What’s the cost of NOT listening to customers?

A company goes through a change at the top.  The new CEO comes from a financial background.  The new CEO institutes cost-cutting measures (after all, it’s what they know).  One item cut, all the customer feedback mechanisms – that means print surveys, point-of-sales surveys, and online feedback.  The company saves some money on cutting [...]

Why Customer Feedback Fails

With it so easy to collect customer feedback these days you’d think most companies would have an excellent “read” on their customers.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case (in my consulting practice).  While the increase in customer contact points (a.ka. listening posts) such as blogs, social media sites, online communities, and word-of-mouth [...]

What Divorce and Customer Loss Have In Common

Stop Believing What Your Customers Tell You
A recent article on Marketing Sherpa demonstrated the difference between what companies (vendors) believe are the reasons customers leave, and the real reasons customers leave.  While companies cite pricing as the top reason, customers say they really leave because of customer service.

Why the Difference?
The article sights two great reasons [...]

How to Get Rave Reviews on Your Customer Reviews

It’s no surprise that a customer will eagerly look for a review or a recommendation prior to making a purchase.  It’s not a surprise either that the Internet has made that so easy.  Nielsen tells us that consumer recommendations are the most credible form of advertising.  78% of us trust consumer recommendations above any other [...]

Verizon vs. Earthlink – The Good, The Bad, and The Policy

  Here are two very different experiences I recently had with Verizon and with Earthlink.  Since they are both in the communications industry, it’s worth looking at what one got right and what one got wrong, very wrong.
Verizon – The Good:  I have a smartphone manufactured by UT Starcom that caries the Verizon label.  I was [...]

The Starbucks Customer FEEDBACK Experience

  This “Starbucks” project is now in full swing with some new posts by Becky Carroll, Jay Ehret, Doug Meacham , Maria Palma, and Meikah Delid. We are starting to learn more about the changes that Howard Schultz is going to make to get Starbucks and their customer experience back on track.  So I took it upon [...]

Giving Senior Executives More Insight from NPS

  The Net Promoter website describes the Net Promoter Score (NPS) as providing “the single most reliable indicator of a company’s ability to grow.”  There has been an on-going debate about how true this statement is and the real value of NPS, particularly for senior executives.  To better understand some of what the debate is about, [...]