Customer Experience

The best customer service happens when you deliver the right customer experience. Whether your customers call it excellent customer service, great customer service or amazing customer service, it’s all based on giving your customers the experience they want.

T-Mobile vs. the customer: Round three (the foul-up)

February 12, 2010

This is the third in a short series of posts detailing my experience as a T-Mobile customer. My goal was to upgrade my phone without paying more than a new customer would. (Since I’ve been a T-Mobile customer for 8 years, it only seems fair.)  You can read round two here. Round one was fast [...]

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T-Mobile vs. the customer: Round two (the change-up)

February 11, 2010

This is second in a miniseries describing my experience with T-Mobile as I try to upgrade my phone without paying more than a new customer would. You can read Round one here. Round one took place entirely on the Internet. And it went well. Round two brought us back into the real world, in more [...]

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T-Mobile vs. the customer: Round one (the setup)

February 10, 2010

I have read that customer churn in the wireless telecom industry ranges from 10% to 67% with an accepted industry average of 35%. If this is true then the average cell phone customer stays less than three years with their carrier.  The same source says wireless carriers have new customer acquisition costs of $300 to [...]

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Is customer service a basic right?

February 9, 2010

In 2008, the president of Brazil signed a decree (number 6.523) that defines customer service standards for companies operating in that country. According to Michael Maoz, of Gartner.com this is not necessarily is a good thing. He does not believe it will improve how Brazilian customers are treated. Whether it works or not, I like [...]

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Remember the basics

February 1, 2010

Lunch at one of my regular restaurants recently reminded me how often servers forget the basics. Less than 10% of them (in my experience) tell customers what the daily special or soup du jour is.  If I want to know, I have to ask them when they show up to take our order. That’s like [...]

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Toyota has a customer service problem

February 1, 2010

A lot of people think Toyota has a quality problem these days. But I would say their biggest problem is a customer service one. Let’s look at the basics. Customer service is all about giving customers the right experience. Do this and they’ll remain loyal. Fail at this and they’ll leave you faster than you [...]

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Minnesota auto dealer makes a bad deal worse

January 21, 2010

When I was a kid, a local car dealer had long-running advertising campaign centered on the tagline: “A better car deal – we wrote the book!” Recently, another Minnesota car dealer made a good start writing a different kind of book. This one might be called: “How to drive customers away by the busload.” This [...]

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Work with your customers, not against them

January 20, 2010

Too often we hear about companies fighting with their customers. Whether it’s a Target store manager calling the police or an auto dealer suing their customer, it seems many people feel they are in an adversarial relationship with their customers. But that attitude will cost us customers. As a customer, who would you rather do [...]

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Send your customers away

January 13, 2010

There’s a coffee shop in London where the owner sends his customers away, into the arms of his competitors. He does this knowing they’ll come back. And when they come back, they’ll probably be more loyal to his coffee shop. His strategy is surprising but simple. He wants his customers to understand his product. He [...]

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Give customers the gift of attention

January 12, 2010

In his book “Free“, Chris Anderson talks about how an abundance of information can lead to a scarcity of attention. We know what he means, don’t we? Daily we are blanketed with information from hundreds (even thousands) of sources. Most of it’s free. Much of it is against our will.  Chris suggests this abundance of [...]

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What kind of customer are you?

January 11, 2010

Sometimes people who focus on improving customer service forget that the lessons apply to everyone. This includes when we are customers. Here’s what I mean. Remember, the three requirements of an Amazing customer experience are: 1. Treat me well 2. Help me accomplish what I want 3. Offer me value As a customer if you [...]

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Give your customer a cookie

January 7, 2010

Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service: Give your customer a cookie And here are some additional thoughts on this topic… At my favorite coffee shop, they do a lot of things right for their customers. A recent example is how they handled a service recovery situation. I had placed a lunch order and [...]

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Is your product made by your customers?

January 5, 2010

I’m usually not a fan of ad campaigns. But I do like Microsoft’s new ad campaign for Windows 7, “Made by me”. It features people (average, ordinary Windows users, we are supposed to believe) who talk about how Windows 7 has the features they want, because they TOLD Microsoft they wanted them. Of course, this [...]

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Only ask for what you need

January 4, 2010

Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service: Only ask for what you need And here are some additional thoughts on this topic… A big complaint customers often have is when companies waste their time asking for irrelevant and unneeded information. Here’s a good example of this. This company offers a handy resource (for no [...]

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Don’t hide important information

December 30, 2009

Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service: Don’t hide important information And here are some additional thoughts on this topic… I had a document to print and I wanted it spiral bound for easier reading. So I pointed my web browser to Fedex Kinko’s to get pricing before I went to their nearby store [...]

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How to give the right customer experience every time

December 22, 2009

We talk a lot about how important it is to give our customers the right experience. It’s extremely important. Because their experience becomes our brand and that determines their loyalty. The challenge with customer experience though is that everyone is different. So every customer wants a slightly different experience. But it’s not as hard as [...]

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