Changing your brand identity? You’re not alone. Jeannie and Adam tackle how to identify when the time is right to rebrand, but watch out! This week they're taking on a customer zero. Evolution vs. Revolution Jeannie and Adam have noticed a trend. When companies rebrand, they often imply that this indicates an evolution in their customer experience as well. Changing the logo of your company is a useful, sometimes necessary move—a reflection of research in usability or color studies, an evolution ...
Oct 05, 2015•16 min
Marilyn Suttle is an expert on customer service culture change and developing emotional intelligence to foster breakthrough success. Her book, Who’s Your Gladys, reveals key methods to change the psychology around handling difficult customers. What's a Gladys? A Gladys is a demanding customer who has high expectations and may pose a challenge for you or your team. Despite these potential difficulties, these customers can give valuable feedback or illuminate aspects of your service that may need ...
Oct 01, 2015•27 min
Intelligent and compassionate entrepreneurs often get caught in the magical world of the ideal customer experience. But what happens when things go wrong? Join Adam and Jeannie as they discuss how to be prepared for worst case customer scenarios. Fewer Ruined Days You’ve created the ideal customer experience, your business is ready to roll. Suddenly something happens: your technology fails, a child gets lost in your store, someone vomits on your roller coaster. Do you have a plan? What do you sp...
Sep 28, 2015•15 min
Inadequate customer service keeps rearing it’s ugly head. The good news is that any company of any size can do something immediate to make their service better. Enter Peter Shankman, the New York Times dubbed “PR all star”, to discuss how being super-excellent may be as easy as “being a little better sometimes”. It's Nice to Be Nice Peter attributes his success to “trying to be nice”. In today’s customer service economy, many people expect to be treated “like crap”. Since customer experience is ...
Sep 24, 2015•22 min
Job seeking is a necessary process that we've all experienced but is there anything that can relieve the stress or helplessness of submitting your resume, as Jeannie puts it, “into the black void of eternity”? With mobile marketplaces taking over a significant portion of the job market, the short answer is, yes. Today on the podcast we have an innovative Customer Hero, an app called Jobr. Jobr is based on the Tinder model of swiping left or right, and connects potential talent with employers see...
Sep 21, 2015•13 min
In honor of the 50th episode of Crack the Customer Code, we've selected 50 customer service sound bites across a wide range of concepts. From designing and delivering great customer experience to overused clichés, these tips run the gamut, and we are excited to share them with you! What You'll Hear In This Episode 50 fantastic sound bites of customer service wisdom and advice. Sponsor Service Strategies offers a wide variety of Consulting Services for Support, eService, Field Service and Profess...
Sep 17, 2015•19 min
We’ve all encountered scripted customer greetings at one point or another in our lives. Are these greetings an effective strategy when crafting customer experience? The Benefits of Customer Greetings Customer greetings are the introduction to your business and a reminder of excellent service as a customer leaves. As we all know, first and last impressions are fantastic points of reference for customers when calling your business to mind. These greetings can offer consistency and identity for you...
Sep 14, 2015•14 min
John Warrillow, the founder of the Value Builder System and bestselling author, joins the podcast this week to introduce strategies entrepreneurs can use to create loyal customers based on subscriptions. How can business leaders identify their subscription models? Millennials are more concerned with acquiring the rights to products and services rather than stock-piling assets. With the advent of the sharing economy and services such as Netflix and Spotify ruling the online subscription world, ho...
Sep 10, 2015•24 min
Customer satisfaction ratings haven’t improved since the 1970’s, in fact, they've declined. With so many tools and resources at our disposal, why does customer service still stink? In a recent study performed by Consumer Reports, 80% of people surveyed had some issue with a recent transaction—they had returned merchandise, questioned a bill, or simply left the store without making their intended purchase. Now digital sales present a new round of challenges for marketers. Customer experience on m...
Sep 07, 2015•19 min
Tom Schwab describes how business leaders can implement NPS and inbound marketing to focus on customer satisfaction and offer them the products and services they need. Tom Schwab: Inbound Expert Tom Schwab is an entrepreneur, a consultant, a writer, a Navy Vet, and an expert at inbound engineering and strategy. He empowers business owners to implement and understand digital tools, build sales, and create marketing machines that amplify their business model by taking them beyond a single efficien...
