Last month, I received a review copy of The Customer Experience Revolution: How Companies Like Apple, Amazon, and Starbucks Have Changed Business Forever by Jeofrey Bean and Sean Van Tyne. Among the companies profiled in the book is EMN8, a manufacturer of self-service kiosks for quick service restaurants (QSR) and
In my previous blog, Pouring profits, I posed the question: “How have you observed businesses capitalizing on (or forfeiting) opportunities to capture revenue and increase profit by offering customers enhanced service experiences?” While the post received a fair number of clicks, there have been no responses to my question. Undeterred,
Last month, a colleague and I had dinner at a Maine microbrewery. Being unfamiliar with its selection of microbrew beers, I ordered a beer flight from our server in order to sample the variety of ales available on tap. For the uninitiated, a beer flight is a selection of beers
A restaurateur recently approached me and asked, “How can I fake that I know a customer’s name? I have a thousand regulars in my restaurant each week and can’t possibly remember all of their names.” She was asking the wrong question. Any objective that involves faking out customers (or any
It is widely acknowledged that the number one reason customers quit doing business with a company is due to perceived indifference towards them as customers. When I ask audiences to describe what it feels like to be treated indifferently, I receive responses such as, “I feel unimportant” and “I feel
When I received my first management position with Marriott in 1992, I worked for a general manager named Mark Conklin. Although Mark (as he preferred to be called) oversaw more than two hundred employees, each employee received a hand-written card from him in the mail to honor the anniversary of
I recently received a review copy of The Energy Bus by Jon Gordon. It was a quick read consisting of 34 short chapters—some of which were only two pages long. The book relates a fictional story about George, a mid-level manager whose work and family life was in disarray before
The Greek philosopher, Plato, said, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” It’s true. No one is excluded from life’s challenges—whether these setbacks involve health, relationships, money, or some other dimension of our lives. There’s a tendency to see our own situation as unique—as if no
This post is the tenth in a series that has identified 10 different obstacles that have emerged from my analysis of customer satisfaction data. Perhaps you have encountered one or more of these obstacles in your own business? The tenth obstacle is missed opportunities. Two years ago, I wrote a
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