Adam and Jeannie welcome renowned speaker and customer service video training pioneer Lisa Ford to discuss her time-tested approach to achieving customer service excellence. Unraveling the DNA of customer service excellence Great customer service is pleasant, satisfying, and possibly best of all, easy. So easy, in fact, that it may seem simple from the outside. But from the inside, achieving that level of customer service excellence is anything but simple. So, how do the companies known for grea...
Feb 05, 2019•27 min
Jeannie Walters CCXP explains how to find and leverage key moments that are typically overlooked, but have a great emotional impact on how customers perceive and remember the customer journey. Are you aware of the key moments in your customer journey? Are you focused on the customer journey? I mean REALLY focused? Most business leaders say they are, but few dive deep enough to uncover the commonly overlooked moments that can punctuate an otherwise great experience with negative emotions. On the ...
Jan 29, 2019•7 min
In this powerful interview, globally recognized author Scott McKain shares the secrets behind brands and leaders who go beyond differentiation to become iconic. Does your brand stand out in meaningful ways? Everyone knows iconic brands like Apple, Amazon, and Porsche. They stand out in ways that not only differentiate them from competitors, but make them iconic. But these brands only represent a fraction of those who struggle to make their mark. Is your brand one of them? “Sometimes we need some...
Jan 24, 2019•34 min
Adam and Jeannie discuss how to prevent valuable knowledge from leaving your company along with superstar employees who are ready to move on. Employee turnover is at an all-time high, so there’s lots of advice out there (and in previous episodes of Crack the Customer Code!) about how to keep employees happy and motivated. But whether you like it or not, some of your best people will still leave you. It’s frustrating and sometimes heartbreaking when your superstars resign, but the financial cost ...
Jan 15, 2019•16 min
Renowned speaker and author Mark Sanborn shares his leadership wisdom to inspire every employee to deliver extraordinary customer experiences, every time. Leadership is not just for leaders...or followers! Leadership has always been a tricky subject, but being a customer-centric leader today is not for the weak of heart. Just knowing what needs to be done and telling your people to do it is far from enough. In fact, leading this way leads to disengaged employees, high turnover, and ultimately, p...
Jan 08, 2019•29 min
Adam and Jeannie kick off 2019 with some of the best resolutions you can make to continuously improve customer experience and customer service all year long. Are you ready to kick off a customer-focused new year? We made it to 2019. Yippee! We had a long, much-needed break, but we’re so glad to be back. And what better way is there to start the new year than to make meaningful resolutions? Perhaps you’ve already made your resolutions about eating healthier and actually using that gym membership,...
Jan 04, 2019•16 min
Jeannie and Adam uncover the science behind consistently great customer service with Mark Colgate, author of The Science of Service. Get customer service down to a science The problem with customer service is not making it great, but making it consistently great. It is impossible to make people do, think and feel the same things. What is great for one customer may be terrible for the next, or simply may not work out the same way in every situation. So how can we know our service is always great ...
Dec 19, 2018•22 min
Jeannie and Adam dust off the crystal ball and have some fun bringing you their expert customer experience predictions for 2019. What are our top predictions for 2019? It’s that time of year again, when we look back at the year behind us and speculate about what’s to come. It’s been an amazing year for trends in business technology, organizational leadership, and customer expectations, so where are we headed based on these? Here’s a peek at what we’re talking about: 1. Artificial experiences get...
Nov 28, 2018•19 min
Jay Baer enlightens us with his powerful and proven approach to strategically creating, controlling and measuring word of mouth with key takeaways from his new book, Talk Triggers. Create amazing word of mouth ON PURPOSE with Talk Triggers When it comes to marketing, nothing is more cost-effective than word of mouth. However, we tend to think of word of mouth as organic. We assume it’s something we can’t predict, measure, and control. Maybe you get lucky, and maybe you don't. But what if you cou...
Nov 21, 2018•31 min
Jeannie and Adam riff not only on the current state of airline customer experience, but how some airlines are working (or not working) to consider the experience as part of their value proposition. Let's talk about the airline customer experience Our hosts spend LOTS of time on airplanes, so they can’t help but keep an eye on the industry and make observations about the experiences delivered. But even if you don’t travel as much as Adam and Jeannie, the travel industry is loaded with examples of...
