Today we transcend the plateaus of current customer experience understanding with Colin Shaw, founder of Beyond Philosophy and co-author of The Intuitive Customer. Creating loyalty with The Intuitive Customer So many companies are focusing on customer experience, yet so many are getting it wrong! That’s why as practitioners in the customer experience field, we’re delighted to interview Colin Shaw to discuss his new book, The Intuitive Customer. We put so much effort into understanding the ration...
Mar 27, 2017•31 min
Adam shares expert tips for the most effective customer service leadership in any industry. Achieving world class customer service leadership Effective leadership is more than just telling people what to do, especially if you want a team that consistently delivers exceptional customer service. Your team is unique, so there is no magic solution that applies to everyone. “There's no magic #management fairy dust that applies in every situation.” -@adamtoporek" However, there are some best practices...
Mar 23, 2017•5 min
Adam and Jeannie discuss key distinctions to handling B2B vs. B2C customer relationships. B2B vs. B2C customer experience Customer experience is all about people, regardless of whether it’s a B2B or B2C relationship. Core customer experience practices still apply in both cases. But there are a few critical distinctions, and each can come with its own set of challenges. “B2B is not just about faceless organizations. It’s about people too.” -@jeanniecw Much of the great customer experience advice ...
Mar 21, 2017•7 min
Adam and Jeannie look at customer service tech from the past, present and future to help you take the risks out of upgrading. Customer service tech: Helpful or harmful? Businesses of all kinds are implementing artificial intelligence and other cutting edge technology to make customer service faster, more accurate, and more efficient. Customer service tech has taken some great leaps, but is it taking over completely? Not so fast! From chat bots to supermarket self-checkouts and beyond, customer s...
Mar 20, 2017•12 min
Jeannie shares tips and distinctions for delivering an excellent overall customer experience to those who your digital products and services. User experience vs, customer experience: Is there a difference? Your rock star dev team has created an excellent user experience, so why are customers still dropping out on you? If the product or service you offer is digital, you might say “all our customers are users,” so it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking user experience covers it all. But while...
Mar 16, 2017•5 min
Adam and Jeannie celebrate our 200th episode by sharing actionable takeaways and thought-provoking quotes from some of our most inspiring guests. 200 strong and growing! We’re thrilled to announce our 200th episode, so we thought we’d bring you highlights from some of our prominent themes and inspiring thought leaders! From robots taking over the world to driving customer-focused change, we’ve worked hard to bring you guests and topics to help facilitate your success in today’s business world. C...
Mar 14, 2017•23 min
Graeme Newell, co-author of Red Goldfish, returns to share the secrets of building a brand following through social purpose. Building loyalty with social purpose Graeme Newell is back to talk about a growing trend with businesses today, which is getting involved with social purpose. Especially with millennials, companies are building a powerful affinity through charity groups and community efforts. Having a strong social purpose can be very powerful for building customer loyalty, shareholder val...
Mar 13, 2017•24 min
Adam shares tips to please unhappy customers without breaking the bank. What do unhappy customers really want from you? Customers may accept and even appreciate perks and comps as part of an issue resolution, because who doesn’t like free stuff!? Gifts and discounts may help soften the emotional state of the customer in the moment, but they don’t solve any problems or strengthen relationships for the long term. ”The most powerful and universal #custserv technique is completely free.” -Adam Topor...
Mar 09, 2017•5 min
Get amazing insights from customer personas by creating and using them better with expert tips from Adam and Jeannie. Getting the most from customer personas Customer personas are typically used as a heuristic to understand customers in a sales funnel. But did you know good ones can help you understand customers throughout the entire journey? There are many great uses beyond the sales phase, if you’re creating and using them properly. “A good #persona is a deep one.” -Jeannie Walters But before ...
Mar 07, 2017•8 min
Adam and Jeannie discuss ways of innovating with customers to deliver the experiences they need the most. Are you innovating with customers? When we think of innovation, we generally think of huge product launches and paradigm-shifting technology that gets a lot of attention. We rarely think this way about smaller changes in things we’re already offering. But small changes can have a profound effect on the true experience delivered, and your customers are crying for them. Are you listening? “Not...
