Jeff Marr
Jeff Marr
Jeff provides thought leadership to Walker and the customer strategy profession through years as senior editor of the online publication, Creating Loyalty. In keeping with the newest proven approaches, Jeff designs services used in client engagements. This includes facilitating customer-driven action by clients at the corporate, functional and account team levels, and creating new measurement solutions.
How Uniquely Valuable are the Best Strategic Account Managers? — ‘Count the Ways…’
In thinking about the best account managers; those managing growing, profitable customer accounts, thoughts naturally go to being skilled in communicating, relationship-building and sharing...
Customer Experience Promoting Collaboration
Customer Experience (CX) leaders find themselves uniquely positioned to foster collaboration between functions and with customers. As one example, CX often builds an advocacy...
“I’d rather do it myself!”
The 1960's housewife screamed, "Mother, I'd rather do it myself!" to her mother or in-law trying to help in her kitchen. I remember how...
The Danger in Providing Excellent Customer Experience
Here is a frightening but too-common scenario. A long-standing business customer has received top-notch product quality and support but suddenly decides to bid the...
Five tips toward a new metric assuring customer focus
A quick, true story -- when delivering buyer insights years ago to a global manufacturing client -- a name we all would recognize --...
In B2B customer relationships, ‘O what a tangled web we weave’
The "tangled web" woven in this famous poem is about practicing deceit. Integrity makes life much easier in account managment too, but the...
What does resourcefulness in growing key business customers have to do with cooking?
Not a big reality TV fan, I admit being quite entertained recently seeing my first episode of "Chopped" on the Food Network. This...
Where hospitality fits into B2B customer loyalty
Sales and Marketing executives who must "place bets" on where to allocate resources sometimes ask, "Are we spending too much on customer/hospitality-related activities? What's...
Survival Innovation
The recent death of Steve Jobs and publication of his biography sparked public attention to business innovation. Apple's track record brings to mind a...
For customer focused leadership, be innovative….and lean
Many companies struggle when it comes to actually enhancing the customer experience. Even after customer initiatives are planned, time may pass and leaders wonder...
Unholy Partnerships and Bubbles — Another on the Way?
You don't have to be an economist (which I'm not) to recognize that extreme boom and bust cycles harm the economy. A market bubble...
Co-Sharing Testimony for the Win-Win … and Account Growth
In a recent blog, I implied that learning your customer contacts' challenges and needs can be as important as the homework you do on...
Customer Strategies — Getting Personal
The old business saying, "Nobody was ever fired for hiring IBM," should have this corollary-- "People got promoted for hiring IBM." Vendor choice and...
When choosing vendors, do companies ‘right-size’?
B2B vendors are selected for reasons that vary by buying sector and company. Vendor size wouldn't always be on a company's short list of...
Tying Employee Compensation to Customer Feedback: It Really Works!
This article was originally published by Creating Loyalty. About half of the large companies in the United States include customer feedback within their incentive compensation,...
What Are They Thinking? Your Partners Can Tell You a Lot
In my 25 years of consulting on corporate customer feedback programs, I have seen channel partners become increasingly beneficial to the value of the...
Should the Focus Be on Customers’ Experience or Loyalty?
This article was originally written as a column for the newsletter, Creating Loyalty. We at Creating Loyalty prefer the term, "customer loyalty" over "customer experience,"...