Shaun Smith
Should Companies Take a Stand on Social Issues?
As the world becomes more socially conscious and politically active, many brands are taking up the cause and showing their support for various social justice movements. But can championing a social cause become counter-productive and damage profitability?
Is Customer Experience Still Relevant? Yes, With These 3 Strategies
By Shaun Smith and Andy Milligan What matters most to customers Many readers will be very familiar with Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs - something that is particularly relevant at present because it helps explain how customers are reacting to the current coronavirus crisis. The…
CX By Numbers
I wrote a blog last week arguing that we are dumbing down marketing in the rush to create digital content. This seems to have struck a chord because I have had many people retweet and favourite it. Little did I know that I would...
Marketing ain’t no noun
David Wheldon, President of the World Federation of Advertisers, couldn’t have been blunter in his warning shot to those brands dead-set on replacing marketing resource with digital tools and advertising platforms. In a scathing address at the recent ISBO conference, the RBS Group CMO...
3 Steps to Becoming a “Purposeful Brand” like Premier Inn, Southwest, and Zappos
“Every business must serve a social purpose”. These are not the words of a social campaigner or a politician; they are the words of a banker, Ashok Vaswani, the CEO of Retail and Business Banking at Barclays,...
What does the VW brand stand for now?
Jeff Bezos famously once said: ‘Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room’. Yesterday, as I was giving a keynote speech, I decided to put the Amazon founder’s theory to the test. I showed a slide with three...
Just how powerful is your purpose?
Within hours, over 100,000 UK citizens had signed the government e-petition to request David Cameron to increase the UK intake of refugees fleeing war-torn homelands. This petition was more than just an emotional response to the compelling media images; it was a clear sign...
What’s the Next Big Thing in Customer Experience?
We've been sifting through the array of predictions that every blogger and his mother seems to have issued over the last three months and here's a very quick recap of what's in store for 2014, in no particular order. The internet of things, enabling your...
How much are you loved?
Every brand wants a relationship with its customers. We want them to like us; even love us, and love only us - forever. Customers too want to be loved, but do they think about their interaction with a brand as a relationship? It seems...
Laggard or leader. Where do you stand on the mobile experience?
This is the conclusion of Forsee in its latest Customer Experience Index, where Amazon hit top spot for best mobile retail experience - a testimony to the online giant’s brilliance in making it quicker, cheaper and simpler for the consumer to buy almost anything....
Does ‘Showrooming’ mean the end of retail?
"It's not one channel or the other; it's making sure that you get a richer experience in both"Christopher Bailey – Chief Creative Officer Burberry. Like Phoenix arising from the ashes, retail brands Jessops and HMV have both returned to the high street albeit in a...
Stick to your purpose
"Stop listening to other people's advice. Go with my gut"Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh. Founder sugru. These words, uttered by the inventor of sugru, the putty-like substance that is designed to fix or improve almost anything, marked the company's transition from struggle to success in January 2009.…
Naked Ambition
"We like to innovate in everything we do: from cosmetics to recruitment to ethics and campaigns." Mark Constantine Managing Director Lush. This is the time of year when aged aunts buy gaily-wrapped gift packs of toiletries for nephews who will probably never use them. The...
Customer Experience – On Purpose
Customer experience, by definition, reflects the impression consumers form as they interact with brands. Trends become apparent by the innovations that organisations introduce in an attempt to differentiate, but also in the ways in which consumers respond. The use of mobile apps like O2's...
The power of social media
Sometime ago I wrote a blog in which I predicted that there would come a time when Ryanair's performance would begin to falter because of increasing customer dissatisfaction with its business model. That time may have arrived because of the power of social media. The...
Do you love your bank?
For most of us the answer will be a resounding 'No!' Yet there are a few banks that manage to gain the affection of their customers. We know that trust and affection are key drivers of brand loyalty, so the million?dollar question is how...
What’s the biggest obstacle to implementing customer experience successfully?
'Lack of strategy' according to Forrester's annual State of Customer Experience report 2011. We agree, but strategy in itself – even if it is bold, differentiated and customer-centric – won't guarantee success. Where we see most companies fail is in the execution. In our...
Innovate the experience, not just the product
July 2011 saw the very last launch and landing of the NASA Space Shuttle.So is this the end of an era for space travel or the beginning of private enterprise creating innovative customer experiences? "History has shown that many of the innovations that we have...
The Rise of Social Customer Experience Management: Three Lessons Learned for Success
Social Customer Experience Management (CEM) can be defined as the "Business strategy for intentionally using social media to engage with customers and deliver an experience that builds brand loyalty." There is research to show that in doing so organisations drive up revenues and profits....
Creating dramatically different customer experiences
Burberry Worldstore – © Burberry, 2011 "From the store windows, the store touch-points, the website, social media or a magazine: it has to be one pure customer experience, not just to gain market share but to gain mind-share" Angela Ahrendts, CEO Burberry. Never have consumers…