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

This is the 5th and final installment in my series Break the Glass, where we are looking at what you can do to deliver a positive human experience in this time of great business disruption. (Next week will start a new series on the role emotions play in customer experience delivery.) Sales trainers have long championed the concept of ABC. Which stands for always be closing. They suggest that when...

This is the 4th installment in my series Break the Glass, where we are looking at what you can do to maintain a positive human experience in a time of great business disruption. Our focus today is on being surprisingly kind. Prior to COVID-19’s disruption across much of the world, my team and I launched something we call the Surprisingly Kind movement . We are collecting and sharing stories of sur...

Thanks for joining me for the third installment in my series titled Break the Glass, where we’re looking at ways to take constructive action in these unprecedented times. This week we’ll explore the importance of setting expectations for team members and customers alike. We’ll also link expectation setting to the third of the four key behaviors covered in this series – namely letting people know i...

Last week we talked about the first of four categories of constructive behaviors that this series will cover, namely listening to the needs and pain of your team and customers. This week we will focus on anticipation and I will link anticipation to the second category of constructive behavior, which is offering value, thought leadership, and kindness.

I have been surprised at how quickly some owners, leaders, and managers have lost their focus on the people who created their success. Those leaders certainly prioritized team members and customers when business was good, but due to panic prompted by threats of business survival. In essence, self-preservation leads to “self-absorption.”  

I want to offer a glimpse into a personal practice that helps me in these times. I truly hope that this approach will be helpful to you as well. It involves taking time every day to list and share the things for which you are grateful. Here’s an example of a recent day of writing...

This week I'm sharing lessons from the most challenging week of my career (and quite frankly, I had it easy compared to so many). When I’m talking challenges, I’m talking about leadership challenges faced by people I’m proud to call clients and friends. Let’s start with the word – leadership. This past week I participated with phenomenal teams who stared into an uncertain future and led.

When lamenting unforeseen and adverse events, my momma Michelli was prone to say, “I would never wish this on anyone, but now that it’s here, what are we to do?” Not surprisingly, during the past week, my mind has searched for “momisms,” “dadisms,” and the wisdom of the ages, to cope with uncertainty like none I’ve encountered in my lifetime. Leveraging off my mom’s aforementioned phrase, I’ve bee...

For years now, I have been equating leadership with managing in a VUCA world. While the acronym VUCA has origins in Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus’ 1985 book titled  Leaders – The Strategies for Taking Charge , the first use of the acronym occurred a couple of years later in Army War College documents. As you likely know, VUCA refers to navigating a world replete with: Volatility Uncertainty Complex...

I’m in the throes of difficult planning sessions with clients as they seek to communicate with and ready themselves to care for their team members and customers in a time of heightened uncertainty associated with the coronavirus. For some clients, these conversations revolve around possible disruptions in a supply chain; for others, it takes the form of remote sales strategies or enabling team mem...

I’m convinced the pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus happened upon an enduring truth when he said, “you can’t step into the same river twice.” I heard that quote when I was a freshman in college and it was the same year I’d read the classic book by M. Scott Peck titled The Road Less Traveled. In this book, Peck suggested above all else people fear change. That made me wonder if we also fear that...

I’m a fan of both business leaders and customers. However, of the two groups, it seems that customers are winning when it comes to embracing change. While customer expectations are increasing at a lightning pace, the fundamentals of customer experience delivery have remained relatively constant across the past decade. Smart customers realize that they have the power to choose brands that care abou...

Quite frequently, my team and I are asked to develop customized frontline and leadership training materials in support of an enhanced team member or customer experience. Having reviewed a lot of generic service training materials available in the market today, I find myself cringing when the curriculum proceeds down any number of over-traveled paths like these...

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, man...

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.

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.  

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...

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...

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.

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-p...

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…

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...

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.

I often consult with leaders who are trying to develop human-centric cultures. In the context of that work, I have shared my view that it's essential to make it easy for compassionate and caring people to stay with your business and also to make it easy for ungrateful and scarcity-minded people to find employment elsewhere. Unfortunately, I have seen many examples where talented and positive peopl...

Wherever you get your news, you are likely to read or hear something about the role sales-enhancing technology will play this holiday season. There's much at stake for this year’s retailers with spending projected to break a record and possibly top the 1 trillion-dollar mark. Whether it's the way Target will be using augmented reality to help families visualize the Christmas trees they will be cho...