I had a recent experience with Starbucks that got me thinking about how marketing organizations can have a tendency to think that their job is to make everything sound like good news — and how sometimes that is such a very wrong approach. Read More
During one of the member coaching hours of my professional development program, someone asked me how to improve the way to have conversations with executive customers.
I recalled a common situation that occurred when I was a technology executive and sales people would bring me into their clients as the “visiting dignitary”. Read More
I have had a “Comcast experience” over the past 2 weeks (photo is of their actual “finished” job) which took me about an hour to clean up.
(They actually went so far as to put in about 8 cable ties to reinforce the most tangled areas, making it impossible to even shove the pile of wires aside without cutting everything apart.) Read More
Awhile back I wrote an article about how BMW “pseudo-service” repels customers.
For those that did not read the prior article, the gist is that as an owner of a new BMW your choice is to get free service from BMW that you dislike (because of the awful and useless, “give me a 5” survey process I described) or to get good, paid-for, service from someone else. Read More
I am the type of person that buys a car and drives it forever.
My sturdy little BMW Z4 just passed 120,000 miles.
Today I found myself thinking a startling thought…
“When I get a new car, I don’t want to get a new BMW…I’d rather get a used one, because new BMW’s come with free maintenance for a few years and I don’t want to have to deal with BMW’s service department. Read More
It all starts with one executive decision.
Every company has one, single, strategic decision to make about customer service. That decision is cost or care?
Here is what I mean:
If you make the decision for Cost:
You have made the decision to provide customer service only because you have to, and you want to do it at the lowest possible cost. Read More
This is a bit of a diversion from my normal topics, but I know many of you are in technology companies, and pretty much all of you are people…
And I have something to say about this.
I was traveling in Cincinnati recently, and was greeted with the following in my hotel room. Read More
I have worked with many different sized companies and one of the universal truths I have seen is that sales people basically hate leads that are generated by marketing.
Unless of course, the “lead” is ready to buy. Read More
Recently I was on the street in a downtown area, and I came across a group of young people with clipboards.
One of them engaged me to share the plight of the polar bears, and all the bad things that are happening to them because of global warming. Read More
This is a sequel to my last post on
Customer Cost or Care.
Several people left comments, and I got even more email with opinions and questions about the real value of keeping or losing a customer, and the real cost, and P&L impact of providing care. Read More
