Archives for The Customer Experience Expert

David fights Goliath VIA the Detroit Automotive Show – a lesson in Contrarianism and Synergy

The Detroit International Automobile Show 2012.   Among the hundred thousand square feet vendor booths, and the multimillion dollar backdrops complete with state of the art multimedia, and eye candy models . . . both male and beautifully coiffed women;  sits the center of attention. It is all about the cars.  There are cars.  Each collection is often changed out each day for maximum exposure.  Audi might have a new metallic paint the invites you to touch it’s too-strange-too-be-true finish.  That is OK because some t-shirted youth, armed with polishing rags and dust wands wander incessantly to make sure nary a
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Customer Satisfaction — hogwash –what about your Employees? – The 5 ABC’s that separates winners from losers.

Sorry about the absence.  I took a few months off to fight off cancer.  That is done and I AM BACK! Let me introduce you to Denise and Leslie.  At my Seidman Cancer Center  . . .  these two ladies were at the front desk.  One day I stopped to get a sucker out of their candy bowl.  When I came back out one reached up and put the candy bowl down by her phone.   I thought, “I didn’t ask earlier . . . I wonder if I did something wrong?” So the next day I asked them, “Does the
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The first one to blink will . . . . .

Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella were at the head of the respective lines waiting to perform their magic on the waiting masses of young lasses in Toon Town at Disneyland. It was clear that each “actor” had been chosen from thousands of applicants, since each was indeed an incarnate of their cartoon counterpart.
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“Excuse me. You have a French fry sticking out of your nose.”

Five Guys hamburgers.  Visions of red and white checked decor, with peanuts in shells to distract you while your burger is customized in it’s assembly and you are assaulted with the French fry experience. Assaulted?  By French fries?  Experience? To the uninitiated.  You can pay less to get a hamburger at almost every other fast food joint in town.  But then you are not vacuumed into the experience of a Five Guys . . . “burger and fries” (I know the rhyming is too much).  The added price is worth the price of admittance. There on the wall is the
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What happens when you charge for free things

Can it be that simple? That the customer feels certain resentment about a $1.00 charge for air when the competitor is free. That the customer FEELS like they are being nickel and dimed. (Which would not be hard to do with the price per gallon of gas). When all things are equal, is there an attitude that shifts the customer’s loyalty when customer FEELS like they are being taken?
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Minus 36 degrees . . .Cookstoves . . .Carrott . . . How to make email and voicemail that connects.

Research shows that 80% of all interaction in the workplace is done with you communicating with some sort of technology.  Voice mail, email, etc.  So how do you “get through?” I arrived to 36 degrees below zero temperatures. When it I got up the next morning and started the car, the transmission was frozen.  I had to let the car sit in idle for 15 minutes before it worked. Canada in March.  The coldest cold in my life.   I was there for a series of presentations over three days in various Alberta and Saskatchewan cities. And then there was the
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Welcome to the Customer Experience

Ah . . .the Customer Experience.The wedding, the graduation, the poor customer service, the stage play, the buying of that new appliance, the relationship with the visiting salesman, or the relationship you have with your doctor.  Done right, they create experiences and events that change and mold our lives. They create drastic change in direction, are the fodder of sweet memories, and staging points for a return to “do it again.” They cause us to marvel and look in awe at the organizations who produce them. Done wrong, they are the core of anger, frustration, lost productivity, evaporated profits and
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