That was the mantra uncovered with each of the hotel concierge interviews we conducted a couple years back. Anticipating need is an excellent model for the customer relationship. It inherently means that the service provider – account manager, waiter, concierge, project manager – has a deep understanding of their service. Deep enough to know what …
Category Archives: Customer Relationship
Try Before You Buy
Even today, with all the Internet offers, shopping is often purchasing a product without first-hand experience with it. Our customer research has proven time and time again that if the product can be handled – it’s more likely to be sold. Until now, it was nearly impossible for customers to actually try out a product …
Taking Ownership
Clients, customers, collegues don’t care why there’s a problem. They just want it fixed and to move on. To do that, each person approached with a client issue needs to take ownership of problem and feel they have the authority to deliver a satisfactory solution quickly. Take this Ritz Carlton experience for example: At exactly …
McDonald’s Learns From Best Buy
In the Star Tribune’s recent “Best Buy Copes with Costs” article, they report that Best Buy’s customer-centric format roll-out (and here) has been scaled back 40%. The customer centricity strategy has its costs. Operating expenses as a percentage of revenue were 2.2 percent higher at the test stores, the company said. But the test stores’ …
Defining On-Stage & Off-Stage
On-stage; where employees are likely to bump into customer. Off-stage; where they are not. It’s one of my favorite ideas from The Experience Economy is that of on-stage and off-stage. Preventing off-stage behavior from occuring on-stage is the key to a good customer experience. My wife has a recent example of where the two collided …
A Polite Response is Reciprocal
Recently, I’ve noticed an impolite practice from some of our vendors. When you connect with a person in customer service, this is the initial exchange “Hello, I’m Steve. May I have your account number?” Rather asking me to reciprocate and introduce myself – as is a common and expected practice in our culture – they …
A Best-ter Buy
Yesterday the Strib announced Best Buy’s new customer personas. According to the article, $50 million is dog-eared for reformatting 100 stores to improve the shopping experience of these 5 archetypes. It seems to me that Ray, Barry, and Buzz already love shopping at Best Buy. Jill on the other hand, can’t stand the place. Perhaps …
Customer in Training
While a number of supermarkets and discount stores offer “customer-in-training” shopping cart as their primary method of keeping children occupied while their parents shop, Wegmans – a Woodbridge, N.J. supermarket chain – goes one step further offering W Kids Childcare centers . The videos, toys, and playground equipment found at these centers is part of …
Lunch is the Most Important Meal – Redux.
As a follow-up to my earlier post on lunches, I submit this announcement from Duluth, MN’s mayor Herb Bergson. Bergson plans to visit one classroom each Friday and take a tourist to lunch that day. He also wants to meet with different small-business owners each Friday to see how the city can help them grow. …
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