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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
How Reward and Recognition Can Drive Customers Away
The Short Story: Verde is seeing a significant increase in customer dissatisfaction with the reward and recognition practices of the companies they do business with. But companies that attempt to “fix” reward and recognition often make matters worse because they misunderstand the relationship between reward/recognition and core product/service performance. Performance on the latter is a […]
Playing Notes or Making Music?
Welcome to Verde Group’s new blog. We look forward to discussions with you on the topics we care about: the psychology of customer interactions, how companies and customers form relationships, and the critical role of customer experience as a driver of loyalty, value and brand. […]