Customer Experience Lessons from the ABCs of Life from Annette Franz Gleneicki

Annette Franz Gleneicki shared this post, this last Tuesday, December 18, 2012, on her blog, CX Journey and I had to past it along. As Annette states, “There are a lot of general life lessons that can be applied to the world of customer experience.” Here are the ABCs she shared: Accept Differences:  Customers are … Read more

To Maintain Quality, We Must Do Some Pruning

Jason Fried, of 37 Signals, wrote this in his recent blog, Pruning: Making room for something new: “It’s so easy to create (because creating is fun), but it’s also easy to ignore (because ignoring doesn’t involve work). Over time, if you create too much and don’t clean it up, you can lose control over quality. Quality, … Read more

Lessons From Apple: Schedule-driven release produces half-baked products and kills innovation

In the October 29 post by Om Malik, From inside Apple, the Scott Forstall fallout at Gigaom.com,Om shares: “Unlike in the Jobs era, when the company would ship features when they were ready for primetime, a culture of schedule-driven releases has become commonplace. The time-based schedule is one of the reasons why Siri and Maps … Read more

Commit to the Customer – not the Technology

One of our greatest challenges in designing the best experiences for our customers is not letting the technology limitation determine the customer experience. When organizations commit to the technology instead of committing to the customers – everyone loses. In this age of the experience economy, this can mean the end for organizations that do not … Read more

Companies that delight their customers outperform their peers

According to Larry Tesler, “Companies that delight their customers outperform their peers.” We should listen to Larry because he knows what he is talking about. Larry was one of the researchers at PARC (Palo Alto Research Center Incorporated) back in the 70’s. PARC, if you didn’t know, has been responsible for such well known and … Read more

The Customer Experience Revolution

Jeofrey Bean of Del Mar Research and I are putting the final edits on our new book, The Customer Experience Revolution. It will be available January 2012. Jeof and I have interviewed folks who have shared their talents with Xerox PARC, Apple, Google, Netflix, Yahoo!, Amazon.com, JD Powers and more to gain insights into how great companies … Read more

Making Peoples’ Lives Better is Good Business

In Hugh Macleod’s blog “Your customer won’t take a bullet for you” (love that title), he states that “If you want to benefit from a customer’s loyalty, you can’t bribe it, you must earn it. Deserve it. Focus not on upgrading your product but upgrading your user’s capabilities.” Hugh goes on and states that “Instead … Read more

Value, Satisfaction, and Where to Spend Your Money

Satisfaction/Value – this charts what customers’ ranked as most valued and most dissatisfied. Items that are most valued and most dissatisfied are where we should concentrate our time fixing. On the contrary, items that our customers don’t value but are satisfied with we should stop spending time on. Items that our customers don’t value and … Read more

Skinit Customizer Increases Conversion by 350%

Overview Skinit is the global leader in consumer electronic device personalization. In 2007 Skinit was preparing to enhance the previously successful Photo Uploader, a web-based application that allows consumers to upload their own photos and manipulate designs for their personal electronic devices. Darryl Kuhn, Skinit CTO, reached out to me to help with the redesign … Read more

Beyond SEO: Case Study

message in a bottle on the beach shore

In pursuit of new business, a small consulting firm was frequently asked if they had a website. Based on the demand-side information and needs of the business, the three missions of the website were to: Establish company credibility Be an easy-to-use networking tool Provide those working at the company with an easy-to-access, anywhere sales presentation … Read more

Beyond SEO: Develop Your Website Business Mission

Develop a specific mission for your website—before investing the technical and creative talent, time, and money in the build. Here are some examples of actual website business missions: Reduce time-to-market and time-to-revenue Generate qualified leads Expand product and service reach while reducing our costs Target a previously unreachable customer Allow partners to more easily do … Read more

Beyond SEO: Specify the Business Purpose

When you know the problem your site helps you solve, the content better addresses the needs of prospects and customers in the market. This “two-way connection” is based on developing a solid view of the website users— new prospects, clients, suppliers, etc., including: • Who they are • What they need • What they want … Read more