Featured Blog Posts (24)

Nestle...I Forgive You

A recent story about Nestle's "screw up" on social media has seemed to get fairly popular. (Truth be told, I haven't really looked into the number of hits any particular article has gotten, but I've seen it several time....via Twitter, email, etc. which at least from my vantage seems to indicate that this is probably getting circulated pretty broadly).

The short version of the story is that a… Continue

Added by Brett LaDove on March 22, 2010 at 4:00pm — No Comments

Loyalty is Not Just for Customers

Customer loyalty is important to business success. Profitability of customer retention is pretty much common knowledge. So companies do a lot to encourage customer behav… Continue

Added by Lynn Hunsaker on January 2, 2010 at 7:00am — No Comments

Customer Satisfaction Bonus Traps

Why do sales and service representatives feel compelled to tell customers how to answer a survey? Does the company want to know what the customers really think, or is the company trying to build positive publicity by claiming superior ratings?

The answer to the second question exposes the company's cultu… Continue

Added by Lynn Hunsaker on November 17, 2009 at 7:23am — No Comments

Dealer Locators.....Tools and Opportunities

'Dealer Locator' is one of those terms that seems to mean different things to different people. In short, a dealer locator is a tool that helps customers learn where-to-buy your product, but there are a variety of tools and ways to support this function. In the article below I explore some thoughts on this topic and broadly outline some different approaches. Anything to add? Dealer locators generally fall into three categories: 1. Query-able databases provide a good way fo… Continue

Added by Brett LaDove on October 26, 2009 at 2:30pm — No Comments

You're Not Running the Show Anymore

Could you imagine if, on any page of your website, people could write whatever they wanted for anyone else to see? Of course, a variety of social media vehicles already allows any individual to comment on anything they want, and share it with whomever they want; but generally, their audience has been confined to people in their own social network, or to someone searching on the topic. With the newly introduced Google Si… Continue

Added by Brett LaDove on September 29, 2009 at 2:50pm — No Comments

Key Metrics for Customer Service

I’m often asked “What should our customer service group be measuring?” Of course, there are many things you could measure in the customer service arena, but I tend to think of metrics breaking down into two specific categories….those that measure efficiency and those that measure effectiveness. Depending on wh… Continue

Added by Brett LaDove on September 10, 2009 at 11:21am — No Comments

Customer-Focused Culture by Living With Your Customers: A Lesson From Amazon

You never know someone so well as when they live with you! What better way to transform your culture to truly customer-centric ways of thinking and doing, than to invite your customer to attend all your discussions? This has long been a practice at Amazon, since founder… Continue

Added by Lynn Hunsaker on September 1, 2009 at 6:23am — 3 Comments

5 Keys to Employee Engagement for Customer Experience

CLICK HERE FOR PODCAST VERSION (4:48)

Lack of cooperation across organizations is a momentum inhibitor for customer experience management (CEM). Among best-in-class CEM practitioners, top cha… Continue

Added by Lynn Hunsaker on April 23, 2009 at 8:30am — No Comments

Maintaining Brand Loyalty During Tough Economic Times

Every economy has it's triumphs and failures; this economy is no exception. I've met with quite a few people representing a wide variety of industries over the past several months -- a few interesting themes have emerged. A handful of companies who have managed their businesses conservatively during the boom… Continue

Added by Brett LaDove on April 15, 2009 at 6:00pm — No Comments

5 Steps of the Customer Loyalty Hierarchy

In a recent discussion on LinkedIn, Shaun Mooney said he thought the first step in Customer Loyalty is the product. I think that the more appropriate statement is that the first step in the “transaction” is the product, and the first step to loyalty is the emotional connection created through the customer experience. Customers have a hierarchy of needs that extends from the core offer (ie. the basic product, or simplest service) to the emotional connection. The Model T was the core offer way ba… Continue

Added by Curtis N. Bingham on March 30, 2009 at 9:47am — 2 Comments

Measure Customer Value the Customer's Way

Customers automatically use 50 or more metrics for any customer experience, according to author Anthony Ulwick, in his book "What Customers Want". We may be re-inventing the wheel as we strive to come up with customer metrics that spell success. Looking at things from the customer viewpoint we've got to admit that customers really do know what outcomes they want. "It's easy to portray customers as emotional, illogical indiv… Continue

