Traffic Jammed Customer Service

How many of us have endured endless wait times when calling customer service numbers? Or suffered through long lines at a POS counter? Or even waiting for a website to load and log you in for online self service. All of these are cases of "traffic jams" in the customer services of an organization.

Value is in the Eyes of the Customer

The Subjective Theory of Value states that value of a product or service is based on the subjective importance of it to an individual. You can read more about the details and economic theory behind this on the link here.

Lets look at this theory in the light of customer relationships. There is evidence all around us that the value of certain relationships is different from customer to customer. Where one will value a social network presence of an organization more than visiting their physical office, others will have a different opinion.

Making Customers Smile

A lot of us know that we do our best work when we are happy. If there is stress or tension, we generally either try to avoid the situation or choose the least challenging avenues to get the work done. Those are not always the best pieces of work, they are generally just mediocre.

The Golden Rule and the Customer

Recently, I read a post from Don Peppers, talking about what it would take to make a genuinely trustable airline.  In his post he refers to the Golden Rule, "Do onto others as you would have them do onto you." That sparked a thought in my mind about how we treat our customers today.

Do we really follow this rule? A bigger question is, do we need to?

Customer Experience Innovation: Does Innovation Require a Framework?

Recently, I shared an interesting article, on one of the social network sites, that I had read about Customer Experience Innovation. Among the comments that I got, one was regarding organizations going about customer experience innovation by requiring employees to simply "do it". Without a framework or a business plan or strategy behind it.

The "We got your back" concept for Customer Services

We all know that Customer Services is a very important, if not the most important, touch point to maintain a great customer relation and influence the customer experience overall. If it is through call centers or through the growing social media channels, the same rules apply and we see the same impact on the overall experience.

With all the different ways that customers can reach us today, and the large customer service teams, are we strangling our own capabilities to influence the customer experience? This question led me to think about, what I call, the "we got your back" concept. This is based on what the organization philosophy is with regards to the freedom that a customer service representative/agent has to influence and manage the overall customer experience.

Creatively Delighting Your Customer - A Story of Buying Online.

The online store is a common phenomenon these days. For some organizations, it is their main point of sale and reason for their growth. Remember Amazon? However, online shopping is not everyone's cup of tea. Some people prefer going to the regular brick & mortar establishments.

Quality of Customer Experience

In a recent discussion in Gary Lemke's blog posts, the aspect of speed of CRM has been the center of attention. In today's post, the concept is linked to customer delight. Though I appreciate the perspective of the speed of the customer interaction being important to the whole customer experience, I believe that there is something more important than the speed that in a lot of cases results in more satisfied customers.