Mar 06, 2017•16 min
Jeannie shares expert tips and guidelines for building a customer experience team that scales efficiently and aligns with organizational goals. Building a customer experience team When it comes to building customer experience teams, leaders often struggle to decide what is needed from those new roles and when. What do those jobs entail? When is best to hire, and how? “Not one person can do the heavy lifting for an entire customer experience team.” - Jeannie Walters A lot goes into building a sol...
Mar 02, 2017•5 min
Adam and Jeannie share quick tips and a little neuroscience to keep negative interactions from causing poor service and employee burnout. Are your agents emotionally trained to handle negative interactions? From dealing bad tempers to outbursts and emotional meltdowns, our customer-facing employees see the worst in people – sometimes daily. It’s a natural human reaction to take on some of the negative emotions we’re exposed to. For employees, that could lead to lashing out at customers, taking i...
Feb 28, 2017•7 min
Chief Customer Success and Happiness officer Amy Downs of Lifesize outlines her strategic path to a 79-point increase in Net Promoter Score. Customer success and happiness: A mini case study Customer experience is gaining traction! But when we think about how the slightest increase in Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a cause for celebration in most organizations, we realize there’s still a long way to go. Thankfully, we have inspiring leaders like today’s guest who have proven that success is within ...
Feb 27, 2017•29 min
Adam shares tips and best practices for understanding and providing great customer service through a focus on internal customer service. Internal customer service matters. A lot. Be they co-workers, vendors or partners, others are depending on you to execute their own responsibilities. Do you know who your internal customers are? Have you ever considered the importance of delivering great customer service? Just because they are not buying your product or service doesn’t mean you shouldn’t practi...
Feb 23, 2017•5 min
Adam and Jeannie share tips for outsourcing customer service without outsourcing your integrity and values. Outsourcing customer service Outsourcing has an ambiguous reputation, often being mentioned in negative context. But whether your company needs to scale quickly or has cost restrictions, sometimes outsourcing customer service just makes sense. How do you connect with an outsourcing partner that delivers the right experience to your customers? Can you make sure your customers are receiving ...
Feb 21, 2017•6 min
Adam and Jeannie share facts and stories to help you decide how and when to engage on social media with colleagues and customers. Social media with colleagues Are you Facebook friends with co-workers? What about clients, or your boss? Should you be? Some companies have rules against it, while others encourage or expect it. But in many cases, it’s left up to the individual to decide. So, what is your policy for social media with colleagues? Whether you’re trying to develop a policy for yourself o...
Feb 20, 2017•19 min
Jeannie shares quick tips for gathering intelligence to better understand your competitor's customer experience and how yours measures up. Have you evaluated your competitor’s customer experience? Customers are certainly judging your customer experience. But did you know they’re also judging the experience your competitors provide? Never assume your customers will always be satisfied with the experience you provide. You need to gather some competitive intel! So how do you know if your customer e...
Feb 16, 2017•4 min
In this special Valentine's Day edition, Adam and Jeannie share simple ways you can show your customers the love! Show customers some love! If you’re listening today, that must mean you love your customers. Where would you be without them!? A great experience may be baked into your processes, but how about going beyond the usual routine to show your customers the love? Today, Adam and Jeannie have some great tips for surprising customers with a little extra something to show your appreciation. D...
Feb 14, 2017•6 min
Adam and Jeannie interview Jacqueline Jasionowski about how improving customer experience at BMW is breaking the car-buying mold and differentiating the brand. Improving customer experience to stay on top BMW has a long record of success as “The Ultimate Driving Machine.” But even they recognize that we’re in a paradigm shift when just having a great product isn’t enough to stay on top. “…everybody sees that the customer experience landscape is the battleground for customer loyalty,” says today’...
Feb 13, 2017•27 min
Today we discuss building culture that drives both revenue and a great working environment with author Bobby Albert, author of Principled Profits—Outward Success Is an Inside Job. About our guest Bobby Albert, who led a small, local family business to a nationally recognized leader in its industry, explains how it happened in Principled Profit—Outward Success Is an Inside Job. In this inaugural book, an in-demand speaker/consultant pinpoints specific principles that, in practice, can supercharge...
