Joseph Michelli

It’s crunch time for retail! The holiday season may bring out the best in humanity but holiday shopping can also bring out the worst. We’ve all seen the “Black Friday Brawls” as shoppers play tug-of-war with the last doorbuster sales item. No matter yo...

It’s the holiday season 2018, that peaceful time of the year when we focus on the most important things in life – being with family, celebrating faith traditions, entertaining friends, and relaxing – wait I must be under the influence of eggnog. Let’s ...

My parents told me, I told my children, and I suspect they will tell their children two magic words. In the United States, during this time of year, these words play prominently in family gatherings. The good news is the magic of these words extends we...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Starting around 2012, I had the good fortune of working with the leadership team at Mercedes-Benz USA (MBUSA) as they sought to elevate their customer experience from the middle of the pack among all automobile man...

Recently, a new client of mine said, “Just like everyone else I want to differentiate my business through the customer experiences I provide, but quite frankly I’ve tried a lot of things and am not seeing any sustained improvement.” Rather than being t...

I’m on deadline for a new book and have been looking back at a variety of recent customer experience research studies as part of my writing. As a result of that process, I realized that I haven’t posted many of the sources and findings that I rely on i...

This the third in what I am planning to be a four-part series on service design, persona-based customer journey mapping, activating customer journey maps, and optimal future experience visioning. Given that we’ve set the framework for service design and persona-based journey mapping in prior posts, I will focus this installment on how to use a customer […]

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Persona-based customer journey mapping helps you understand core customer segments so you can add value to these groups. As promised, this weeks’ blog is a continuation of last week’s post titled Aim Before You Fire. In that post, I shared my thoughts on the importance of immersing yourself in an understanding of the core customer […]

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Recently I wrote a blog in which I offered my definition of experience design. From my vantage point, experience design is one of the core competencies of human-centric organizations along with human-centric culture, customer listening/understanding, effective change management, and productive use of customer-focused metrics. I am sure I will be addressing all of those topics in […]

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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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