Jon Picoult
Two Words That Will Hurt Your Business’ Customer Experience
For all the time and energy that companies invest in improving their customer experience, many are unknowingly sabotaging those efforts.
How? Simply by using two words which should be stricken from every business leader’s vocabulary – “back offic...
Is Your “Net Promoter” Really “Not Promoter”?
So, you’ve added the Net Promoter “likely to recommend” question to your customer surveys. You’re tracking the results and reporting a Net Promoter Score (NPS) on your Executive Dashboard.
Alas, your company is “doing” Net Promoter – right?
Not q...
The Difference Between “Purpose” and “Propaganda”
U.S. pharmacy chain CVS recently announced that it would no longer use “materially altered” imagery to market beauty products in its stores.
That means no more perfect, digitally-modified wrinkle and blemish-free photographs to sell everything fro...
Where Business Leaders Should Spend More Of Their Time (But Don’t)
Imagine if there were a place where executives could go to discover striking new ways to improve their business. A place where, just by...
Stop Wasting Your Money On Customer Experience
Faced with increasingly commoditized markets, more and more companies are launching customer experience improvement programs to differentiate themselves. However, there’s something many of these...
Why Your Customer Research Is Flawed
U.S. pollsters got quite a surprise in the early morning hours of November 9, 2016.
That’s when it became apparent that their sophisticated voter research...
How to Bottle a Great Customer Experience
Someone’s figured out how to bottle a great customer experience.
No, this isn’t a magic elixir that, when applied to any customer interaction, turns disappointment into...
Why Uber Just Made A Wrong Turn
Uber Technologies last month took action to heal a rift with its drivers, but it may have inadvertently created a rift with its customers.
The company...
Behind Chipotle’s Woes
It’s not just the food that’s making people sick at Chipotle.
The restaurant chain’s workplace policies might also be to blame – and therein lies...
We Want Your Feedback (Well, Not Really)
What do you do when a company asks for your opinion… and then refuses to let you voice it?
A few years ago, I wrote...
Olive Garden Serves Up A New Recipe For Success
Last October, when activist hedge fund Starboard Value ousted the entire board of Olive Garden’s parent company, the newly installed Directors probably never imagined...
Why Revenue Growth Is A Poor Measure Of Customer Experience ROI
In their zest to demonstrate customer experience ROI to skeptical business leaders, some customer experience evangelists are getting too revved up over revenue growth.
But...
A Surprising Way To Achieve Price Competitiveness
How can a company liberate itself from the death spiral of product commoditization?
Competing on price is generally a losing proposition – and a very...
Why Health Insurers Make People Ill
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‘Tis the season for health insurance open enrollment, which can mean only one thing… ...
Is Your Company On The Naughty List?
Outrageous service fees, unintelligible correspondence, poorly organized websites, overly complex products, inept staff, long hold times… What would Santa say to all those businesses...
Need To Cut Costs? Deliver A Better Customer Experience.
If you want to deliver a great customer experience, you better be prepared to pay up… right? Maybe not.
Conventional wisdom suggests that with an...
Why Framily Failed: 3 Customer Experience Lessons From Sprint’s Latest Misstep
It looks like Sprint needs some Framily counseling.
This past January, the wireless carrier introduced (with much fanfare and an expensive ad campaign) its “Framily”...
The World’s Leading Industry For Tone Deafness
There isn’t a lot of love out there for financial services companies.
This was underscored most recently with the release of The Reputation Institute’s annual...
Starbucks’ Brew For Effective Employee Training
On one winter evening in February 2008, Starbucks closed all of its U.S.-based stores and insisted that its 135,000 employees take a coffee break.
Well,...
A Surprisingly Simple Way To Engage Your Employees
For all the talk about the importance of employee engagement in the workplace, there are decidedly few specifics to act on.
When management gurus extol...