Customer Insight: How Logistics Raises the Bar on Customer Expectations Ask any customer shopping online when they want their order delivered, and it’s a good bet they’ll answer ‘tomorrow’. Thanks to masters of logistics like Amazon and Zappos, customers have come to expect 2-day or even 1-day shipping, sometimes at no cost. They want things […]
Transform your customer insights by avoiding these common errors Technology and analytics have provided companies the means to understand their customers in ways they couldn’t have imagined even a few years ago. Almost every large organization invests heavily in customer measurement programs, yet many don’t achieve the customer insight they’re looking for. Why? It turns […]
Find the difference between interesting and actionable insights By now, the notion that customer experience matters to market success is nearly universal. A 2016 Gartner survey found that 89% of companies expect to compete primarily on the basis of customer experience — up from 36% in 2012. Most companies make significant investments in customer research […]
Consumers are creatures of habit, often seeking out their favorite restaurant, hotel or store, because they know they’ll have a positive experience. These positive experiences make them loyal — whether it’s a perfectly grilled steak, a service associate who helps you find that perfect gift, or the ease of pre-selecting your hotel room in advance […]
Recently a client asked me how to engage Human Resources, Legal/Risk and Finance in their customer experience journey. When my client had approached these groups about their contributions to the customer experience, the response was essentially: “We are very in favor of focusing on the customer experience and are glad that our sales and customer […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 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 […]