Nov 14, 2018•20 min
Adam Toporek explains how the Peak-End Rule can make or break a customer experience in surprising ways, and how leveraging it helps you leave a more favorable impression on your customers...on purpose! Ruling customer emotions with the Peak-End Rule One thing we’ve covered a lot on this show is how to “wow” your customers. But we often forget that an overall wonderful experience can be filled with terrible moment-to-moment experiences, and vice-versa. So what are your customers really feeling af...
Nov 06, 2018•7 min
Adam and Jeannie unlock your potential to create and deliver ever-improving customer experiences with Shaun Belding, CEO of The Belding Group and author of The Journey to Wow. Are you on your Journey to Wow? Leaders everywhere say they want to “wow” their customers. So they create new processes and experiences that look great from within the walls of their organizations. Then they find out customers are saying “wow, that was… awful!” But who hasn’t said that more than once? We all know there are...
Oct 30, 2018•28 min
Jeannie and Adam discuss the past, present and future of custom subscription boxes and their growing role in the data revolution. Subscription boxes enter the data revolution In the past few years, we have seen explosive growth in data collection methods. As a result, marketers get a better ROI on their campaigns while delivering more personalized products, services, and experiences. And now we’ve seen a growing trend in subscription boxes, where consumers offer much richer information from the ...
Oct 23, 2018•18 min
Forward-thinking designer and strategic facilitator Ruben Ocampo joins us not only to set the record straight about what design thinking really is, but to share his unique, human-centric approach to service design. Do you see service design through a human lens? In this ever-changing world of products and services, we have a major problem with problem-solving. Too often, we approach service design as a means to our own ends. Then, in our efforts to adopt a better approach, we adopt terms like “d...
Oct 16, 2018•28 min
Adam and Jeannie discuss the apparent decline in trust of Word of Mouse and how businesses and consumers are navigating the misinformation associated with online reviews. Navigating the new Word of Mouse Positive word of mouth can be very powerful in driving sales and forging loyalty. But because marketers know this, review sites and forums are becoming rife with fake reviews. For example, it’s been said recently that up to one-third of reviews on TripAdvisor are fake. “People are more and more ...
Oct 09, 2018•17 min
Bestselling author and career futurist Marti Konstant joins us to discuss how an agile career can create a brighter future for you, your colleagues, and your organization. Why career agility is a priority With customer expectations changing constantly, agility is important in today’s marketplace. But how agile is your business, really, if your career is not? How ready are you to take the next step in your project, in your organization, or ultimately, in your career? “… develop talent value for y...
Oct 02, 2018•21 min
Jeannie Walters CCXP gives you the 101 on customer journey mapping so you can stop stalling and start making a difference today. Customer Journey Mapping: What’s holding you back? When the subject of customer journey mapping comes up, we often think of gorgeous, robust maps that take forever to complete. Then we think of how much work that must be, how enormous our customer journey is, and ultimately, how we don’t have the time or money for all that. But that’s why many business leaders miss out...
Sep 25, 2018•10 min
Adam and Jeannie discuss how to overcome the pitfalls and challenges of developing a business model around entrepreneurship with Danny Schuman, author of “The Worst Business Model” and founder of Twist. Do entrepreneurs need to have a business model? As entrepreneurs, solopreneurs and small business owners, we tend to follow our passions and go with our guts on everything. But sooner or later, we must develop a business model or scaling becomes difficult… or even impossible! “Sometimes it’s hard...
Sep 18, 2018•25 min
Adam and Jeannie explore the decline of people using the phone for customer service and how to know if chat is better for you and your customers. Why is chat better than phone for some customers? We all know calling a company for customer service is typically time-consuming and frustrating. So with text-based service options like chat becoming more available, many of us are opting not to pick up the phone. “We all have been trained to not pick up the phone…” -Jeannie Walters But is this really b...
Sep 11, 2018•19 min
Joshua March, bestselling author and Founder of Conversiocial, shares how social media messaging helps create better customer experiences while cutting customer service costs. Customer service efficiency through social media messaging Besides the fact that customers want help via social media messaging, it’s cheaper, faster and more efficient that traditional channels. But most companies have yet to adopt it as a core channel for customer service and communication in general. “If you’re taking a...