Added by Lynn Hunsaker on February 17, 2009 at 10:10pm — No Comments

Customer Experience Improvement on a Tight Budget

Great strides in customer experience improvement are attainable with minimal out-of-pocket investment. Most companies have a wealth of untapped resources within. Proven winners both during and after a down cycle are those that embrace a slowdown as an opportunity to strengthen innovation and business processes. This strengthening better aligns offerings and ways-of-doing-business in ways that matter to customers and are… Continue

Added by Lynn Hunsaker on January 2, 2009 at 11:00am — No Comments

The Collaborative Workforce

I have been interested in online collaboration since the early days of the Internet, and as such have been an early adopter of a variety of collaboration tools. For several years, I have leveraged the best available tools whenever I had (or could create) an opportunity. As is often the case with early adoption, there have… Continue

Added by Brett LaDove on December 16, 2008 at 7:26pm — No Comments

A Web 2.0 Primer

I will be leading a workshop here in Northern California in January, and I thought I would share the work-in-progress outline, as it think it will be of interest here as well. The focus of the program, which is primarily targeted to Management Consultants, is: "Make 2009 the Best Yet!". , and I'll be leading the break out session on Web 2.0. Here's the official description: "Like many buzz words t… Continue

Added by Brett LaDove on December 4, 2008 at 12:46pm — 1 Comment

Customer Experience in a Down Economy

As economic cycles change, customer experience strategies must adapt to evolving customer expectations, competitive forces and financial realities. To offer timely advice on customer experience strategies, a group of 18 experts contributed to a free public… Continue

Added by Lynn Hunsaker on November 26, 2008 at 5:11pm — No Comments

Looking Back at a Knowledgebase Prediction

I just reviewed a knowledgebase landscape analysis I did for a client back in early 2005. In this analysis I identified four 'key trends' that I predicted would significantly impact this area. The key trends and technologies which I suggested would comprise an important part of the knowledgebase landscape were: 1. Search (external and internal the organization) 2. Text Analytics (the techniques to infer meaning from text) 3. RSS (Real Simple Syndication) 4. Wikis (collaboration platforms) With… Continue

Added by Brett LaDove on November 14, 2008 at 11:00am — 1 Comment

CEM's Weakest Link: 3 Tips for Managing Brand Value

You’re only as strong as your weakest link. You may be gambling your brand equity if the weakest links leading to the end-customer’s experience aren’t managed. Have you analyzed your business processes in terms of customer touchpoint value chains, to identify reliability risks and strengthen your weakest links? Here are three tips for managing your brand value: 1) What is Your Brand Value Chain? It’s common to think of customer touchpoints as finite contacts between front-line employees and cus… Continue

Added by Lynn Hunsaker on September 25, 2008 at 5:43pm — No Comments

One More Reason to Blog on The Customer Care Network.....Widgets!

As I've mentioned before, blogging is not for everyone, but for those who want to share their ideas and thoughts more broadly, The people behind The Customer Care Network have created and begun distributing a widget that will allow other website owners and bloggers to add our blog feed to their sites -- in a catchy little widget. (It was already possible to add an RSS feed). Take a look at the widget at the bottom right column of this page. Adding a widget to your website or blog is as e… Continue

Added by Brett LaDove on September 23, 2008 at 9:40am — No Comments

Is Your Company Ready for Company?

The notion of companies blogging or micro-blogging (Twitter, etc.) makes plenty of sense, but let's face it....there's risk in starting one, isn't there? First, let's explore why it might make sense for your company to blog (or micro-blog)? Your company is already on the web right? Remember what that took to get started? What information were you going to communicate? Who was going to say it? Who would approve the content? How often would it be updated? Clearly there were a lot of questions to… Continue

Added by Brett LaDove on September 9, 2008 at 6:30pm — No Comments

Have you had your "Mac moment" yet?

Rewind to Valentine's Day 2007. My h-band drags me to the Apple store. He proudly says, pick out your new Mac for your Valentine's gift. His excitement is barely controllable. Why you ask? He has his new Macbook Pro and of course he loves it. He has "switched" our entire house over to Apple gear. I considered fighting, this unnecessary change and disruption to my life, but know in the end this change is happening with or without my cooperation. I select a nice MacBook and off we go with our big… Continue

Added by Kelly Roy on September 5, 2008 at 10:00am — 1 Comment