Articles
Customer Experience Strategy | CX Strategy
How to Build the Ultimate Brand to Better Connect with Your Customers
Figuring out your brand personality can seem to be impossible. It's like figuring out who you are and what really matters to you as a person. We all struggle (whether we admit it or not) when it comes to figuring out who we really are. It can take years of self-reflection, self-care, and personal discovery only to discover that who we thought we were is not who we actually are…and then begins the process of accepting who we really are. Well, you don’t have that kind of time when it comes to buil…
How to Respond to a Negative Comment in a Way that Generates More Business
Some people just love to hate. That hate can affect the reputation of your brand and cost you your next client.Imagine going into the office on Monday morning to discover that someone has written a scathing one-star review of your company on a site that you regularly generate leads from and currently have a five star rating. The woman who wrote the review was not a client, but someone who had asked that you meet with her and provide a quote. This woman received quotes from multiple companies and…
Really, How Well Do Your Customers Know You?
A popular question that businesses are asked is “How well do you know your customer?” It is a great question. It’s fabulous because if you actually take the time to dive into it, you’ll discover who your customer is beyond stereotypical demographics. You’ll get to the personality traits and the personal interests of your customers. Simply put—the more you know, the better you are able to target and predict their buying behavior. 
The flip side of this question is “How much do your customers know …
Be Determined in Getting Clear About Who Your Target Audience Is
One of the main challenges that businesses face is attracting their ideal client. For many, they see the total addressable market (TAM) and multiply that by the price of their product or service—it's HUGE!! And it’s not reality. You can have the best sales funnel and the product or service offerings but if you are not attracting the right people then you have a problem. Your problem only gets bigger when developing and implementing your marketing strategy because you end up doing more, paying mo…
Communicate with, don't talk at people when you are participating on LinkedIn
Yes it is easy to automate your blog posts so they automatically post to the groups you belong to. The challenge with that is it screams "Sales Pitch! Do not click!" It is also against the rules in some groups which could result in you getting banned from the group, or worse, being put in LinkedIn jail! I know this may surprise you but all of those little photos of people that you see on LinkedIn, they are real people just like you! They don’t like to be talked at, told what to do, or to be trea…
Who wants to be “Monetized”?
Every brand has multiple tribes: your target market, your clients, your employees or your vendors, all of them work with you and follow you for a set of reasons. I spend a lot of time working with companies developing an understanding of just who their tribes are, how to communicate with them, and how to grow these multiple tribes.Loyal tribe members are often referred to as having brand loyalty. What is critical to understand is they will not be loyal to you because you paid them, twisted their…
Learning from Another Brand's Customer Service Mistakes
Has your company ever had a problem with dealing with customers? We all have "off days" and do make mistakes.
Over the last few weeks, there has been a lot of chatter about a major cable and Internet provider that made “headline” news when a customer recorded a call to the company’s customer service center. All the customer wanted, was to terminate his service...a simple request, blown horribly out of proportion! The customer service agent proceeded to ask questions as to why the customer would…
Customer Service, Client Journey, Brand Experience, OH MY!
“I know what customer service is.”
“I think I know what customer experience is.”
“What is brand experience?”
That is usually how a conversation about customers relating to a business goes. Companies are familiar with customer service and usually customer experience, although they sometimes conflate the two. Brand experience, on the other hand often draws a blank, or worse, it is lumped in with customer service. Do you see a pattern developing here? There has been a lot of conversation around …
Customer Expectations at a Restaurant
I’ve been gluten-free for about a year now. In that time, I have learned to pre-screen restaurants to ensure that they either have a gluten free menu, they have gluten free options, or that they would be willing to accommodate. Living in Seattle also means that I am very spoiled—even if the restaurant doesn’t mention anything about gluten free options, the staff usually has enough training that we can make it work.A restaurant’s menu is perhaps their most valuable tool. Not only does it tell the…
The Pez Dispenser of Customer Service
To this day, I can’t figure out why pez dispensers are so popular. It’s a super cheap toy with some random head on the top of it. When you lift the head it gives you a less than average piece of candy. Is the excitement in moving the head or in receiving the candy?Clearly, I am not a part of their target market.
But that is ok. I don’t need to be. This simplistic view of what some consider to be a collector’s item is similar to that of a customer dealing with a company’s customer or tech support.…