Sep 04, 2018•26 min
Adam and Jeannie discuss the core distinctions between a purchase brand and a usage brand and how that translates to better customer experiences, and ultimately, greater long-term success. Your customer’s journey is not what you think it is It’s one thing to sell a product or service then call it a success and move on to the next customer... But it’s another thing to continue building a mutually rewarding relationship with that first customer. As it turns out, engaging, educating and celebrating...
Aug 28, 2018•16 min
Jeannie and Adam interview author and speaker Melissa Agnes about how preparing beyond traditional crisis management can make your brand invincible. Will Crisis Management save your brand? Most brands have a Crisis Management plan, typically as a large volume to refer to for guidance when a situation arises. Unfortunately, these plans rarely pull through during a real crisis. And what’s more, they serve only as reactive tools. So, what good is that when bad PR has already gone viral or your part...
Aug 21, 2018•38 min
Live from the National Speakers Association’s Influence 2018 conference, Adam and Jeannie take the mic (and camera!) to make 2 strong cases for mapping your customer’s journey more thoroughly. Your customer’s journey is not what you think it is Too often, brands elect not to map the entire customer journey because they think they know all about what happens. Unfortunately, this sense of understanding is typically based on assumptions around the ideal journey, not the actual experience. As a resu...
Aug 14, 2018•7 min
Adam and Jeannie discuss an innovative approach to resolving collaboration issues and working together harmoniously with Alan Schaefer, CEO and Founder of Banding People Together. Take collaboration to the next level, then ROCK it! If you work as part of a collaborative team, then you know collaboration can be rough. But don’t beat yourself up! Even when there’s a solid process, collaborating effectively is rarely an effort that just falls into place. “There are no collaborative rules of the roa...
Aug 07, 2018•31 min
Jeannie and Adam report live from the National Speakers Association’s Influence 2018 conference to discuss what it means to do customer experience right. What’s the best way to “do” customer experience? We get this question a lot! In fact, our hosts recently attended the National Speakers Association (NSA) Influence 2018 conference in Dallas, TX, and several of the amazing speakers approached them to ask this same question. “When we introduce this idea of #CX, people ask ‘what does that mean?’ o...
Jul 31, 2018•4 min
Author and renowned speaker Jess Pettitt flips diversity training on its head to help us check our biases and stereotypes to not only reduce friction, but to leverage them for better experiences and greater business outcomes. Turning diversity training upside-down with Jess Pettitt When the idea of “diversity training” comes up, we often think it’s about making people feel more comfortable at work, and ultimately, avoiding situations that cause trouble. But today’s guest is here to explain that ...
Jul 24, 2018•30 min
Jeannie shares the best ways to become a powerful force for positive change in your organization as an in-house customer experience change agent. Who is the customer experience change agent for your organization? Organizational change is not easy, especially when it involves becoming customer-centric. While leaders mean well by making this the focus of a town hall meeting or a banner on the wall, business as usual takes precedence and these great ideas fade into the background. “Half the time we...
Jul 17, 2018•10 min
Adam and Jeannie offer customer-centric alternatives to common customer service phrases that seem innocent but tend to trigger negative emotions. Are these customer service phrases causing unnecessary friction? Communication can be difficult, especially in customer service situations. But we know this, so we try hard to maintain a positive tone for customers. However, there are many words and phrases we hear in customer service situations that may not always be interpreted the way we expect. “So...
Jul 10, 2018•16 min
Bestselling author and global speaker Jeff Toister returns to the show with amazing tips and actions for creating and executing on your vision for an outstanding service culture. What’s your vision for a solid customer service culture? If you want to deliver outstanding customer service that inspires loyalty and positive word-of-mouth, then you need a customer-focused service culture. But while many leaders think they provide excellent service, they have an unrealistic vision of what that means....
Jul 03, 2018•31 min
Adam and Jeannie share tips and insights around succeeding with, rather than just dealing with, difficult customers. Plus, we’re introducing Adam’s new course to help you become a pro at this! If you're dealing with difficult customers, that's your first mistake. Dealing with difficult customers properly has always been one of the biggest challenges customer service teams face. In fact, it’s a sensitive issue that vexes leaders and employees throughout many organizations. “This is the area that ...
Jun 26, 2018•17 min
