Podcast: Customer Delight in a Social World – a Chat with CustomerThink CEO Bob Thompson

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I had the pleasure of chatting with my colleague, Bob Thompson, on my July 25th podcast! What a great show. One of the biggest points that we chatted about was that it often takes so little to delight the customer – it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money for the company; yet it adds incremental value for the customer. Secondly, the human factor matters and it has to be baked in. Technology can be a tool to delight customers in conjunction with a human touch. In fact, Bob asked Intuit how they measure delight? Intuit says – “with a smile.” That’s human!

How do you create a better customer service experience?

Without having service baked into your company values and your DNA, technology alone is not a sustainable differentiation – unless your entire ‘value-add’ (minor jargon alert!!) is unique IP/ tech (Apple, Google…etc). That means having a human-centered focus is key (score for “keeping it human”!). His point: technology can automate what humans don’t do well; however, technology alone can’t scale that critical human touch (I didn’t pay Bob to say that. He just knew that I was right!). Finally, Bob mentioned that marketers need to think about differentiation more than they do delighting; that’s one of the 5 habits of successful companies. The little things can make a huge difference.

Bob’s new book on customer-centric companies is out later this year. Bob is a blast and we’ll have him back on the show.

Follow Bob @bob_thompson

Follow Kathy @kathyklotzguest

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Kathy Klotz-Guest
For 20 years, Kathy has created successful products, marketing stories, and messaging for companies such as SGI, Gartner, Excite, Autodesk, and MediaMetrix. Kathy turns marketing "messages" into powerful human stories that get results. Her improvisation background helps marketing teams achieve better business outcomes. She is a founding fellow for the Society for New Communications Research, where she recently completed research on video storytelling. Kathy has an MLA from Stanford University, an MBA from UC Berkeley, and an MA in multimedia apps design.

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