Customer service. Customer experience. Focus on the customer. The customer is at the centre of everything we do. Why do we hear this so much? Because time and again we see that selling something of value at a fair price is not enough. The customer must find the seller easy to do business with at every […]
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You may not know your customers as well as you think
I’ve been married for a long time, certainly long enough to know my wife Alicia pretty well. Or so I thought. But last week while dining out, I learned something new. At the end of our meal, the server ran my credit card and returned it to me, saying “Here you go, Jon. Have a […]
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The 2015 Customer Experience Risk Study is now available!
The Verde Group, together with LoyaltyOne, partnered with Dr. Deborah Small from the Wharton School of Business to conduct a retail consumer study to assess the financial impact associated with poor customer experiences in the U.S. across key retail formats: Grocery Store, Mass Merchandise, Pharmacy, Department Store, and Specialty Apparel. The study finds that […]
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3 Steps to Firing Your Worst Customers
As I wrote recently, customers who are loyal to your business and contribute to your bottom line should be rewarded with an outstanding experience. But what about unprofitable customers, the ones who cost you money? Most businesses have customers who call in 10 times a month asking for credits, return items more often than not […]
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The profitable customer is always right
“The customer is always right.” Although this saying has been around for more than 100 years, pretty much everyone who works in customer service knows that while most customers are always right, certain customers are often wrong. Consider the customers who return tools, jewellery or clothing after they’ve been used. The resulting costs will either […]
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Verde Update: New Product Partnership Launched with LoyaltyOne Consulting
Verde Group and LoyaltyOne Consulting partner to deliver innovative Customer Experience solution I am pleased to share exciting news. Verde Group has partnered with LoyaltyOne Consulting, a global customer loyalty consultancy specializing in the design and development of customer engagement strategies for Fortune 1000 brands, to develop an innovative new customer experience (CX) offering […]
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Which “Silent Experiences” Are Killing Your Customer Loyalty?
Which Experiences Are Your “Silent Killers”? In my last post, ‘The Complexity of Customer Simplicity‘, I pointed out that one of the chief obstacles for companies that seek to “simplify” the customer experience is the difficulty in knowing what customers want. Customer simplification efforts need to address the issues that aggrieve customers the most. These […]
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The Complexity of Customer Simplicity
Last week I had to call my cable company to accomplish what I thought would be a simple task: getting a replacement modem. I was quickly reminded why most consumers hate their cable companies. I’ll save you the gory details of the experience and just provide the bullet points: • three days • seven calls […]
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An Obsession with Success Metrics Won’t Create More Success – Find Out What Will
I understand why companies like to focus on positive measurements — be they sales, profits or stock price. We all want to feel good. But if you want to improve, you also have to identify what you need to do differently or stop doing. In my last post, NPS: the danger of its singularity, I examined […]
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NPS: The Danger of its Singularity
After Fred Reichheld published The One Number You Need to Grow in the Harvard Business Review, many customer experience professionals thought they had to ask only a single question: “How likely is it that you would recommend company [x] to your friends and colleagues?” Gone were the “overall” questions that had dominated customer surveys, as […]