Crack the Customer Code

Today we discuss claims of company longevity as a sales point and whether or not they still have a positive marketing impact on today’s consumers.

We’ve all seen marketing copy that says things like “America’s favorite widget for 50 years!” or “Building whirligigs since 1942.” In generations past, these claims held a lot of water for consumers looking to do business with brands they can trust.

But in today’s world, technology changes overnight and products and services we’ve never thought about are turning new brands into household names. And connected customers have too much power to assume you offer the experiences thy want simply because you’ve been around forever. They look for social proof of experiences that fit into their modern, digitized lives.

Empowered consumers have turned innovative companies like Amazon and Netflix into giants in a relatively short time, leaving leading brands like Borders and Blockbuster with little more than their “impressive” histories to speak of.

What about your company history? Maybe you’ve been around for 40 years, but Adam and Jeannie have their doubts about whether today’s generation would care. Does your company history make you sound like an expert, or a dinosaur? Perhaps the newness of your startup can actually give you an advantage with millennials… It’s all about your customers and what matters most to them.

• 360Connext® post, Why Claims of History Fail to Impress Today’s Customers
• Customers That Stick® post, 5 Millennial Traits to Improve Customer Service
• Episode 130: Chloë Thomas, Customer Manipulation
• Episode 040: Robert Rose and The New Era of Marketing
• Episode 012: Millennial Consumers, Anna Bell, and NFL Customer Experience

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam and Jeannie tackle customer experience challenges in many industries with Curtis Kopf, Vice President of Customer Experience for Premera Blue Cross.

A great customer experience is an easy one. But there is often great complexity involved in making those experiences happen.

Curtis Kopf has a long history of working with customer-focused organizations that are driven by strong missions. These companies have become leaders in their industries by hiding that complexity, or simplifying internal processes and training programs to remove that complexity from the equation altogether.

For many companies, the challenge is not so much about understanding their customers as it is about executing the actual solutions to their challenges. We often feel powerless to neutralize known pain points due to internal processes, industry regulations, legal obligations and safety practices. Sometimes the best improvements come from pushing those perceived limitations and even finding creative ways to work with external agencies that are closely tied to the experience.

Curtis explains some of the innovative ways Premera, Amazon and Alaska Airlines have created viable customer experience solutions that were previously considered impossible. Would you like the inside scoop on how these companies have set industry standards with the incredible experiences they create? Listen in!

Curtis Kopf is Vice President of Customer Experience for Premera Blue Cross.

Curtis is a visionary leader and digital innovator who has built industry-leading customer experiences.at Alaska Airlines, Microsoft and Amazon.com. As Vice President of Customer Innovation for Alaska Airlines, Curtis built award-winning mobile apps and customer feedback programs, as well as pioneered such innovations as online bag-tags and the use of biometrics. Future Travel Experience named Curtis in June as one of 25 global innovation leaders in the airline industry and Alaska’s mobile app was named by Fortune as the best travel app in America in 2015.

Curtis has held a variety of leadership roles in his career - from serving as Amazon’s first General Manager in the UK to developing curriculum and teaching at the UW’s Mobile Business Strategy Certificate Program. He has an undergraduate degree in English from Brown University and a master’s degree in writing from Johns Hopkins.

He is Vice Chairman of the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Puget Sound Board.

Connect with Curtis

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

• Customers That Stick® Post, Customer Experience: At the Edge of a New Discipline
• 360Connext® post, 3 Ways to Add Magic to your Customer Service Training
• Episode 123: CXPA Live, Regulated Industry Challenges
• Episode 039: Does Employee Empowerment Work?

Sponsor message:

Do you know how to deliver the superior customer experience you visualize? We can help your team become a force for positive change, starting with a customer-centric mission. The Customer Experience Investigators™ at 360Connext specialize in helping companies across industries and around the globe develop and internalize unique and scalable customer-focused missions. To compete with the other 89% of companies staying afloat by providing better experiences, you need a compass for making astounding changes in the customer experience while breaking down the silos that are holding you back. We offer evaluations, workshops, and roadmaps to keep your wheels firmly planted on the road to a customer-centric future.

Join us on our mission To Create Fewer Ruined Days for Customers™ today. Visit us at 360Connext.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we discuss infrastructure and the ability to fit into the customer ecosystem as key factors behind the success of any game-changing innovation.

Tesla Motors plans on making their amazing electric cars more attainable and affordable for the masses. This sounds great, and they certainly have the technology to create the product. But what about the infrastructure? Currently, it can be challenging to find a charging station for these vehicles, and Tesla hasn’t said much about how they are addressing this.

