What customers want is to be recognized. Valued. Our pain points understood. We want the companies we do business with to choose us too. To see us. Me. You. The people behind the demographics and revenue streams. Customers rarely pick a brand “just because.” Far more...
Fortune has dissected just how bad things were during CEO Ron Johnson's brief and stormy tenure at the head of J.C. Penney. You may know that J.C. Penney (or "JCP" as the newcomers tried to re-brand it) is a department store chain in deep trouble. What you might not...
I was listening to the Zac Brown Band’s "Last But Not Least” the other day. It’s about a guy who prioritizes everything around him except what’s most important: I put everything together But I left out one big piece I put you last But not least Unlike the song, this...
Running Shoes + Baseball Talk = Instant Brand Fan. Let me explain. My friend Deborah Brody mentioned that she'd just purchased new running shoes from Zappos. She also mentioned how convenient it was, and that she was able to purchase the last model at a discount. So I...
The lines were long, and getting longer. No surprise, really, as there were only two open checkout counters in the grocery store--one for customers with 15 items or fewer, the other for everyone else. As I stood there, I remembered that the last time I got stuck in...
Do you like "Big Data"? McKinsey released an interesting report last year that does a good job of laying out the key ways data is being employed in a business environment. The report identifies five broad categories: Transparency Performance metrics Customer...
My friend Mike Schaffer was an hour late to work this morning. Sadly, that's not unusual (and not because Schaffer is lazy, passive aggressive, or hates his alarm clock). The problem is the city's train system. Washington's Metro system was poorly build, and it...
Sometimes the best customer experiences happen by serendipity. I recently pooled my Amazon gift cards to purchase the complete 5-DVD collection of the Best TV Show Ever. When it arrived, I put disk one into the DVD player I rarely use with huge anticipation. Then....
I've been trying to get "free" checks from PNC Bank for six weeks. Free, apparently, is a very relative term. PNC Bank has lost a lot. Here's a brief chronology of what happened: 1. Mid-March: Call 800 number to order more checks. On hold, on hold, on hold, automated...
I went swimsuit shopping the other day. (Stick with me, I promise this post is not really about swimsuit shopping.) The first store specialized in utilitarian swimsuits, which on paper made sense as I was looking for something to actually swim in. But many of the...