Feb 11, 2017•20 min
Adam shares some of the best ways you and your employees can stand up for yourselves when customers cross the line into unacceptable behavior. Customers’ needs come first, until they cross the line... Customers may say some unpleasant things when they’re not happy, but what happens when they cross the line? Whether their behavior makes employees fearful or just extremely uncomfortable, it’s never OK to let customers get away with it. Are your frontline teams prepared? You need happy employees wh...
Feb 09, 2017•5 min
Adam and Jeannie share helpful tips for quickly turning cold calls into opportunities to spark meaningful relationships. Cold calls: Must they be so cold!? Sometimes making cold calls is still necessary. The idea is usually to start a new relationship, but it can be difficult to start anything this way! It doesn’t have to be so hard, and your reps don’t have to strike out so often. A slightly better understanding of the customer journey can make an amazing difference. If you take just a moment b...
Feb 07, 2017•5 min
We've learned some startling facts about how online reviews affect the decisions your customers make, so we're sharing tips on how to take action today. Your customer journey includes online reviews Adam and Jeannie have been researching online reviews, and they’ve found some interesting facts they can’t wait to share. 2016 was a big year for online reviews, but 2017 will be bigger. Are you ready? Studies show we rely more on customer reviews to find what we need than ever, and this is especiall...
Feb 06, 2017•13 min
Jeannie shares a few simple ways advocating for customers can greatly improve overall experience and what any organization can do to get started. “Who’s advocating for customers in your organization?” No matter how buried you are in day-to-day processes, or how scarce your resources are for customer experience, this is the one question you should be able to answer. Who in your company is speaking with decision-makers on behalf of the customer? Integrating customer advocacy into your business mea...
Feb 02, 2017•5 min
Adam and Jeannie discuss tips for dealing with outrageous customer demands the right way. I’m sorry, you want what? When!? People are sometimes just irrational… Or, are they? Sooner or later, you’ll eventually be faced with outrageous customer demands. Emotions can run on overdrive in these situations, so it's important to keep yours in check while staying sensitive to your customer's! How do you handle these situations without losing your cool, or without losing a customer? If you haven’t alrea...
Jan 31, 2017•5 min
Bestselling author John DiJulius shares what it takes to join the Customer Service Revolution and differentiate your brand with world-class service. Will you survive the Customer Service Revolution? In today’s connected world, the traditional ways of serving customers are no longer serving anyone. We’re in the middle of a Customer Service Revolution, and today’s guest, John DiJulius, is here to help us understand what that means and rock it. John has worked with leading revolutionary customer se...
Jan 30, 2017•36 min
Adam shares tips for using automated customer service while keeping in tune with customers and preventing disasters. Preventing automated customer service disasters Automated customer service can help to create a smoother, more convenient process for customers while freeing up company resources. Ideally, it’s a win/win situation. But sometimes technology creates terrible experiences for customers, even while we think everything’s working well. Does your strong service culture work when #custserv...
Jan 26, 2017•4 min
Adam and Jeannie share tips for creating employee incentives that don't break the bank. No budget for employee incentives? You have great employees who need to feel rewarded, but don’t necessarily have a budget for bonuses and pay increases. If you don't do something, engagement and morale could start slipping any time. We have good news for you: Your hands are not tied! What motivates a rock star employee, anyway? Though bonuses and raises certainly do help, it’s not just about the money! There...
Jan 24, 2017•5 min
Adam and Jeannie share tips for calculating the ROI of customer experience improvement in your organization. Show us the numbers! Convincing executives to invest in customer experience improvement can be tricky, and you may need some convincing yourself. Is it really worth it? How can you predict the ROI of customer experience for your organization? Today we have tips to not only help you calculate the ROI of investing, but also calculate the loss of not investing. You can use the data you alrea...
Jan 23, 2017•7 min
Jeannie shares expert hiring tips to avoid costly mistakes and bring in a truly customer-centric employee who is a great addition to your team. What makes a customer-centric employee? Picking a candidate with the right skillset is important. However, if you want to deliver outstanding experiences, it’s not everything. Most skills revolve around a set of tasks rather than people. So if you’re not careful to hire customer-centric employees, watch out! Because the most “qualified” individual on you...
Jan 19, 2017•5 min