This news hearkens back to the early days of the automobile itself. It was many years before it actually made sense for most people to own one, as the fuel as a commodity was less accessible than the vehicles themselves. Perhaps the same fuel companies that (eventually) grew around the gas-powered auto industry will evolve to accommodate the electric cars. Perhaps not, but Tesla seems willing to take that risk and move forward.

What about your next innovation? Can you afford to take big risks like Tesla and boldly go into the future? If you can’t, you must consider how your concept will fit into today’s customer ecosystem. Is there an infrastructure in place to support the use of your product? If not, you may find yourself at the mercy of other organizations, or time itself, to see it through to success.

• Customers That Stick® post, Innovation is No Longer Optional
• 360Connext® post, 5 Silent Issues that Destroy Customer-Focused Innovation
• Episode 101: How the Innovation Process Fails Us
• Episode 077: Crowdsourcing Innovation with Customers
• Episode 072: Matt Phillips, Innovation Expert

Sponsor message:

Do you know how to deliver the superior customer experience you visualize? We can help your team become a force for positive change, starting with a customer-centric mission. The Customer Experience Investigators™ at 360Connext specialize in helping companies across industries and around the globe develop and internalize unique and scalable customer-focused missions. To compete with the other 89% of companies staying afloat by providing better experiences, you need a compass for making astounding changes in the customer experience while breaking down the silos that are holding you back. We offer evaluations, workshops, and roadmaps to keep your wheels firmly planted on the road to a customer-centric future.

Join us on our mission to Create Fewer Ruined Days for Customers™ today. Visit us at 360Connext.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s guest shares how Columbus Metropolitan Library creates an environment that’s attractive, comfortable, and relevant to today’s rapidly-changing needs and lifestyles.

To remain relevant and attractive in today’s world, organizations of all kinds need to rethink the ideal customer experience often. And in some cases, they must rethink the way they do business. Libraries are no exception. But sadly, most have not changed much with the times.

Columbus Metropolitan Library (CML) has maintained impressive membership and attendance rates in spite of a growing belief (currently about 66% of Americans) that libraries aren’t important to their lives.

Why visit a physical library in today’s connected world?

As Chief Customer Experience Officer, Alison Circle has brought a wealth of marketing and customer experience wisdom to CML. By tuning into the changing needs of members and the communities they serve, libraries like CML are providing comfortable and rich experiences that can’t be delivered through your laptop.

For CML, customer-centric thinking creates an environment that inspires and strengthens communities by answering to their rapidly-evolving quest for knowledge. Alison shares some of the ways innovative architecture, engagement, and processes have brought a sustainable experience strategy to an age-old industry.

Listen to Alison’s fascinating story and learn what CML has done to differentiate their experience from traditional libraries.

Alison Circle, Chief Customer Experience Officer for Columbus Metropolitan Library (CML), has more than 25 years marketing experience. For 13 years she was National Marketing Director for Garrison Keillor and "A Prairie Home Companion.” Following that she was Creative Director and Account Director at Jack Morton Worldwide, a global branding agency. In 2004 she joined CML as Director of Marketing and Strategic Planning. In that capacity she rebranded the organization and won over 20 national and international awards for her work. In 2010 that work was recognized with the Library Journal’s Library of the Year and in 2011 she was named a Library Journal “Mover & Shaker.” She is an in-demand speaker on issues of libraries, customer experience and design. In 2012 she was promoted to Chief Customer Experience Officer where she serves on the Executive Leadership Team and oversees 23 library locations, Marketing and all programs and products.  She leads programming, experience and design for the library’s building program for 10 buildings, including the Main Library. Most recently she has launched a Customer First philosophy to lead CML to a new level of customer experience.

Explore and connect with the Columbus Metropolitan Library

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• YouTube
• Columbus Metropolitan Library website

• Customers That Stick® Post, What the Gainesville Police Officer Teaches Us About Customer Service
• 360Connext® post, 3 Ways to Let Customers Guide Your Greatest Innovation
• Episode 125: How Environment Impacts Experience
• Poll: Two-Thirds of Americans Think Closing Libraries Wouldn’t Impact Them, Their Families

Sponsor message:

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com, that is customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we discuss the impact different methods of payment have on customers and the way we do business.

We admit payment methods aren’t a sexy topic like unboxing or social media engagement. And that’s why this part of the customer experience is so often overlooked! But trust on this one: It’s huge.

So how does method of payment fit in, and how much of an impact does it have on your customer experience? Would you know? From those holding up the line writing old-fashioned checks to those throwing a fit because they can’t use their AMEX, it’s typically your front-line staff that takes the heat. Have you thought of your payment methods as a driver for attracting or losing your best customers?

