Michael Lowenstein
Michigan J. Frog and Parables of Customer Disappointment
Perhaps I'm channeling the inner ukulele player in me, but my all-time favorite cartoon, often considered to be the “Citizen Kane” of its kind, is “One Froggy Evening”, created over 60 years ago. The plot centers around a mysterious amphibian, one Michigan J. Frog,...
4 Powerful Rules to Create Employee and Customer Word-of-Mouth Programs That Work
For any offline or online social word-of-mouth initiative to be impactful with key stakeholders, financially and otherwise, there must first be full realization of what...
The Preoccupation With Pre-Customers
Many companies devote considerably more energy and resources to capturing customers than they do to keeping them. But, all customers are not created equal; some have more potential value than others. It’s extremely important for targeting the best customers that their array of value...
Why, Oh Why, Is ANYBODY Still Measuring Customer Satisfaction?
When Customer Retention, my first book on customer behavior was published, now over 20 years ago, one of the strongest reactions voiced was my contention, and the proof offered, that satisfaction and retention were fundamentally different concepts, and that they required different measurement protocols....
Key Stakeholder Decision Crossroad: Stay or Go?
Building on his long-time mantra of “People work for people – they do not work for businesses”, management consultant Donn Carr’s recent LinkedIn post, Why Good Employees Quit, listed nine reasons why employees leave their jobs: 1. They are overworked, i.e. pushed to contribute beyond…
Digital Transformation in Retail Banks: Potential Impact on Brand Equity, Customers, and Employees
Discussion of the myriad and varied ramifications of Digital Transformation is, seemingly, everywhere (and unavoidable). I’m capitalizing the first letter of each word because the pervasiveness of digital transformation has all the feel of Big Data a...
Comcast Goes Sales Bottom-Fishing, Door-to-Door, Trying To Win Back Ex-Customers
Last Friday, a sales representative from Comcast came to our door, offering a 40% discount (he hand-wrote 40% OFF! on his business card) to switch back our cable service (from Verizon). We dropped Comcast three years ago, which the representative knew. What he...
When Positive and Negative Customer Experiences Hit Home
A recent blog post by Denyse Drummond-Dunn offered an enterprise-level cultural concept that everyone involved in one-to-one customer experience management should get behind: "So what is customer centricity really about? After all, putting the customer at the heart of business sounds easy doesn't...
It Takes Teamwork: Customer Experience Management and the Little Red Hen
Think back, if you will, to your favorite childhood nursery rhymes and you’ll no doubt recall the lesson learned from the Little Red Hen. She and her brood of chicks planted and cultivated the corn, harvested it, made it into batter and baked...
MROC ‘n Roll: Generating Social Connectivity and Valuable Insights from Employee and Customer Communities
Over the past few years, we have seen the growth of b2b and b2c market research online communities, or MROCs. Companies can, for example, conduct qualitative research, such as juries and panels to evaluate alternative communication concepts...
Connecting Satisfaction With Behavior: Does The Service-Profit Chain (or The Employee Engagement-Profit Chain)...
The Service-Profit Chain, an enterprise performance and financial results concept introduced by Gary Loveman, James Heskett, W. Earl Sasser, and Leonard Schlesinger in 1994 in Harvard Business Review, and in a 1997 book by the last three authors, can essentially be explained as follows:...
Accueil: Where and How Does Humanity Impact Customer Experience?
What makes this question so profound, and so pivotal, in customer experience optimization today is that every aspect of value delivery is at play. Further, it should be understood that all stakeholders are keenly aware of when...
Are Popular Customer Experience Metrics Just “Immature”, Or Do They Have Bigger Challenges?
Based on insights from the Temkin Group report’s State of CX Metrics, 2015, a recent LinkedIn infographic post by CXPA co-founder Bruce Temkin labeled customer experience metrics as “Immature, But Improving”. This is a very revealing, and very disappointing, conclusion. The reasons...
Delivering Unique, Attractive (Even Branded) Customer Experience Lagniappe: Any Company Can Do This
This week, Bob Thompson’s informative, timely blog on strategies companies can use to make customer experience a competitive advantage - and how most neither measure experience nor compete on it – puts me in mind of a line of discussion around customer experience...
How Can Your Company and Customers Profit Most from Higher Employee Commitment?
Today, there’s a lot of discussion among corporate strategists, and even senior HR folks, about “putting employees first”. Whenever this is surfaced, it’s useful to ask some relevant questions with regard to ultimate enterprise value, particularly the...
You Don’t Have To Be Famous, Just Motivated: Anyone Can Influence Brand Behavior
My friends at Keller Fay Group (Ed Keller and Brad Fay) have conducted research which once again demonstrates that everyday people, i.e. consumers, customers, suppliers and employees, can have a significant on the product and service vendor decisions individuals make in the marketplace. ...
Comparing Perceived Value Drivers For Employees and Customers
Some may remember an episode of ‘90’s sitcom ‘Murphy Brown’ in which Candace Bergen, as Murphy, is viewing a focus group about her news program, FYI, through the two-way mirror. In a key scene, focus group participants are asked to describe...
The Reverse of Advocacy: Impacts of Customer Alienation and Sabotage
Daiji wa shoji kara: “Serious disasters come from small causes” Feudal Japanese proverb The polar opposite of Advocates are Saboteurs (or ‘Badvocates’, as coined by leading PR firm, Weber Shandwick). Saboteurs are the extreme of what we label...
Intersecting Viral Marketing With Emotional Customer Connection: TD Bank’s ‘Home Run’
As customers in all b2b and b2c sectors steadily become more actively digitized in their daily lives, companies are having to respond, and hopefully stay ahead, in the race to build stronger interpersonal relationships with them. Who's doing this well, using innovative techniques...
“If You Were The Only Girl In The World”: Being Real With The...
This sweet old song, "If You Were The Only Girl In The World", with words by Clifford Grey and music by Nat Ayer, and written in 1916, has special meaning on Valentine's Day. The song contains some lines which have great employee ambassadorial...