Customer experience

Emotions come first, behavior comes second.

The Internet promises to give marketing the same boost in productivity that new operational strategies have given to manufacturing.

And why your company can’t ignore it.

While management skills can improve service systems, a manager is better off if he or she first has a clear understanding of the operating characteristics that set one service system apart from another. This author offers one view of services, which, if followed, results in a “rational approach to the rationalization” of services. His view, […]

Buyers expect the same level of service and flexibility as when they shop in their personal lives.

The best stay attuned to their customers’ signals in the social graph.

By thoroughly mapping the job a customer is trying to get done, a company can discover opportunities for breakthrough products and services.

Brands are not just names slapped on products by the marketing department; they embody the value those products have for your customers. That may be more true for high-tech products than it is for soap.

The approach, once used primarily in product design, is now infusing corporate culture.

[This post is part of Creating a Customer-Centered Organization.] Few managers would have hired me into the job, at $11-per-hour with no commission, as a retail sales associate at a suburban mall. I had no retail experience. I was 50 years old and my last job as a staff reporter for the New York Daily […]

Career-oriented women are increasingly flexing their spending muscle. Here’s how companies can reach these “Golden Misses.”

Examples from MassMutual, Starwood Hotels, and Marriott.

New technologies can be dazzling. But do they represent the future of retailing? Have the fundamentals really changed?

The American consumer is changeable. He wants X. No, he wants Y. Never mind, he wants Z. We used to quiz him with focus groups and mall intercepts. But...

This post is part of Creating a Customer-Centered Organization. Much of the conversation about customer-centricity focuses on business-to-consumer (B2C) firms. And while these companies were the first to acknowledge the business benefits of delivering a great customer experience, business-to-business (B2B) organizations are increasingly getting in on the game. Companies like Salesforce.com, Philips, and Oracle have […]

In the rush to build Internet businesses, many executives mistakenly concentrate all their attention on attracting customers rather than retaining them....

On July 3 a New York Federal Judge ordered Google to hand over their complete record of viewers’ behavior, including user names and internet protocol addresses in service, to Viacom’s $1 billion copyright infringement suit against Google’s YouTube service. It raises the very interesting question, does Google keep too much information on its users, and […]

How does your company stack up?

Focus your analytics on your most valuable customers.

They care about problem-solving.