The customer experience is the new marketing.  Which means that how you design every aspect of your service or product experience is what matters most–not the words you tack on afterwards. Apple vs. Bose Let’s look at a tiny part of the customer experience: on/off switches. Like many frequent travelers, I rely on Bose noise-cancelling […]

Do you kowtow to new prospects… …all the while neglecting your existing, loyal customers? It doesn’t sound too sensible, does it? But it happens all the time. I’m going to use a picture here, and spare you the corresponding thousand words. Make sure what I’ve captured below isn’t happening at your business. And have a

We hear it all the time: “There are things worth more than money.”  But how often do we forget, in customer service, that there are things worth far more than money to our customers, our guests, our clients? Next time a customer is upset, next time you have a service failure, don’t jump immediately to

I spend a fair amount of time, as a customer service speaker and consultant, talking about the traits (warmth, empathy, teamwork, conscientiousness, and optimism–“WETCO”) needed to ensure great customer experiences. Here’s another one that helps:  a sense of humor, coupled with a culture that allows you – when appropriate – make use of it.  Not

Often, when you set out to improve your own business offering, your instinct is to do so by borrowing (or, as Picasso was said to recommend, stealing) the innovations of your competitors. And this makes sense, because your customers do judge you in comparison to what they’ve experienced elsewhere. United offers passengers a choice of

My daughter came to me not long ago, mystified by a non-self-adhesive postage stamp.  You know: the archaic kind of stamp that you have to lick. She wasn’t joking around:  She had no idea how these old-fashioned stamps worked. She had literally never encountered a stamp that you have to lick, and the idea that

Bob’s Red Mill, an employee-owned organic-foods mill, store, and café in Milwaukie, OR (yes, that’s the right spelling) is a phenomenally run operation.  But don’t take my word for it.  Look through its windows. They’re so astoundingly clean that I thought, sitting inside Bob’s café for half an hour, the windows were actually open (which

This morning, at the ticket counter of my usually-favorite airline, Southwest, I was disappointed to hear the gate agent ask an elderly, slightly flustered traveler, “Sweetie, do you have a form of photo identification for me to see?” Ouch. Of course, if you call everyone “sweetie” or “hon,” I’m fine with that: It just means

Nearly everybody (here in the U.S.) tips the waitress.  After all, tipping in that context is a public event: people are watching. Loudon Wainwright even closes his concerts with a hilarious musical plea to do so. But what about hotel housekeeping? Hey, nobody’s looking.  Just as your peers won’t ever learn your questionable taste in