Sep 03, 2015•24 min
We all love metrics, and that’s what this episode of Crack the Customer Code is all about. In particular, it’s about one metric - the Customer Effort Score - and whether or not it’s the best customer experience metric to track. Do you know what the Customer Effort Score is?The Customer Effort Score, measures how much perceived effort your customers experience trying to get an issue resolved. The more effort they have to put in, the less satisfied they are. The less effort, the more satisfied.Lis...
Aug 31, 2015•20 min
Lee Caraher tells us how intergenerational workplaces can succeed despite the perceived great divide between Millennials and earlier generations like Boomers. Are Millennials really that different from earlier generations? People talk about intergenerational conflict today like it's something new, but it's not. Humans have always been informed by their generation (in addition to many other factors), so it's no surprise that Millennials have a different perspective of the world than the GenXers b...
Aug 27, 2015•28 min
Businesses hack customer behavior all the time; the real question is, are they using their powers for good or evil? Join Adam and Jeannie as they discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of hacking customer experience. It is ever okay? Is Customer Hacking Okay? Adam says the intention behind customer hacking is everything; after all, companies have been practicing hacking in one form or another for ages—narrowing options so you know which product to buy, optimizing prices, etc. Our biological mak...
Aug 24, 2015•18 min
John Murphy discusses how emotional intelligence can be a driver of success across metrics as you learn how to engage with your team, your clients, and your customers. How can business leaders engage their team in the company vision? "Emotional intelligence is absolutely fundamental to the growth and development of an organiztion," says John Murphy, the founder of John Murphy International, "and strong leadership is the [vehicle] for this sort of engagement." By creating an emotional connection,...
Aug 20, 2015•28 min
Adding "Surprise & Delight" to your customer service strategy, while an incredible opportunity to build a dedicated consumer base, is harder to execute than you may expect. Adam and Jeannie discuss the trend of “Surprise & Delight” (or S&D, as some have started to dub it). Quite a few business leaders have been using a Surprise & Delight strategy to create joy and lasting memories among customers. But is it an effective strategy? The most effective? Loyalty programs often disappo...
Aug 17, 2015•19 min
An Interview with Robert Rose Robert introduces some of the principles taught in his latest book, Experiences: the 7th Era of Marketing, which he co-authored with Carla Johnson. After briefly summarizing the previous six marketing eras, Robert explains how the next one signifies a profound paradigm shift where customer experience intersects with marketing through the content we produce. According to Robert, we have moved beyond the age of just describing the value of products and services in mar...
Aug 13, 2015•22 min
SPONSOR MESSAGE Customer Experience is hot… but are you taking advantage of its huge potential to make your services business more prominent and profitable? Join Service Strategies for an informative Customer Experience Workshop in San Diego on October 27th. You’ll learn how to create customer success while generating profitable revenue for your services business. The workshop is part of the Service Industry Summit event, which bring together leaders from companies like Cisco, Dell and others to...
Aug 10, 2015•20 min
Bob Burg, Author of The Go-Giver SPONSOR MESSAGE Customer Experience is hot… but are you taking advantage of its huge potential to make your services business more prominent and profitable? Join Service Strategies for an informative Customer Experience Workshop in San Diego on October 27th. You’ll learn how to create customer success while generating profitable revenue for your services business. The workshop is part of the Service Industry Summit event, which bring together leaders from compani...
Aug 06, 2015•26 min
A few fun changes for Crack the Customer Code! SPONSOR MESSAGE Customer Experience is hot… but are you taking advantage of its huge potential to make your services business more prominent and profitable? Join Service Strategies for an informative Customer Experience Workshop in San Diego on October 27th. You’ll learn how to create customer success while generating profitable revenue for your services business. The workshop is part of the Service Industry Summit event, which bring together leader...
Aug 03, 2015•5 min
Product vs Experience: Selling and maintaining emotional connections Ben Blakesley, Sr. Manager, Global Social Media, Reebok Customer Zero: How scam artists are ruining the experience for the rest of us SPONSOR MESSAGE Customer Experience is hot… but are you taking advantage of its huge potential to make your services business more prominent and profitable? Join Service Strategies for an informative Customer Experience Workshop in San Diego on October 27th. You’ll learn how to create customer su...
Jul 30, 2015•31 min
Goodsnitch, the “Anti-Yelp”: Snitches don’t end up in ditches! Jennifer Maldonado, Sr. Business Analyst & Voice of the Gamer program owner at Activision Customer Hero: Middle School Entrepreneur fills a Huge Customer Experience Gap SPONSOR MESSAGE Did you know that by 2016 eighty-nine percent of companies will compete mainly by the customer experience they provide? How are you preparing for this? Your survey data and customer journey map only tell part of the story. Get your whole organizati...
