Customer Experience University - Winning Loyalty & Engagement One Customer at a Time

Success Requires Community Engagement | Customer Experience Excellence – The Airbnb Way

This is the final post in my series titled – “Customer Experience Excellence – The Airbnb Way."
This week we continue to journey through key concepts found in my 10 leadership books, as we finish our quick review of my book titled The Airbnb Way - 5 Leadership Lessons for Igniting Growth through Loyalty, Community, and Belonging. Throughout this series, we’ve explored belonging, trust, hospitality, and empowerment. This week we highlight community.
The Airbnb Way is filled with examples and tactics for bringing stakeholders together to enhance community.
How are you helping your customers come together as a community?

Empowerment is More than a Management Catchphrase | Customer Experience Excellence – The Airbnb Way

This is the fourth in a 5-post series titled "Customer Experience Excellence – The Airbnb Way."
This week we continue to journey through key concepts found in my 10 leadership books by diving back into our cursory review of my book titled The Airbnb Way - 5 Leadership Lessons for Igniting Growth through Loyalty, Community, and Belonging.
Last week we touched on hospitality. This week we will spotlight empowerment and next week we will round out this series by discussing community.
At the core of Airbnb’s value proposition is empowerment. The platform enables people to use the economic power of their homes to generate revenue. In fact, Airbnb leaders have crafted an “Economic Empowerment Agenda.”
In The Airbnb Way, I go beyond the macroeconomics of the platform and explore how leaders enable and empower their teams, hosts, and guests.
Since empowerment is a multi-dimensional social process that helps people gain control and foster power, what processes do you have in place to foster power and control for your team members and customers? 

Everyone is in the Hospitality Business | Customer Experience Excellence – The Airbnb Way

This is the third in a 5-part series. This week we continue to journey through key concepts found in my 10 leadership books. Let’s rejoin our brisk review of my book titled The Airbnb Way - 5 Leadership Lessons for Igniting Growth through Loyalty, Community, and Belonging.
Last week we touched on trust. This week we will highlight hospitality and in the weeks ahead we will explore empowerment and community.

Trust is the Currency of Relationships | Customer Experience Excellence – The Airbnb Way

This is the second in a 5-part series. This week we continue to journey through key concepts found in my 10 leadership books and pick up our exploration of my book titled The Airbnb Way - 5 Leadership Lessons for Igniting Growth through Loyalty, Community, and Belonging.
Last week we touched on belonging, this week we highlight trust and in the weeks ahead we will explore hospitality, empowerment, and community.
Given all the ways in which we routinely trust strangers in conventional business, why is it difficult to imagine a similar transfer of trust in the context of sharing economy options like Airbnb?
At what points in your customer journey are you at greatest risk for losing trust?

Create Belonging | Customer Experience Excellence – The Airbnb Way

This is the first in a 5-part series.
In late 2019 I released a book about Airbnb’s meteoric rise. It was titled The Airbnb Way - 5 Leadership Lessons for Igniting Growth through Loyalty, Community, and Belonging.
As you can imagine, the timing of The Airbnb Way wasn’t optimal, as Airbnb faced its share of challenges with dramatic decreases in travel in the early phases of the pandemic. That said, I believe my work with Airbnb leaders provides important and enduring value across the five areas featured in the book. Namely:
Belonging
Trust
Hospitality
Empowerment
Community
Each episode in this series will focus on one of those themes. Let’s start with belonging.
 

How to DRIVE employee engagement (part 2) | Customer Experience IS Team Member Experience

This is the final post in a series titled "Customer Experience IS Team Member Experience."
Given the current challenges of attracting and retaining employees and the resulting impact of those challenges on customer experience delivery, this series has focused on engaging your employee base. Last week, I offered 10 evidence-based practices for driving employee engagement and retention. This week, I’ll round out the series with 10 more scientifically proven ways to increase your organization's engagement levels.   

How to DRIVE employee engagement (part 1) | Customer Experience IS Team Member Experience

This is the fifth post in a series titled "Customer Experience IS Team Member Experience."
As this post's name implies, there are many best practices when it comes to increasing employee engagement (EE). For our purposes, I’ll stick with evidence-based approaches (those that show reliable and replicable results) featuring 10 employee engaging activities this week and 10 more to close out the series next week. 

What are the REAL benefits of employee engagement? | Customer Experience IS Team Member Experience

This is the fourth in a series titled "Customer Experience IS Team Member Experience." 
Generally, the benefits of a highly engaged workforce fall into two categories – increased financial performance and improved employee performance and well-being.
Since employee engagement looks like the best thing since sliced bread, how do we increase it in our workplaces?

How do you know if they are engaged? | Customer Experience IS Team Member Experience

This is the third in a series titled "Customer Experience IS Team Member Experience."
As promised, this week we will look at how to best measure attitudinal and behavioral elements of employee engagement or EE.
While many commercially available employee engagement metrics exist, I am a fan of the Gallup Q12.
Next week, we’ll look at employee engagement outcomes. For now, here are three challenge questions:
Do you measure the engagement of your workforce? 
If so, how are you using what you learn to craft action plans that decrease the "squatters and renters" while increasing the "owners?"
If you don’t measure workplace engagement, when are you going to start?

Vigor, Dedication, and Absorption | Customer Experience is the Result of Team Member Experience

I’ve spent considerable time talking about adaptivity and learning resilience. As such, I’m intrigued by the role of "vigor" and “absorption” in concepts of employee engagement.
As you'll recall from my last installment, employee engagement or EE was conceptualized in 1990 but didn't gain research traction until approximately 2008. In that post, I asked you to think about whether employee engagement is an employee trait, a state created by your organization, or a set of attitudes or behaviors.