst of servant leadership.  Service should not be like politics, in that service is: 1) about people not power 2) emphasize those being served not the one serving 3) occurs without making…

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Frightful to Connected

Many businesses are frightfully uninvolved with their customers except when the customer is contemplating a sale or when the client makes a purchase.  Here are three tips for moving to a more solid connection with customers that will make your competition irrelevant.  The first two suggestions apply best  in the business-to-business space or where high-value…

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Is your service visionary or just your hallucination?

My friend Terry Paulson, author of the Optimism Advantage, says the difference between a vision and a hallucination “is how many people see it.”  In order for service to be “real,” leaders need to create a roadmap for its delivery.  At the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company that vision starts with a”credo” which is placed on a “credo…

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Rude and Slow – The plight of service

RightNow’s Customer Experience Impact 2010 report shows that 82 percent of consumers in the U.S. said they’ve stopped doing business with a company because of a poor customer service experience. The main reason for that defection in 73 percent of cases was rude staff and in 55 percent of situations it was the company’s failure…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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