Customer service usually sucks. That’s not news. So I reserve my commentary for companies that manage to screw up in more interesting ways. That’s what Lowe’s just did. It not only failed, it failed 13 different times in one transaction. And it’s worth reviewing, since nearly all of those failures are due to the same…
You can use customer contact information to request feedback, or collect text for posting in an online review. But doing both in the same question, like so many “efficient” strategies, is bound to backfire. A disclaimer that undermines trust I recently worked with a title company to manage the purchase of a new home. Home…
Customer experience surveys shouldn’t give me a choice between whacking hard-working staff and approving corrupt and busted systems. Let me tell you what’s wrong with your systems, not your people. It’s nearly always the systems that are at fault for problems If there’s one thing I learned from the brilliant Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine,…
My internet service went down Sunday night. Verizon’s messages about the outage seemed to emanate from a twilight zone where time and reality have no meaning. I’m a Verizon FiOS customer. FiOS is extremely reliable — it’s never gone down in over five years. That’s good, because my business, my family’s work, and all my…
When I worked closely with Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine, the authors of the customer experience book Outside In, I learned how most customer experience problems are rooted deep within corporate systems. That’s what happened to me this week in an interaction with AT&T. The odyssey of dropping a line from AT&T My son, a…
Have you been good to your customers? They will stand by you now. Have you been mean? Then don’t be surprised when they desert you in your time of need. That’s the schmuck deficit. Payback is a bitch. Many of the companies, large and small, that I deal with regularly are hurting right now. I’m…
I bought a Tesla. The experience of buying it was terrible. Analyzing the reasons for this is a great exercise in thinking through customer experience. This is not my first electric car. I’m a believer. Six years ago, I bought a Nissan Leaf. My family has been very happy with it. The maintenance costs are…
Ingrid Lindberg, the world’s first customer experience officer, is a groundbreaking figure in the discipline of customer experience (CX). She comes to the analysis of corporate writing from a CX perspective. I love her principles, which I’ll give a sample of here. I first came upon Lindberg in researching my most recent book. This passage…
The most important thing to Apple is the product. After that comes employee efficiency. Customers? They’re in third place. Here’s how I learned that: Yesterday I finally brought my iPhone with its failing battery into the Apple Store in Burlington, Massachusetts. When I showed up, the bright and happy Apple guy in the front of…