Guest Service

We all want to see constant improvement, but what do you do when customer satisfaction flat lines?

The dreaded customer satisfaction (CSAT) plateau. It happens to every organization.

Probably the favorite Sub-Need is “You treat me like a new customer all the time”. Its “failure statement” tells you why this bugs so many of us: “You treat me as a commodity once I’m on board, and only give the best deals to attract new customers.” In the book we lament this all too common business practice, accelerated by the proliferation of “promotions” and “special deals”, almost always focused on landing new accounts.

The idea goes further. Moments of truth are what customers experience (the verb again), they constitute the river analogy since customers will often present to their vendors with different needs.

Summer’s almost here! A time to relax, enjoy outdoor meals, get new summer clothes, take vacations, make new friends, and create memories with those you love. But can summer also teach us something about creating memories with our clients?  Yes!  It can help us remember that when emotion is attached to a memory it becomes…

Building a customer-first company involves every part of the business. Employees across teams and levels need to believe in the value of putting customers first and make doing so a priority day-to-day.

But, when it comes to employee onboarding, many companies talk about customer focus but don’t actually provide new hires with the training they need to deliver on this important company value.

The possibility to provide exceptional service is available to almost any company if it believes in its people, is willing to innovate, and really cares about their customers’ experience..

Customer personas; buyer personas; call them what you will – businesses (notably marketing functions within them) have been creating and using this visual and descriptive method to ‘bring customers to life’ for many years. As Customer Experience has established itself across sectors globally, Customer Personas (if I may call them that) are now a core tool in the armoury of the Customer Experience Professional.

Sooner or later every company encounters a situation that simply wasn't anticipated in advance. So when a customer's experience involves this kind of unforeseen event, especially if it is of great significance or importance to the customer, you want your employees to be willing and able to deal with it, even if it might mean overriding a standard practice, or making a judgment call on their own authority.

One of the many factors that affect success is customer experience.

Every contact point with your prospective customer is an opportunity to make an impression. Wasting that opportunity is inexcusable.

Focus on being the best

Bill Capodagli has nearly three decades of management consulting and corporate research expertise. Bill co-authored the best-selling business book, The Disney Way, 3E: Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company, now in its 3rd edition. The first edition was cited by Fortune magazine as “so useful you may whistle while you work.”

The customer experience journey that companies must take to accommodate today’s more digitally-aware and engaged customers now goes beyond the traditional approach of satisfaction surveys, call center guidelines, and social media presence. Media-savvy customers with an extended digital reach and a need for immediate answers are expecting and demanding more, and those older methods will no longer give marketers the insight they need to compete.

Today, consumers want to provide helpful insight for the brands they interact with, but most companies are not taking advantage of customer feedback, even though it's in their interest to ask for input from their customers across multiple touch points.

The average person can only handle a few tasks at a time. But for companies, the ability to process and respond to multiple customer requests rapidly is now a competitive differentiator. The speed with which companies can collect and convert customer data into insights and act on it is critical.

Customer Relationships - Customer experience is quickly overtaking price and product as the key brand differentiator. Make sure you're not sabotaging customer experience.

A recent segment on the CBS Sunday Morning show had an amazing customer service story. Shep Hyken shares the experience and highlights three things we can learn from it..

“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate”. That is a reference to the 1967 movie Cool Hand Luke, and my assessment after rereading the findings of our Consumer Study on Customer Rage associated with complaints and the complaint handling process.

Humans versus robots. This scenario is playing out across a widening swath of industries as businesses weigh the value of replacing human workers with automated and artificial intelligence systems. And while the human touch still has merit, business leaders are exploring more and more opportunities to increase efficiencies and cut costs with robots.

Customer Relationships - Your product or service cannot survive on its own. It needs backup in the form of strong customer support. The way you interact with your audience will determine ho