The illustrious Stephen Covey passed away earlier this week. Covey was a legend in the business community. Author, speaker, and educator, Covey was most famous for his huge bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The 7 Habits had a major influence on my life. It was released when I was in business school, […]

If we listened to pop psychology adages, we would never introduce negativity into team training. For example, a famous phrase of self-development leader Tony Robbins is “You are what you focus on.” And in the big picture, he is right. If you spend your time worrying about all the ways your team can drop the […]

We are only halfway through the year, but Big Data seems on track to be crowned the official “hot” customer experience term for the year 2012. A quick definition of Big Data from my pals over at Vivisimo: “While “big data” lacks a formal definition, it generally refers to extremely large data sets that are […]

No matter what you are doing, you are always in one of three states with your customer: proactive, reactive, or inactive. While this framework is broad, categorizing your customer focus in this way can bring ineffective behaviors and inefficient priorities into sharp relief. Do you ignore proactive customer service because you are frequently in reactive […]

The reality of the customer relationship is that the two parties are not on equal terms. Businesses exist to serve customers, and as such, business professionals must embrace the challenge of attempting to understand the customer, they must embrace the responsibility of empathy. To deliver effective customer care, we need to understand that we do […]

This topic came up in a discussion with a team member. She asked, “how do I know when to jump in and help someone with a customer?” It was not a problem I had thought much about before. While I had discussed the eventuality in training, I had not given much consideration to the level […]

Loyalty programs seem to be everywhere these days. From major airlines to local dry cleaners, it seems like wherever we go a company is offering us the option of joining their rewards program or loyalty club. So what are these loyalty programs and, more importantly, how effective are they? What Is a Loyalty Program? To […]

What airline has the best customer service scores? The annual American Customer Satisfaction Index for the airline industry was just released. If you are not familiar with the ASCI, here is a blurb from its site (link no longer available): The ACSI reports scores on a scale of 0 to 100 at the national level. […]

One aspect of the customer experience that is seldom discussed is how employees represent the brand “in uniform,” even when they are not working at the counter or desk. My wife went to a local bagel franchise last week, and as she was leaving, she noticed an employee of the bagel store in the parking […]