Dave Fish
You Organization’s Secret Weapon
With the tightening labor market, organizations are hiring again in droves. The demand for talent is high, and finding, attracting, and retaining that talent can make or break organizations. So, what if you could find high performing, low cost talent, with no locked-in long...
The Righteous Path to CX Outcomes
“That’s why we hired you!” The executive from the now defunct automotive brand was clearly agitated and I wasn’t helping things. “If our scores don’t go up, why would we continue to do business with you?” he bellowed, turning a worrisome shade of red. A fair question. As a neophyte to the supplier world nearly 20 years ago, I cheerfully explained that the act of measurement, in and of itself, would not result in any meaningful increase. This was clearly not what he wanted to hear. I pushed on, almost reaching the crescendo of my pedagogy, where I would explain how the client’s proprietary measures (which our firm at the time conducted) were woefully inadequate in predicting the syndicated results he coveted. However, before I could get to that point the account manager…
Why You Should Be Designing Experiences, Not Products
Product. Designers think they are building it, marketers think they are promoting it, and sales people think they are selling it. They are all dead wrong. “The Product” I shudder when corporate denizens refer to the goods and services of their organization as “the product.”…
Gutenberg 2.0
The genius of Johannes Gutenberg‘s printing press was in its ability to radically increase the distribution of information. No longer were scribes required to hand transcribe documents, complete with errors. Information could now be quickly and flawlessly mass produced. It was a radical innovation in information distribution, and arguably the beginning of the information age. We are now upon the leading edge of another distribution revolution. This time it is not only the distribution of information that is changing the face of the world, but also radical advances in the distribution of goods and services. The confluence of these forces will fundamentally transform the face of retail, automotive, transportation, and other adjacent industries in just a few short years. Here’s how your day is potentially going to look in just a few short years: Wednesday, October…
The Other Half of the CX Glass
“When I did good, I heard it never. When I did ill, I heard it ever.” This was the idiom on a placard that hung on my grandmother’s kitchen wall for over 30 years. I really didn’t understand what it meant when I was 8 years old, but it rings true now. As a species, we focus disproportionally on the bad, glossing over or ignoring the good. Read the newspaper and you will see a disproportionate amount of bad news versus good. Wars, murders, theft, and other nefarious acts and subterfuge lead the headlines.…
CX Metric Obsession
As a people we are obsessed with metrics. In our professional lives we fret over revenue, gross profit, contribution margin, market share, sales efficiency, churn, and countless other behavioral and financial measures. In our personal lives we perseverate on our BMI, our blood pressure,...
Tesla: The Future of Automotive Retailing?
Tesla is not only redefining what the automobile is; it is fundamentally disrupting how vehicles are purchased in the United States. And, according to new research by MaritzCX, customers are loving it. Tesla’s unorthodox retailing approach of having about 83 factory direct outlets (‘galleries’) in shopping...
Airline Twitter Responsiveness: Who earned the Eldorado and the Steak Knives
“We’ll take the steak knives” tweeted JetBlue airlines in response to my inquiry. On Friday, July 25th at precisely 8:44am I invited all the major U.S. airlines into animpromptu Twitter response time contest. It went like this… Hey @AmericanAir @united @Delta @SouthwestAir @JetBlue...
It’s Not You, It’s Me. The Quiet Breakup with Mass Market
If he were alive today, Henry David Thoreau might breathe a sigh of relief at having made it to today through the greed and materialism of the late 20th century. Simpler living, individualism, localization, thrift, and respect for the environment have made an incredible resurgence...
Understanding Generational Differences in Retail: The Law of the Hammer
“When you have a good hammer, everything looks like a nail.¹” We tend to see our world through the lens of our favorite tools. Econometricians tend to think in terms of causal models, experimental psychologists tend to think in terms of factorial designs, and...
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Generation
I don’t care what companies know about me, I’m really not that interesting. This is what Nina, my 20-something running friend, mentioned the other day on one of our longer jaunts. She went on to say if someone really wanted to know what she...
Will the Automotive Good Times Roll?
2015 has been a great year for automotive sales with a 17.1 SAAR (Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate). This is especially spectacular when compared to the dark days of 2009 when two automotive giants, General Motors and Chrysler, were in bankruptcy and everyone was ratcheting...
Staying Close to Your Flock
When’s the last time you talked to one of your customers? Not read a report or sat in on a focus group, but shook hands...
I Knew You Wanted That
2015 will challenge companies to take their CX from reactive to preactive. If you have ever been to a great restaurant you know the value of world-class service. The thing that always impresses me about a seasoned wait-staff is their Jedi-like ability to almost predict what I...
You Can’t Fix Everything…
“You should have let us know and we would have fixed the problem for you,” said the hotel clerk as I checked out and listed a litany of unsanitary aspects of the room I had stayed in the night before. I tried to explain to her that...
Why We Shouldn’t Be Satisfied with Satisfaction Questions
On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being completely dissatisfied and 10 being completely satisfied, how would you rate how well your CXM program captures your customers’ true feelings? If you are on the south side of 10, you are in good company....
When Marketing Automation Goes Bad
If you’re like me, you’re inundated with emails from marketers. This makes for a less-than-positive customer experience with companies in many cases. Marketing automation makes it easier (and cheaper) than ever to send communications with offers. However, it’s a lesson in quantity versus quality,...
Emotion > Rationality (Sometimes)
I purchased a “previously owned” Land Rover LR3 and I have had nothing but problems ever since I bought it. Nothing major—the “tyre pressure sensor” goes off sporadically even though I am compulsive about ensuring the right pressure in all “tyres.” I had to...
CEOs Set the Tone for Customer Experience
About one year ago, after a long and harrowing day on delays, cancellations, and re-routing, Delta passenger Jessie Frank was on her way to pick up her 12-year-old Type I Diabetic daughter from summer camp. Jessie learned with despair that she was eighth on...
The ROI on Kindness
“May your children die a horrible death!” screamed the disheveled passenger at the TSA agent at Chicago O’Hare airport last week. I guess he was upset that he could not go down the TSA PreCheck line, since he…well…did not apparently register and/or qualify for...