The expected results are clear: achieve greater customer loyalty and ensure that your customers also become your ambassadors. This is a double win: loyalty helps companies to retain its customers and the existing customers themselves become the main acquisition channel for new customers. In order to achieve this double win of customer loyalty and ambassadorship, I believe that companies need to take these 6 important steps: Step 1: Convenience – make life easy for customers Step 2: Manage expectations with transparent communication Step 3: Solve problems and swallow your own pain Step 4: Segm ..read more

The Era Of Search 3.0 One of the most important evolutions of today and tomorrow has certainly been that of search. Search 1.0 – with search engines like Yahoo and AltaVista – consisted of simple human-edited directories of websites, like some sort of “yellow pages”. They offered information but it was up to users to find and filter what they needed and scan through all the links and websites. In the next phase, Search 2.0, Google offered relevant information and links, through an algorithm called PageRank. Now, since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2023, we have arrived at the fascinating S ..read more

Culture Built My Brand: The Secret to Winning More Customers Through Company Culture, by Mark Miller & Ted Vaughn (2021) Too many executive leaders settle for inadequate employee performance, mediocre outcomes, and unremarkable earnings. But this doesn’t have to be your organization’s reality. There is a way to break through the inertia to engage your team, drive better results, and attract a tribe of loyal customers―by tapping into the greatest driver of brand success: your internal company culture. With practical steps and customizable tools, this easy-to-follow guide gives you the know ..read more

A Diamond in the rough For those who are not yet familiar with the Diamond in the rough concept, a short recap. Every company leader I meet (ok, almost every one of them), has the great intention of getting customer experience right. Yet, most companies remain diamonds in the rough in terms of customer experience: their customer experience potential is not fully exploited and they never seem to become the shiny and radiant diamond that their customers deserve. That’s why I wrote my new book: to help companies develop their full CX potential by fostering a culture that is obsessed with the cust ..read more

The wrong priorities ‘Before we start with the customer experience part, I want to give you a quick update on our financial results and how far we deviate from our targets,’ the CEO goes on and on overwhelming employees with 10 minutes of tables, graphs, red and green numbers and arrows pointing hither and yon. Not a word is spoken about customers by this CEO who is fixated on how much above or below the company is from the annual target. Only when he introduces me, is the word “customer” used. I literally felt the vibes in the room change once the CEO started talking. The enthusiasm collapsed ..read more

Hyperpersonalize Very few brands trump Nike when it comes to hyperpersonalization, both offline and virtually. Their perfectly designed hi-tech shops feature personal consultation services – given by “Nike store athletes” – and even a “Dynamic Fit Zone”, where customers can test their shoes in a real-world environment, on treadmills or relaxing in the space. They have a private fitting service for bras, with recommendations to suit customers training needs. The “Nike Fit” in-store service maps your foot morphology for the most accurate fit possible and saves that size for future purchases, in ..read more

In the hopes of inspiring companies all over the world to make that transition into a bright and shiny diamond, I am planning to post some inspiring cases of companies that have amazing Customer Cultures in the coming weeks. This piece is about Patagonia’s fantastic customer culture. Expand your circle of influence in a positive manner (while staying close to your core) Organizations used to primarily act in their own business interest, to optimize results and improve market position. Developments within their industry were also closely followed, which they then tried to influence to their adv ..read more

Find the heart First principles thinking is an ideation method that entails stripping a problem down to its foundation, its heart. The aim is then to challenge every assumption, and reconstruct a solution from scratch in order to improve the overall experience. In some ways, it’s like reverse engineering, but with an added layer of skepticism towards the old product and its conventional wisdom and biases. A classic example of Steve Jobs using first principles thinking is when he visited Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and was introduced to a computer with a graphical user interface an ..read more

Lead Companies with a successful customer centric culture – from Apple and Amazon to Starbucks and Glossier – stand out with these 2 things: they have a strong customer vision and leaders who show with their decisions and actions that they will always and forever put the customer first. You can have the prettiest slogans on your walls or the most inspiring slides, if your employees see that you put efficiency, productivity and revenue before the customer’s needs, your culture will be driven by that. It will be ruthless, competitive and oriented towards cost-reduction. In fact, leaders should t ..read more

Find the perfect balance between consistency & adaptation The McDonalds food experience is probably one of the most consistent around the globe. Anywhere in the world, if you crave something recognizable, something familiar, you can enter a McDonalds and find exactly what you expect and want. The same burgers, the same drinks, the same deserts, the same atmosphere, the same cleanliness and convenience. Especially in these uncertain and often difficult times, there is a lot of value in that comfort, even though consistency obviously does not sound as ‘sexy’ as innovation. But there also nee ..read more