Jul 23, 2015•33 min
Keurig brews social backlash, recent innovation goes back in the grinder Ramon DeLeon, Global Business and Social Media Keynote Speaker Customer Hero: Disney Cruise Line’s unbelievable dedication to details SPONSOR MESSAGE Confident, in control, successful... Is this how you feel when you work with customers? If you answered "no" you're not alone. Customer service can be incredibly difficult. Adam’s new book, Be Your Customer's Hero: Real World Tips and Techniques for the Service Front Lines is ...
Jul 16, 2015•24 min
The pros and cons of obsessing about data Raj Sivasubramanian, Senior Manager, Global Customer Insights, eBay Marketplaces Virgin’s new hotel is a Customer Hero! SPONSOR MESSAGE Please support our fantastic sponsor, Touchpoint Dashboard! Are you mapping your customer journeys but struggling with how to derive value from your maps? Touchpoint Dashboardis a powerful web-based journey mapping platform that makes visualizing, collaborating, and sharing maps so easy to do. Touchpoint Dashboard was pu...
Jul 09, 2015•28 min
Target Canada’s “supply chain disaster” Erin Wallace, Global Manager, Customer Experience, John Deere Poor customer satisfaction is a slippery slope for Wal-Mart! SPONSOR MESSAGE Please support our fantastic sponsor, Touchpoint Dashboard! Are you mapping your customer journeys but struggling with how to derive value from your maps? Touchpoint Dashboard is a powerful web-based journey mapping platform that makes visualizing, collaborating, and sharing maps so easy to do. Touchpoint Dashboard was ...
Jul 02, 2015•31 min
Thanks to our sponsor, Touchpoint Dashboard! Does customer experience trump brand in acquisition? Luis Serpa UL (Underwriter Laboratories) Principal, Digital Experience at Underwriters Laboratories Customer Zero: The Cable Industry! Does customer experience trump brand in acquisition? Is customer experience more important than brands for long-term success? A study about what’s more important, customer relationships or brands, reveals customer relationships became more important in the last decad...
Jun 25, 2015•34 min
Do you need a customer experience manager? Best-selling author Jeanne Bliss How Netflix became a Customer Hero SPONSOR MESSAGE Are you mapping your customer journeys but struggling with how to derive value from your maps? Touchpoint Dashboard is a powerful web-based journey mapping platform that makes visualizing, collaborating, and sharing maps so easy to do. Touchpoint Dashboard was purpose built to ensure that your journey maps meet your goals and become the catalyst for change that they were...
Jun 18, 2015•26 min
Is everyone driven by convenience? Diane Magers, from AT&T, discusses making change in a huge organization Why department stores need to catch up How important is convenience for customers? Determining how to make things easier and more convenient is all about understanding your customer’s real goals. And what about the impact on society if everything becomes TOO convenient? Convenience is about offering choices. But what about business decisions that may have a negative impact on a small gr...
Jun 11, 2015•30 min
Thanks to our sponsor, the Customer Experience Professionals Association! Please find more details about the CXPA for individual or corporate members. What’s the Future of Customer Experience? Before sharing the insights gathered from the customer experience leaders at the CXPA Insight Exchange, Jeannie challenged Adam with the same questions. What is the future of customer experience? And why, after so many years of discussing customer experience as a priority, are so many organizations still g...
Jun 04, 2015•24 min
Thanks to our sponsor, the Customer Experience Professionals Association! Please find more details about the CXPA for individual or corporate members. Zappos innovates again with holacracy Arizona Diamondbacks CEO Derrick Hall invigorates the baseball fan experience Why we hate fine print! Will Zappos win with non-traditional management? Zappos is in the news once again for implementing a management concept called holacracy. This concept throws out the idea of managers as decision-makers. Decisi...
May 28, 2015•26 min
Will customer experience become as fragmented as marketing An interview with Ann Handley, author of Everybody Writes And our Customer Hero is #1 Cochran Automotive Will Customer Experience Become as Fragmented as Marketing Jeannie and Adam discuss whether or not customer experience will become as fragmented and specialized as marketing and other developed industries like accounting and law. Adam argues that increased specialization is the natural progression in any developing industry. Jeannie w...
May 21, 2015•32 min
