For those of us who are sports fans (cough cough, Go Cubs!) it’s sometimes weird to hear about our beloved teams as “products.” This term is thrown around a lot by team owners who fight with cities over stadiums and parking lots. In the last few months, I’ve had the privilege of getting an up-close […]

by Jeff Toister It’s not every day you solve a $50,000 problem. That’s what the customer service manager had just done. It was a billing issue that fooled the company’s CRM system into thinking a customer’s payment had been processed when it really hadn’t. Incredibly, the IT department was able to fix the issue in […]

I admit I was nervous. Growing up in the 1980’s and 90’s, the only association with the city of Medellin or the country of Colombia was hearing about the violence on the news. The violence is what made the news, of course, and it was primarily due to the drug trade. What didn’t make the […]

Your customers are already evaluating the experience you are delivering. And they’re making decisions because of it. 89% of customers will decide based on customer experience in 2016. How can you create a better customer experience now to compete in this changing marketplace? 1. You need to understand the customer journey of today. You can’t improve on […]

The ideal customer journey is so tempting. It’s so magical to start designing the beautiful, happy day  journey for our customers. On their best day, they fall in love with our products, they get excited at the unexpected moments of delight we offer, and they move on to become evangelists whose loyalty can’t be threatened. […]

Written by Jon Drachenberg My husband Jason and I recently took a short trip to Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, a favorite childhood destination of mine, just to unwind after several chaotic weeks of packing and moving across the city. We were seriously beat, and looking for something much more low-key than our usual trip to a theme […]

Did you know customer experience is the new: marketing customer advantage trend in business user interface answer ???? No. It’s not. It’s not any of these things, and yet I keep seeing blog posts and articles and podcasts and books that make these claims. It’s not new. It’s not a trend. And it’s not only […]

A common refrain in customer experience circles is that to deliver a winning experience, you first need to empower your employees. But does it work? And what does employee empowerment really mean? In an ideal world, employees are empowered to use their best judgment to resolve customer issues without needing to seek approvals, jump through […]

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of being invited to an event sponsored by Freshdesk as part of their Customer Happiness Tour. The intimate event was a chance to get to know customer experience leaders from brands in the Chicago area, as well as hear speakers from Zappos and Judson University. Happy to […]

It was supposed to be a routine, but necessary, appointment… At my son’s physical, we noticed a weird thing and were referred to a dermatologist. (I’m happy to report there is nothing wrong.) But this is not the story of the actual medical diagnosis. This is the story of what’s wrong with how patients are […]