For larger companies, it’s easier to provide numerous payment options to help provide the best experiences for everyone. But many smaller and growing companies need to choose. It means striking the right balance between customer demands and making a realistic assessment of the resources you have to deliver. You also need to consider how it affects your staff, especially in hospitality-based businesses where employees thrive on tips.

Is it worth the time, resources and risks involved to continue accepting cash, checks or special cards? And how can you keep customers happy if you decide to make changes? Maybe there’s an app that will help eliminate some of your biggest challenges around payment.

Listen in and decide (carefully) for yourself!

• 360Connext® post, How Stripe Features the End-User Experience to Enhance B2B Sales
• Customers That Stick® post, On Keeping the Customer but Losing the Business
• Episode 115: Do Loyalty Programs Still Work?

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam and Jeannie interview Chloë Thomas, author of Customer Manipulation.

Many businesses struggle because they refuse to think of it this way. But in reality, it is our jobs as marketers to manipulate customer behavior. We use whatever tools we can to attract customers, to get them to spend more, then send new customers our way.

So how can we keep a handle on customer behavior, without being pushy or feeling guilty?

Chloë explains how to use the customer conversation as the “global term for all interactions customers have with your business. A prevalent theme in Chloë’s book, it’s not just talk. It’s about building trust through consistency, great customer service, and getting customers to share their positive experiences with others.

Can you stay in control of your own customer conversation? Listen in!

Chloë Thomas is an eCommerce expert focused on eCommerce strategy and marketing, to help eCommerce people make better decisions as they build their path to success. Author of 4 books, keynote speaker, and host of the eCommerce MasterPlan Podcast. Her latest book is currently riding high in the Amazon rankings – Customer Manipulation: How to Influence your Customers to Buy More and Why and Ethical Approach will Always Win.

Connect with Chloë

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Google+
• Chloë’s site, eCommerce MasterPlan

• Customers That Stick® Newsletter, The Customer Conversation, plus a Free Gift
• 360Connext® post and Slideshare, Changing Customer Behavior: Your Brain Loves a Story
• Episode 043: When Is it Okay to Hack Customer Behavior?
• Chloe’s book, Customer Manipulation

Sponsor message:

Do you know how to deliver the superior customer experience you visualize? We can help your team become a force for positive change, starting with a customer-centric mission. The Customer Experience Investigators™ at 360Connext specialize in helping companies across industries and around the globe develop and internalize unique and scalable customer-focused missions. To compete with the other 89% of companies staying afloat by providing better experiences, you need a compass for making astounding changes in the customer experience while breaking down the silos that are holding you back. We offer evaluations, workshops, and roadmaps to keep your wheels firmly planted on the road to a customer-centric future.

Join us on our mission To Create Fewer Ruined Days for Customers™ today. Visit us at 360Connext.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeannie and Adam discuss recent issues with the TSA check-in process and how many of the customer experience nightmares that emerged around it could have been avoided.

Customer service in government security… Dare we use these phrases in the same sentence?

In many cases, TSA agents have done an excellent job providing good customer service while staying firm with security regulations. There are many people doing great work in the organization!

However, the TSA has been in the news a lot lately due to increasing wait times and other poor experiences. Travelers have taken to Twitter using the hashtag #hatethewait to vent the frustrations about long lines and ill-prepared staff.

This could happen to any organization that doesn’t look ahead, see trends, or react quickly enough. What’s really wrong here, and how could these situations be avoided? Adam and Jeannie discuss their own experiences with the TSA to uncover how they could leverage resources they already have to ease frustration, avoid bottlenecks, and improve the overall experience.

• 360Connext® post, How Micromapping Can Save Your Business
• Episode 123: CXPA Live, Regulated Industry Challenges
• Episode 022: TripIt’s Amy Jackson

Sponsor message:

Do you know how to deliver the superior customer experience you visualize? We can help your team become a force for positive change, starting with a customer-centric mission. The Customer Experience Investigators™ at 360Connext specialize in helping companies across industries and around the globe develop and internalize unique and scalable customer-focused missions. To compete with the other 89% of companies staying afloat by providing better experiences, you need a compass for making astounding changes in the customer experience while breaking down the silos that are holding you back. We offer evaluations, workshops, and roadmaps to keep your wheels firmly planted on the road to a customer-centric future.

Join us on our mission to Create Fewer Ruined Days for Customers™ today. Visit us at 360Connext.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s guest discusses the digital fan engagement strategy behind the Copa America Centenario, one of the world’s largest soccer tournaments.

There’s much more to the modern fan engagement than getting the crowd excited at the stadium. Today, fans are engaging on social media, websites, mobile apps and email lists. Die-hard fans are looking for more information and a deeper connection to the game, while newcomers and guests are just hoping to figure out what it’s all about.

