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Customer Relationships Transcend Outright Blunders
I spoke with a lawyer whom I’d advised a while back about how his efforts to reconnect with some of his best clients were going and he told me a fascinating story. He’s been meeting them for breakfast or lunch and asking them how they’d like his firm to improve and what they thought about […]
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What happened to “That was Easy!”?
The Customer Experience is All in the Details. I’m trying to order manilla folders from Staples, which should be pretty simple, right? It was easy to find them on the website, but when it came time to order, it was miserable.
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Sacrificing Customers for Profitability
I spoke with a rapidly growing software company last week about their sales compensation practices. Like many software companies, they provide sales incentives on license revenue, but NOT on services revenue. In other words, they want their sales team to sell software, but NOT the services required to implement the software and deliver the ROI […]
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An Extraordinarily Deep Customer Understanding
It isn’t too hard to find out what customers need, want, and are willing to pay for. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Customers are demanding to be heard. If you search the web for aberrations of many company’s names you’ll invariably find sites that customers have set up to voice their opinions (ie. […]
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Corporate Christmas Letters Are Worthless
I’m jaded on corporate Christmas / Holiday letters. Too many of them that I receive are preprinted and haven’t even been signed. But even for those that are signed, the cards have a generic message and a scrawl. Even those that are less generic are more “me centric” and have nothing about me. Take this […]
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The Power of a Favor
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Jared Sandberg wrote that “simply asking people to fill out a questionnaire in New York’s Penn Station resulted in a 57% compliance. But prefacing that question with the phrase, “Can you do me a favor?” followed by a pause pushed the level of compliance to 84%.” Frank Flynn, the associate […]
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Why I Hate Verizon Wireless
I’ll never, ever, ever go back to Verizon Wireless. I had set up automatic payments to Verizon that I neglected to cancel when I made the switch to AT&T. When I called to ask for a refund, they told me that it would take up to four billing cycles to process the refund. Ridiculous! I […]
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Hilton–A great experience at being dollared to death
What do you think of when you hear the name Hilton? No, not Paris Hilton, but the Hilton hotel chain? Do you think upscale, comfort, impeccable service, and plenty of amenities? Hmm. So did I, until I stayed at the downtown Hilton San Francisco. The first morning when I went downstairs to the highly touted […]
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Thanks for Renting–oh, wait! Just Kidding!
“Cool! National has really gotten it right!” I thought. I had just turned in my rental car an hour ago. After checking in, I had quickly opened up my laptop to check email before I boarded my plane. I was impressed to see at the top of my inbox a message from National Car Rental’s […]