Traditional customer loyalty programs aren’t performing nearly as well as they used to. How can we forge loyalty with the next generation of customers? The next generation of loyalty programs Punch cards, reward points and other incentives have helped companies forge customer loyalty in the past. But these methods have lost a lot of ground! Customers are using technology to help them shop with hundreds, if not thousands of competitors. The advantages of saving up points or checking emails for sh...
May 09, 2016•21 min
Today’s guest shares his secrets for tying creative principles into brand experiences. Unleash your inner artist! Creativity is the driver behind groundbreaking ideas and memorable brand experiences. And solving unforeseen customer service problems requires a level of finesse nobody can get from a script or rule book. In many ways, these things require the work of an artist. However, those creating brand experiences often work in a typical corporate environment, where artistic thinking is easily...
May 05, 2016•38 min
What makes a great mobile app stand out from the majority that never get used? Today we share some of our favorites and what makes them home screen essentials. The magic of our favorite apps Companies are quickly bridging the cross-channel gaps to deliver enhanced experiences through mobile technology. From apps like TripIt that help organize travel details to retail apps that use geolocation to help customers find the products you need most, Adam and Jeannie talk about their own favorite apps. ...
May 02, 2016•22 min
You have 5 seconds to win the customer in a retail setting. How can you use neuroscience and smart package design to jumpstart the customer experience? The science of package design Marketing your brand in a retail setting today is more competitive than ever. The decision to buy is now based on much more than just quality and pricing. Brand packaging, as our guest Terri Goldstein explains, used to be an afterthought- often left in the hands of the ones printing the labels. Today, executives unde...
Apr 28, 2016•23 min
You need rules and processes to keep things running smoothly. But do the resulting analog customer experiences give rise to serious pain points in your customer journey? Analog customer experiences Artificial intelligence, customer service scripts and chat bots can be life-savers for your customer service team. It’s great when we find new ways to streamline and automate our processes, and even better when we find the solutions that are “just right.” So what happens when we put those analog exper...
Apr 25, 2016•18 min
Today’s guest discusses how he helps big hospitality brands improve the guest experience and forge better connections with their customers, resulting in explosive growth. Growth hacking with an excellent guest experience Mike Ganino shares how he helped companies like Potbelly and Protein Bar grow from small companies with only a handful of locations to beloved household names. Wouldn’t you like to do this for your brand? It all comes back to culture and leadership. Mike explains how he helps co...
Apr 21, 2016•25 min
Adam and Jeannie discuss how the most innovative leaders in the fashion industry are responding to ever-increasing pressure to innovate quickly. Tougher customer expectations inspire rapid innovation Today, fashion demands can change as fast as your Pinterest boards. Keeping up with these demands poses many challenges for retailers. Burberry and Tom Ford are now promising the hottest new runway fashions will be available immediately, not six to eight months from now, which is the norm. How can r...
Apr 18, 2016•22 min
Today’s guests discuss their new book, Blue Goldfish, and how companies can bridge the gap between people and technology in a world where human-to-human interaction is disappearing from the customer experience. Solving the riddle of frictionless digital commerce According to Gartner, 80% of B2B transactions will occur without human-to-human interaction by the year 2020. That’s a pretty big game-changer! While technology is creating some amazing opportunities to personalize the B2B experience, ma...
Apr 14, 2016•23 min
Adam and Jeannie discuss cutting-edge new levels of customization and how they are making life better while changing how many companies do business. Redefining customization We’ve talked a lot about the importance of personalization for customers. Typically, that applies mostly to how we communicate. Innovative ways of collecting and managing customer data have helped a great deal. So what happens when highly-specialized customer data can be applied to advances in 3D printing and the Internet of...
Apr 11, 2016•18 min
Today’s guest shares the principles of social consciousness in business, and how he made millions providing intrinsic value. Building a great company with social consciousness Are you in business to solve real problems for people, or are you in business to put money in your pocket? This is a question today’s guest J V Crum would really like to ask yourself. At the core of building a great company today, J V explains, you must approach business from a consciousness perspective. J V gives us some ...
Apr 07, 2016•34 min
To create a great customer experience, we need to peel back the layers of the organization and look at what happens far behind customer-facing parts of the journey. How does offstage customer experience affect your customers? Offstage customer experience is vital to your overall strategy Well-trained customer service reps are a lot like onstage actors- as great as they are, the audience will not rave about the show if the seats are uncomfortable or the microphones don’t work! Many companies negl...
Apr 04, 2016•16 min
Pat Helmers, host of the Sales Babble podcast, discusses the intersection of sales and customer experience. Driving sales with great experiences Sales is tough! And driven by the need to close the sale and move onto the next customer, sales teams often don’t understand how the sales process relates to the overall customer experience. The best salespeople see the value in building lasting relationships with customers rather than focusing on transactional outcomes. How can you get salespeople to b...
Mar 31, 2016•27 min
Virtual reality is hitting the markets hard, but it’s mostly just for gamers. Will that change? Today we discuss some surprising possibilities for customer service applications. Is virtual reality more than just fun and games? Virtual reality (VR) has been a hot topic among geeks and gamers for many years now, but it was all the rage at South by Southwest Interactive this year. Are we on the cusp of a new era when VR tech will have more practical applications? Adam and Jeannie discuss the differ...
Mar 28, 2016•21 min
Today’s guest helps us understand emotional intelligence to bridge the gap between employee engagement and improved customer experiences. Emotional intelligence creates great customer experiences What is the connection between employee engagement and improved customer experience? Jim Rembach shares some of the most important ways true employee engagement helps the overall experience. It comes down to emotion, and the need to train for it is more important than ever. Improving emotional intellige...
Mar 24, 2016•24 min
Adam and Jeannie discuss why most innovations fail to effectively address the changing needs of customers and how the innovation process itself can shut out the best ideas. The problem with “best practices” and customer experience innovation Innovation is more important than ever in our connected, omnichannel world. And yet, it’s rarely done well. So many innovations have come and gone while the ones that really make a difference are so few. Why is that? Too often, innovation is created from the...
Mar 21, 2016•17 min
In this special 100th episode (yippee!) Adam and Jeannie recall some of the great (and not so great) moments in customer service history. Like it or not, you are making customer service history! Have you ever thought about what people will be saying about your customer service in 100 years? Probably not, and we’re guessing some of the brands mentioned in this episode didn’t make their ideas sustainable like Maxwell House did in the ad below. A look back in time reveals that we’ve come a long way...
Mar 17, 2016•17 min
What’s the difference between B2C and B2B customer experience? IS there a difference? Adam and Jeannie discuss in today’s episode. B2C vs. B2B Customer Experience: What’s the difference? This may sound like a trick question, but it comes up a lot! Many B2B companies don’t believe it’s important to invest in customer experience, and some even believe it doesn’t apply to them at all. So is customer experience more important in a B2C environment? On one hand, you might say companies that sell direc...
Mar 14, 2016•17 min
A well-known thought leader and futurist, today’s guest barely needs an introduction! Brian Solis discusses his new book and what it means to be entering an experience-driven business world. The future is all about experience 3.5 years in the making, Brian describes the arduous process of writing his groundbreaking new book, X: The Experience When Business Meets Design. Brand interactions exist within mobile apps, cloud-based services, social media, content marketing, and traditional communicati...
Mar 10, 2016•43 min
There’s a lot of debate over which customer loyalty metrics tell the real truth. So what’s the answer? Adam and Jeannie discuss the different types of metrics and why they don’t necessarily work for everyone. Are your customer loyalty metrics providing real insight? Customer loyalty is elusive and difficult to determine. And many business leaders are obsessed with settling the debate over which metrics really tell the real truth about customer loyalty. Looking for indicators of what we really wa...
Mar 07, 2016•16 min
How can you leverage customer complaints? Today’s guest shares highlights from his new book, Hug Your Haters, and additional insights from the extensive research it’s based on. Understanding the science of complaint What if you could survey thousands of individuals to find the “who, what, where, why and how” of customer complaints? Jay Baer has partnered with Edison Research to do just that, and he has written his new book “Hug Your Haters” based on intensive study of thousands of consumers. Jay...
Mar 03, 2016•30 min
We all know the customer onboarding process should be as simple and satisfying as possible, but what about offboarding? The experience customers have when they leave you can have a huge impact for the long term. The customer journey does not stop when they’re leaving you. In an ideal world, we would never have to say goodbye to customers. So we don’t like to think ahead to customer offboarding. It’s really easy not to think about! But churn rate is all too real. Do you understand the offboarding...
Feb 29, 2016•13 min
Becoming a customer-obsessed organization can seem impossible for many well-established companies. Fortunately, today’s guest has had a front-row view of some astounding transformations. Is it time for a customer experience overhaul? Today’s guest has made a name for himself exploring some of the world’s greatest customer experience brands and giving an insider’s view of how they have successfully turned their customer experiences around. Joseph Michelli tells some amazing stories of companies t...
Feb 25, 2016•21 min
Jeannie and Adam put the hype and buzzwords aside to discuss what employee engagement really is so you can create a highly-motivated team around a great customer experience. Employee engagement: Have we got it all wrong? Employee engagement has been a buzzphrase for the past few years, and with good reason! It’s no secret that positively engaged employees are vital to a strong workplace culture, leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. But Adam and Jeannie have some sad news: Desp...
Feb 22, 2016•15 min
We have the advantage of working with 5 generations of business leaders. How can we break the technology barriers and build solid business relationships? It’s all about people, not systems. The 21st-century mindset: People over process An expert on forward-thinking leadership and new ways to work, Ayelet has identified 4 traits for 21st-century leaders, and she shares them with us. Ayelet’s explanations about what they are and why they are important will have you re-thinking the way you communic...
Feb 18, 2016•28 min
Training customer-facing employees becomes even more challenging as we scale our businesses. What happens when they need re-training? Can this be done without shutting down? Is re-training your staff an option? As companies grow, it becomes harder to be sure employees are connected to the brand values and mission. Chipotle, Starbucks and others have gone public about temporarily closing their doors for the purpose of re-training their customer service staff or reconnecting with their missions. H...
Feb 15, 2016•18 min
You love your customers, but do they know it? Adam and Jeannie have dedicated this special Valentine’s Day episode to showing customers love. Do you love your customers? Let's make sure they feel it! There are many ways people define love, but we’re focusing on what it means to love your customers. The word “love” is used a lot in the context of customer experience, and we’re finding it means different things to different organizations. So what is customer love? Some may say it’s about deliverin...
Feb 11, 2016•13 min
Financial institutions may be starting to review how you use your smartphone to help determine credit-worthiness. Adam and Jeannie discuss what all this could mean for mobile privacy on the customer level. Would you hand over your phone or sign off on your usage records? Are organizations trying to redefine mobile privacy? We use our smartphones for many things nowadays, from banking to shopping to checking our work schedules. Our devices are collecting more data about us than we think! And fina...
Feb 08, 2016•20 min
Customer retention and loyalty are critical to the success of your business and maintaining relationships is a key to both. Today’s guest shares 27 years of wisdom to help us create personal connections with customers, no matter how big our organizations grow. Customer retention: Are your customers an endangered species? Richard gives us a brief history of his experience working with successful companies, and how their success is largely attributed to customer retention. Drawing from 27 years of...
Feb 04, 2016•21 min
Are you pursuing a customer experience leadership role? Maybe you’ve found yourself defaulted to a customer-focused role within your organization… Now what? Adam and Jeannie share expert advice for emerging leaders in the field. What do emerging customer experience leaders need to know? Adam and Jeannie discuss how they came into their customer experience and customer service leadership roles. Did they dream of becoming experts in these fields in their youths? We’re guessing this was not your fi...
Feb 01, 2016•18 min
Dr. Ardienne Boissy of The Cleveland Clinic, one of the first organizations to create C-suite responsibilities around the patient experience, shares highlights from her 12 years of leading an enormous shift in how the healthcare system perceives and engages patients. The Power of Words in the Patient Experience It’s one thing to possess the wisdom and skills to help patients heal and recover, but understanding how the patient actually feels – not just in regards to their ailments – but in regard...
Jan 28, 2016•30 min
