Starbucks: Greatness Personified/Excellence Diversified – What About You?
I met him while working with Starbucks around the time I wrote my first book about the company titled The Starbucks Experience. I’d venture to say that Starbucks might have been little more than one man’s vision if it wasn’t for his leadership strengths. He was one of the original architects of the brand – a…
The Risk of Excellence: Avoiding Customer Experience Mediocrity
Some years ago, I had the good fortune of working on an article draft with John Timmerman and Curt Coffman. John is currently Executive Director of Digital Transformation at Gallup and Curt has co-authored perennial bestselling books like First Break All the Rules and Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch. The article we worked on together…
Customer Value: Expanding Across the 12 Standard Forms of Value
Great leaders often ask me to help them create “customer value”, while others ask me to help them create “profit.” For me, the only way to generate sustainable profit is by developing a core competency for customer value creation. Chasing profits is a tiring and stressful endeavor – creating value is an innovative and energizing pursuit.…
Back with an Apology: Rare Rewards of Service Professionalism
I’ve often made a distinction between service and servitude. Sadly, and all too often, customers treat service providers like they are lesser beings. At the same time, I am disheartened when service providers take little pride in developing the skills necessary to be true service professionals. It is my belief that automation will replace many…