Joseph Michelli

Experience design keys for the future. My work in customer experience design has spanned decades, industries, and continents. That said, there are certain sectors where my team and I have spent a lot of time –not least of which are automotive, hospitality, financial services, building trades, retail, and restaurants. When it comes to the restaurant sector, […]

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P or B? Unique Value, Elasticity, and Branded Customer Experience Long before the iPod, iPad, and iPhone, there was an “I” brand from my youth that had a strong and unique brand image. With its narrow restaurant layout, high pitched distinctively blue roof, and tables adorned with multiple types of syrup. It was none other than […]

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I once wrote that to be joyful we must capture the natural occurring humor of reality. Extrapolating the idea of seizing natural occurring opportunities, I’m a fan of gleaning customer experience lessons from news headlines. Here are three quick examples of customer experience lessons just waiting to be plucked from recent news stories: Only one […]

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In last week’s blog, I talked about how customer journey mapping has gained widespread acceptance and how to get maximum value out of efforts to depict perceptions of customers across interactions with your brand. I also noted four elements necessary to effectively guide your customer experience design efforts and suggested that the following four considerations […]

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Years ago, it was much harder to convince a client to do a customer journey map. In those days, many leaders were willing to map interaction points with customers in order to drive efficiency or reduce waste. When customer experience designers like myself would suggest that touchpoint maps need to be upgraded to customer journey maps […]

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Isn’t it remarkable how things we learn at one point in our life come back to us as welcome gifts later? Early in my career, I wrote a book about helping children develop humor skills (Humor, Play and Laughter – Stress-proofing life with your kids). I became a student on the topic because I wanted […]

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Business Fear: Afraid of Being a Loving Business? Long ago I embraced an idea that has had a profound positive effect on my business and, in turn, has helped me be more effective in the way I guide customer experience and leadership efforts on behalf my clients. It is a simple distinction found in a […]

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As best I can remember I first met Howard Schultz in 2005 during work with Starbucks that led to the publication of my first of two books about the company, The Starbucks Experience. I was on one of the many maze-like floors at Starbucks world headquarters in Seattle (formerly the Sears fulfillment center back in the […]

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For an Experience Professional Practicing Otherness in a Selfish World is Essential One of the core values at our company The Michelli Experience is otherness. Our team knows that otherness is a seldom used word but we like the sound of it and moreover we like the concept behind it. For us, otherness is: the […]

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A Loyalty Program Doesn’t Loyalty Make – Repeat Business Is NOT The Grand Prize For clients with whom I have helped create loyalty programs, I am quick to make a somewhat unpopular set of distinctions between repeat business and customer loyalty. Given the confusion that abounds between loyalty and repeat business, I thought I would […]

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  This is the second in a two-part blog series.  If you missed my perspective on 5 Things You Should Not Do in the Name of Customer Experience please check that out here.  This week we are flipping our conversation to discuss five things you absolutely must do to be customer-centric. Let’s get straight to it: […]

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I was asked recently to provide a couple blogs concerning must-have and must not do elements of a successful customer experience business. Here are five things you should NOT do.

  Redesigning Process Improvement in the Age of AI & the Customer Long ago you could win in business if you had standardized processes and your competition did not. In essence, if you standardized your processes, you maximized efficiencies and drove consistency into your product creation and service delivery. Those standardization benefits are best exemplified by […]

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Once upon a time, brands purchased advertisements which effectively influenced prospective buyers. In those days, consumers were at the mercy of advertising claims made across traditional outlets (e.g., network television, radio, newspapers, and magazines). Nowadays newspapers struggle to generate sufficient ad revenues to stay solvent, people TIVO past television commercials, and giants in radio like iHeartRadio […]

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As I was writing my blog last week, the news was shifting quickly on the Starbucks debacle in Philadelphia. In fact, when I put the finishing touches on that post, Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson had simply issued an apology and made a promise do a thorough investigation into the situation. Predictions Made and Predictions Overlooked […]

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As you might expect from someone who has worked with and written a couple of books about Starbucks (The Starbucks Experience and Leading the Starbucks Way), I have had my share of media asking me to opine on what happened in that Philadelphia Starbucks when 911 was called and the police placed two black men in […]

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Waiting for Your Email: For the Good of Humanity, Please Reply What happened to service standards and communication etiquette? At the risk of sounding like my father (as he extolled the virtues of the good old days), I am mystified by the rapid deterioration of responsive communication and service urgency. I suspect I’ve been blessed […]

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Hello Facebook & Apple – It’s about transparency and safety when it comes to value proposition and customer-centricity. Unless you have gone well beyond the “delete Facebook” movement and literally given up the Internet altogether (which would mean I am writing this to myself), you’ve certainly had a front row seat to the Facebook vs. […]

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My crystal ball says winning experiences will deliver. I lay no claim to my prognostic ability, but when it comes to the future of customer experience delivery, I’m willing to venture an educated guess. I predict future retail wars will involve online brands (whose value proposition will be an expansive choice, “best pricing” and quick delivery) […]

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Goodbye Toys “R” Us and Hello Your Sustainability. In my house, we called it “Torture Us” as a synonym for Toys “R” Us! The name was our way of capturing the experience we had when we joined throngs of shoppers at Christmas looking for that understocked “must have” toy.