Leadership

Being Surprisingly Kind | Starting a Movement for Customer Experience and Beyond

We believe kindness is a choice that is demonstrated through action. Rather than practicing “random acts of kindness” we believe kindness must be intentional. We also believe that it is not enough to be kind only when it’s expected. We want to surprise others with kindness!
Finally, we believe stories of surprising kindness serve to inspire others, so we hope you will share stories of leaders, managers, team members, colleagues, friends, family, acquaintances, and even strangers who have been surprisingly kind.

Everything Matters When It Comes to First Impressions | Mastering Your Customer’s Arrival Experience

Given limited resources, I spend a lot of time helping my clients look for ways to deliver excellence at the highest value moments across the journey of their core customer segments.
While each customer group will differ on the moments-that-matter most to them, certain customer interaction points play a fairly universal role when it comes to customer engagement or customer churn.

Leveraging Trends to Drive Business Success through Customer Experience

Let’s look at some data reported by Adobe and Econsultancy in a report titled Experience Index 2020 Digital Trends. That study reflects the input of more than 13,000 marketers, IT professionals, and creatives from across the globe.
Let’s take a look at a couple of these findings and what they can mean for your business.
 

2020 and Beyond | How to Deliver Memorable Customer Experiences in a World Without Walls

You probably know I’m a fan of customer experience research conducted by PwC. For example, in my recent book The Airbnb Way – 5 Leadership Lessons for Igniting Growth through Loyalty, Community, and Belonging, PwC kindly gave me permission to use their global research on consumer expectations for human care and technology deployment.
Today, I’ll share some of PwC’s findings from their 2020 Retail Marketplacestudy, which has broad implications beyond the retail sector. In that research, PwC identifies a number of key drivers affecting customer expectations today...

Looking Back, Letting Go, and Moving Forward

I am increasingly convinced that the proliferation of choice (for consumers and business leaders) makes prioritization one of the most important elements of personal and business success.
Many of us will begin 2020 with a long list of new strategic priorities. We’ll identify six, seven, or more new projects to add to business objectives that carried over from 2019. All these new initiatives may be relevant to future success, but few will likely garner widespread buy-in and effective execution.
From my vantage point, the art of business success is to identify key business objectives and execute against them flawlessly. All too often, companies drift in what I call shiny ball syndrome...

Imagine it is 2025 – How’s Your Customer Experience?

What will customers expect and encounter when they interact with you and your business in 2025?
I know that the question is asking about a distant horizon line, but it wasn’t long ago that 2020 seemed like it was forever far away.

Slowing Down to Savor the Season – Unplugging to Connect!

About 28 years ago, I used to speak about managing the stress of the holidays. Those presentations were loosely based on the book Unplug the Christmas Machine: A Complete Guide to Putting Love and Joy Back into the Season. In it, the authors, Jo Robinson and Jean Staeheli, focused on four main themes:
Prioritize gift-giving to those who truly need your gifts
Engage in activities (across a well-paced holiday season – not just a day) that connect with your deepest personal values
Seek to be a peacemaker among friends and family
Commit to spiritual growth
Over time, I’ve come to believe we don’t need to and quite frankly can’t “Unplug the Christmas Machine” – that machine will run even if you or I were to find a way to unplug it.
I suspect our efforts are better spent focusing on how to create humanity-rich experiences this time of year. To that end, I offer some thoughts which I’ll lovingly call “gifts” for the season. These gifts can be given to...

Put a Bow on It | The Art of Wrapping and Trimming Your Customer Experience

For as many times as I have done it myself or experienced it, you’d think I would have made this connection much earlier. My newly emerging awareness involves the symbolic relationship between outstanding customer experience delivery and the practice of wrapping a personalized present and then putting a bow on it.
Allow me to explain…

Not All Customers are Jolly but Service Professionals SHOULD BE | 7 Tips for Managing Customer Complaints and Stress This Holiday Season

The holiday season may bring out the best in humanity, but holiday shopping can also bring out the worst. We’ve all seen the “Black Friday Brawls” as shoppers play tug-of-war with the last doorbuster sale item and we've heard of “Cyber Grinches” who gobble up online deals for high-demand items only to resell them when scarcity drives up the price.
No matter your business, people can become – let’s call it - frayed this time of year. So, here are a few tips I’ve shared across the years to help people work through a service challenge or customer complaint. I hope you find value in them as you seek to make this a peaceful and profitable holiday season.

Winning this Holiday Season | The Art of Selling through Human Experience Creation

The next few weeks will be “make or break” for retailers. With more shopping occurring online (particularly through mobile devices), brick and mortar retailers are looking for ways to get people to leap from their couches and into their stores.
Here are some things to consider as you build a lasting customer relationship based on positive sales experiences.