Christianne discusses the techniques used for reaching out to all kinds of sports fans via digital channels. Through a carefully-engineered digital strategy, fans are able to engage with other fans, their favorite teams, and even the players themselves.

It’s not just about having the information available on the web and mobile devices. It’s about discovering how fans engage differently per channel, and offering experiences on those channels that are unique yet well-connected.

Going mobile with fan engagement is much like going mobile with any organization. If you’re not providing an experience that offers something different than your website, why bother with a mobile app or social media? Christianne shares how the mobile app for Copa America Centenario helps enrich the experience and connect fans with their favorite teams and players on a more personal level.

Why not do this for your organization? Listen in to learn how to connect with your customers and turn them into fans.

Currently overseeing digital for the upcoming Copa America Centenario on behalf of U.S. Soccer, Christianne Harder is a long-time athletics communications strategist. Starting off in college football in team operations and recruiting, she now focuses on how fans interact with web, mobile, and social media. A graduate of UC Berkeley (Go Bears!), Christianne also earned her Master in Intercollegiate Athletic Leadership from the University of Washington in 2010.

Connect with Christianne

• Twitter
• Instagram 

• Customers That Stick® post, Omnichannel Customer Service with the Human Touch
• 360Connext® post, Sports Lessons – How to Turn Customers into Fans
• Episode 071: The Fan Experience Goes Digital
• Episode 063: How to Create Frugal Customer Experiences (River Plate Soccer Club)
• Episode 028: Arizona Diamondbacks CEO Derrick Hall

Sponsor message:

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com, that is customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeannie and Adam discuss transparency in business, and what it means for customers, employees and stakeholders.

How much information do you really need to share, and with whom? This is an age-old conundrum, but the digital age has brought about new challenges.

Transparency has become a hot buzzword in recent years, and with good reason. Customers, employees and stakeholders are demanding more information than ever before. This is especially true for millennials, and they are using the many new tools available for digging up information companies don’t offer up-front.

Adam and Jeannie share some stories about transparency gone wrong. When is it too much information for customers? For employees and stakeholders?

Before you lay it all out on the table, you need to strike the right balance between protecting sensitive information and offering disclosure.  Where or how you share the information can also make a huge difference.

Should the onus be on customers to dig in and find out what they’d like to know about your company? Dig into this episode and find out!

• Customers That Stick® post, 5 Millennial Traits to Improve Customer Service
• 360Connext® post, No Longer a Buzzword: Customers Redefine Transparency
• Episode 100: Customer Service 100 Years Ago
• Episode 083: Cause Marketing Done Well

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam and Jeannie discuss the challenges of creating a culture around patient empathy with Sven Gierlinger, Chief Experience Officer for Northwell Health.

Healthcare workers are indeed heroes. With sensitive tasks and complicated registration processes at hand, creating experiences that make patients feel safe and comfortable is a tall order.

With a background in hospitality at Ritz-Carlton, Northwell Health Chief Experience Officer Sven Gierlinger looks at patient experience through a different lens.

Like the hospitality industry, as Sven explains, healthcare “puts heads on beds and gets paid for it.” And his own past experiences as a long-term inpatient helps him amplify the need for healthcare organizations to embed a focus on service and empathy into clinical processes.

Thanks to forward-thinking patient experience experts like Sven, we’ve come a long way. But there’s still a lot of work to be done! Listen in as Sven shares some of the best ways to create a culture around patient empathy.

As Chief Experience Officer for Northwell Health, Sven is responsible for creating a superior and consistent service experience for patients, visitors and employees. Prior to his current position he was Vice President of Hospitality and Service Culture at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Michigan. In that role he established a culture of service excellence through development and implementation of standards, system-wide rounding, and training programs for all employees ranging from first impressions to leader coaching. He was a driving force in creating excellence and consistency in the patient experience.

Connect with Sven

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

• Customers That Stick® post, When Bad Systems Happen to Good People
• 360Connext® post, The Intentionality of Patient Empathy
• Episode 086: Adrienne Boissy, The Patient Experience
• Episode 121: CXPA Live, Healthcare Experience Observations

Sponsor message:

Do you know how to deliver the superior customer experience you visualize? We can help your team become a force for positive change, starting with a customer-centric mission. The Customer Experience Investigators™ at 360Connext specialize in helping companies across industries and around the globe develop and internalize unique and scalable customer-focused missions. To compete with the other 89% of companies staying afloat by providing better experiences, you need a compass for making astounding changes in the customer experience while breaking down the silos that are holding you back. We offer evaluations, workshops, and roadmaps to keep your wheels firmly planted on the road to a customer-centric future.

Join us on our mission To Create Fewer Ruined Days for Customers™ today. Visit us at 360Connext.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices