Jan 15 2016 | Loyalty Today
Customer experience improvements draw on several important elements, and not all of them tend to be treated equally.An element that does receive a great deal of attention is a statistical mindset. Valuable improvements can arise from digging into customer feedback to see which customer experience...Read More
Jan 13 2016 | Loyalty Today
Take 10 companies that deliver a great experience — chances are, you’ll find 10 very different customer satisfaction surveys that each of those companies rely on to improve their experiences.But regardless of what business objectives drive a survey, there is one thing that...Read More
Jan 07 2016 | Loyalty Today
Chances are, you intuitively understand the value of a great customer experience. But when it comes to making customer experience a priority across your organization, intuition is rarely enough. Regardless of whether or not company leaders believe that good experiences are good for the company...Read More
Jan 04 2016 | Loyalty Today
Delightful customer experiences often start with something simple: an employee noticing a surprising or atypical customer need, and going out of their way to make sure that need is met. Here are five great examples from this year.As you read these stories and look forward to 2016, ask...Read More
Dec 25 2015 | Loyalty Today
It’s a tradition. With the crucial holiday shopping season in full swing, retailers raise armies of customer service personnel to bravely battle through the annual onslaught of store traffic. Sound a lot like a war? It can certainly feel that way to the shopper, and no retailer wants its...Read More
Dec 18 2015 | Loyalty Today
Have you ever stopped to ask: why get customer feedback?There are a range of answers. A big part of it is knowing how you’re performing. There's also getting that information to everyone inside your organization so that they can use it to inform their decision-making. But perhaps the...Read More
Dec 12 2015 | Loyalty Today
What’s the difference between a taxi and an Uber?On a lot of levels, they’re the same. A car. A driver. A passenger wanting to go somewhere. Yet riding in each one is an entirely different experience. Why is that?It boils down to a key fact: Uber drivers are held accountable for the...Read More
Nov 20 2015 | Loyalty Today
We’ve all heard the promises — companies promising to “put customers first.” Many have the best of intentions, but that means very little if the infrastructure to actually deliver isn’t in place.If you really want to prioritize the customer, you need to get the right...Read More
Nov 02 2015 | Loyalty Today
Your customers know you better than you know yourself.It can be tough to hear this — but as customers have been empowered by information, it’s increasingly true, even for the world’s top brands. You have market research dating from weeks or even months ago; they have the...Read More
Oct 10 2015 | Loyalty Today
This article was originally featured by Arizona State University’s Center for Service Leadership on October 2nd, 2015.Several years ago, I met a successful customer service director from a retail bank. She had led the charge to bring customer experience thinking into the bank...Read More
Oct 05 2015 | Loyalty Today
Customers have more power than ever.They’re armed by information — a vast supply of it, all on the Internet — and it’s undermining the traditional ways of building a “brand.” It’s creating transparency, and making it easier for consumers to share their...Read More
Sep 28 2015 | Loyalty Today
For companies that operate across multiple regions, cultural differences add a layer of complexity to customer relationships. How can a company consistently deliver experiences that are consistent with its values and brand promise, while still meeting local standards of respect and good service...Read More
Sep 08 2015 | Loyalty Today
Growing up, my brother was autistic. Autism affects different people in different ways, but for him, what it meant was that he couldn’t communicate well — particularly his emotions. He could tell you factual things: “I went to the park. I ate lunch.” What he would have...Read More
Sep 05 2015 | Loyalty Today
It’s no secret that there’s a lot of value to be had in building a high-cachet brand. People desire your products; they want to be associated with you. But not all of the effects are positive. Chief among the unintended side effects: a prestigious brand can actually mask problems in...Read More
Aug 30 2015 | Loyalty Today
As an industry, banking does a poor job of connecting with customers. According to a recent Temkin Group report, consumers are more likely to recommend their fast food restaurants and airlines to a friend or colleague than their bank. Not good.Banks can do any number of things in an effort to...Read More
Aug 03 2015 | Loyalty Today
My best advice for staying productive at work? Stop thinking about work as a place, and then do less work. This follows the platitude that everyone is different. Everyone has a unique chemistry for beingmore productive.Maybe you’re a morning person who does your best work between 6 a.m. and...Read More
Jul 29 2015 | Loyalty Today
At RingCentral, we feel a great product combined with a great customer experience is a formula for long-term success. For this reason, we put passion, dedication and focus into delivering consistent, world-class customer delight.One key success factor has been collecting customer feedback and...Read More
Jul 22 2015 | Loyalty Today
“Why do companies fail?”This question is what inspired Professor Clayton Christensen to pursue his work on the theory of disruption. There are many startups out there that manage to identify and meet a customer need. They become successful; they grow big. Systems are put in place to...Read More
Jul 14 2015 | Loyalty Today
As Jeff Bezos and his team have tirelessly developed Amazon and its offering, one guiding principle has tended to rise above others: remove friction from the customer experience. No frills — but even less friction.That being said, if you asked an Amazon customer what’s the one thing...Read More
Jun 30 2015 | Loyalty Today
To an outside observer, the most visible cause of customer experience excellence seems to be company’s attitude toward their customers. Employees at every level — from the CEO’s strategic decisions down to the frontline’s daily interactions — seem to magically grasp...Read More
Jun 18 2015 | Loyalty Today
Oddly enough, a company’s happiest customers are often the ones who end up getting the least attention after they’ve provided feedback.The reasons for this neglect are rarely malicious. Since happy customers aren’t an obvious risk, many companies just don’t make time for...Read More
Jun 04 2015 | Loyalty Today
You would be hard-pressed to find a company these days that doesn’t collect some type of customer data after important interactions — but this information alone won’t give those companies a big-picture understanding of the experiences they deliver. While customers do bring...Read More
May 28 2015 | Loyalty Today
From inside an organization, it can be easy to think that a good customer experience is determined by the quality of the individual interactions you deliver. However, things look much different from the customer’s perspective. One of the most important learnings in becoming a customer...Read More
May 23 2015 | Loyalty Today
Everyone has a love story or two. What’s yours?That moment you fell so hard that it was tough to remember life before. That experience that began a lifelong relationship that becomes a part of who you are.Just as with people, it can happen with brands. But how in the world can we feel...Read More
May 06 2015 | Loyalty Today
As an industry, banking does a poor job of creating loyalty among its customers. According to a recent Temkin Group report, consumers in the US are more likely to recommend their fast food restaurants and airlines (airlines?!) to a friend or colleague than their bank. That is not good...Read More
Apr 28 2015 | Loyalty Today
A man and his son are in a terrible car accident. The father dies, and the son is rushed to the emergency room in critical condition. In the operating room, the surgeon looks at the boy and exclaims, “I can’t operate on this boy, he is my son!” How can this be?If it took you a...Read More
Apr 22 2015 | Loyalty Today
As insights and decisions become more data driven, it’s not surprising to have initiatives questioned with, “Do you have the data to back that up?” And this is a good thing. People are making more informed decisions without having to rely overly much on the uncertainty of...Read More
Apr 15 2015 | Loyalty Today
If you could only ask one question on your employee survey what would it be? Would you ask about the employee’s manager? Work-life balance? Fulfillment on the job? Perceptions of compensation and facilities? Whether or not they had fun at the holiday party?Don’t answer yet.I like this...Read More
Apr 02 2015 | Loyalty Today
When companies want to improve their customer experience, they often take a step back and take stock of how customer-centric their entire organization already is. The logic goes that, in order to prepare yourself for a big leap, you first need to know exactly where you’re standing.But in...Read More
Mar 27 2015 | Loyalty Today
Whether we’re conscious of it or not, there are certain characteristics that we typically prioritize when we’re looking for our ideal job. These often include a good salary, generous perks and benefits, a position at a well-respected company, and perhaps even a prestigious role or...Read More
Mar 20 2015 | Loyalty Today
Love makes us do stupid things.Like moving to Las Vegas to start a job in hospitality at the height of the 2008 financial crisis. Having just finished my MBA, I had a great job in a great city (New York). Everything was great — except my significant other lived 2,500 miles away.There are...Read More
Mar 14 2015 | Loyalty Today
The excitement of getting a new job: is it even possible to accurately describe this feeling? You feel accomplished and, more importantly, special. And you should. You’re eager about your new role and your new company — maybe you’re starting a more senior position or finally...Read More
Mar 11 2015 | Loyalty Today
Patent disputes aside, Amazon’s 1-Click is emblematic of one of the most important customer experience paradigms: that creating a path of least resistance for customers is essential. This is obviously true for online experiences, where bottom lines can be drastically...Read More
Mar 08 2015 | Loyalty Today
Receiving feedback for the first time — especially criticism — can be difficult without the right preparation. Customer feedback is no exception.When a company adopts a new customer feedback system, many of its employees won’t be used to so many unfiltered customer opinions...Read More
Mar 05 2015 | Loyalty Today
Failure isn’t pretty. From Motorola’s Iridium to Google Wave, business history is full of stories of huge, successful companies making some pretty bad decisions. Decisions that lead to big, fiery, costly, and public failures. Fingers are pointed, shareholders grumble...Read More
Mar 04 2015 | Loyalty Today
A track team competed in the 4×400. Each runner on their team had the fastest lap of their respective group, but they still lost the race. What happened?They struggled with all the hand-offs.It’s a simple metaphor, but it’s useful in demonstrating the yawning gap between...Read More
Mar 01 2015 | Loyalty Today
…As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know. — Donald...Read More
Feb 24 2015 | Loyalty Today
Beyond price, one of the few ways companies think they can differentiate in the highly competitive telco market is by decidingwhich Kardashian they feature in their Super Bowl commercial.Sunrise Communications, Switzerland’s second largest telecom, decided to take a different tack. They...Read More
Feb 20 2015 | Loyalty Today
Show me someone who isn’t facing challenges of one kind or another at work, and I’ll show you someone who is lacking in self-awareness. It’s a situation that, at one time or another, we all have to face—whether we’re at the frontline of an organization or in its C...Read More
Feb 16 2015 | Loyalty Today
Transaction-based businesses have it tough. Compared to subscription-based businesses — where the default is for relationships to continue — there’s far from any assurance that the customer who walks in your door today will be back for a second date.But is this actually true...Read More
Feb 09 2015 | Loyalty Today
Originally published on Fortune.com on January 28, 2015Companies often focus on how employees are brought in, but what about when they leave? Chances are, there’s not much thought put into making this transition comfortable (for both parties) or even in considering the value of...Read More
Feb 04 2015 | Loyalty Today
When it comes to rolling out any business-wide initiative, gaining buy-in from your C-suite is one of trickiest steps — and customer experience initiatives are no exception.This difficulty often comes down to time and prioritization. Your whole C-suite will likely approve of the general...Read More
Jan 27 2015 | Loyalty Today
In the business world, the strength of a metric lies in — not only how accurate it is — but also the extent to which it helps drives change and action. The world of customer experience is no exception, where the metrics discussion has become a tried and true pastime.But there is no...Read More
Jan 25 2015 | Loyalty Today
There are few things more disheartening for a customer than feeling that their feedback is falling on deaf ears.Recognizing this, many companies make a point of following up on customer feedback when something goes wrong. Some simply apologize or try to placate the customer with discounts and...Read More
Dec 31 2014 | Loyalty Today
Customer-centric companies are winners. Customers can feel it when organizations bring them to the table for every business decision. Friction is reduced and processes are streamlined, and the quality of customer experience just goes up.Auto & General Services, an insurance...Read More
Dec 27 2014 | Loyalty Today
Engineering management recruiting is broken.Why?The fundamental reason is that companies have done exactly what comes naturally to them: to be self-centered. They focus on what they want, and unfortunately, this tends to turn recruiting into a skill-set wish list. As a result, companies seek...Read More
Dec 26 2014 | Loyalty Today
2014. It flew by before we could truly get to know it — but it was no less of a big year. How will it be remembered? The Year of Comcast? Of Uber? Of Amazon?Regardless, it was a year when customer experience made headlines and was embraced by more business leaders ...Read More
Dec 17 2014 | Loyalty Today
Which role in your organization has the biggest impact on your company’s customer experience?If you ask most company leaders, they’ll likely name someone with a customer-facing position — frontline employees, perhaps, or even the CEO. And those answers wouldn’t necessarily...Read More
Dec 15 2014 | Loyalty Today
My company recently reached a big milestone: there are now over 600 Medallians. In the tech world, this is the equivalent of going into the 21+ age bracket when you’re growing up. These kinds of milestones are always cause for reflection. In doing so, I saw that there were vestiges of our...Read More
Dec 11 2014 | Loyalty Today
It’s increasingly the case that brand reputations are being made and broken by customers on the Internet and across social media. As a result, it’s more important than ever to take the pulse of every customer interaction — ensuring that you’re delivering great experiences...Read More
Dec 04 2014 | Loyalty Today
Market research was developed almost a century ago, at the dawn of advertising in the 1920s. It was a response to the beginning of brand-crafting — companies wanted a means of testing the effectiveness of their products and their advertising. Market research gave companies a way to gauge...Read More
Nov 25 2014 | Loyalty Today
Take a moment to think about the people you turn to when you need support or advice. If you’re like most of us, family members and friends are the ones who spring to mind. While we may have a good work friend here or there, we usually don’t go to our coworkers for help when things get...Read More
Nov 21 2014 | Loyalty Today
What do the best CEOs do to connect themselves and their companies to their customers?The habits of customer-centric CEOs like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Apple’s Tim Cook aren’t as hard to pick up as some executives might expect. Here are three things leaders can start...Read More
Nov 19 2014 | Loyalty Today
When you own (or are in charge of) a business, it becomes a close family member — you’d do anything for it. From tireless days and sleepless nights to unpleasant decisions and difficult problems to resolve, you’ll do what you think is right. You’ll take out the garbage if...Read More
Nov 10 2014 | Loyalty Today
Like the “Shareconomy,” the Internet of Things (IoT) is currently a bit of a catch-all — if not an all-out tech world buzzword. But simply put, it’s the leveraging of WiFi and mobile technologies to give a digital pulse to previously analogue items and experiences. And the...Read More
Nov 04 2014 | Loyalty Today
The Age of the Customer has long since arrived — but while many leaders grasp the implicit value of customer experience as a business driver and competitive differentiator, they don’t know where to invest resources and focus improvements.Medallia is all about solving this problem. We...Read More
Nov 02 2014 | Loyalty Today
Traditional banks — venerable financial institutions housed in imposing stone and marble — are swiftly becoming a thing of the past. Customers are increasingly looking for friction-free ways of conducting their day-to-day banking, relying on online or mobile solutions to their banking...Read More
Oct 18 2014 | Loyalty Today
While an increasing number of companies are investing in Voice of the Customer programs, many haven’t realized the level of impact across their businesses that they hoped for. The data they collect from customers is often siloed — and it’s not connected to financial results nor...Read More
Oct 08 2014 | Loyalty Today
Suppose you walk into a high-end clothing store and you tell the manager that you plan to spend $30K on a new wardrobe. How do you think the manager would react? I suspect you’d receive a pretty awesome shopping experience for the next hour or two, really solid fashion advice from their top...Read More
Oct 07 2014 | Loyalty Today
What if there was a day dedicated to customer experience? A day to put customers front of mind, to put yourself in their shoes, and to surface ways to serve them better? A day to engage employees — celebrating customer champions and encouraging others to step up to the plate?Well, at some...Read More
Oct 01 2014 | Loyalty Today
How many great candidates do you think you’re losing because of flaws in your recruiting process?The truth is that many companies – especially large or fast growing ones – lose more candidates than they should. Despite the significant resources spent bringing people into the...Read More
Sep 26 2014 | Loyalty Today
The hospitality industry is famously competitive when it comes to delighting guests. But despite this stiff competition, Hilton Worldwide has won consistent acclaim as a leader in guest experience. This year, that acclaim included some prestigious hardware — the 2014 Gold Medal for CRM...Read More
Sep 19 2014 | Loyalty Today
The Art of War is the darling of business and new age development gurus. How they interpret Sun Tzu’s classic is as you would expect. Attack your competitors’ weaknesses. Take them by surprise. Crush them with your wiles. Win at life. To summarize, these interpreters of Sun Tzu...Read More
Sep 17 2014 | Loyalty Today
What makes a brand a luxury brand?People often think about the answer to this question in terms of quality of the product. More and more, however, companies are realizing that the experience they provide contributes just as much to whether their brand is viewed as a luxury one — or not...Read More
Sep 11 2014 | Loyalty Today
For many of the world’s leading hospitality brands, building guest loyalty is a top priority. Hilton Worldwide understands the value of this more than most: after a three-year study across their entire family of brands, Hilton found that customers who receive a great experience spend on...Read More
Sep 04 2014 | Loyalty Today
It’s that time of the year. Goal setting is in the air as companies prepare for year-end budgets and planning, and executives are asking: “What should we aspire to achieve in the next 12 months?”Many dive straight into the numbers and their impact on customers:What investments...Read More
Sep 02 2014 | Loyalty Today
At first glance, it might seem that delivering a great experience is easier for business-to-business (B2B) companies than for consumer-facing firms (B2C). B2B companies typically serve fewer customers, and a small pool of relationships can be mistaken for a smaller challenge compared with the...Read More
Aug 27 2014 | Loyalty Today
Given mounting customer expectations, how do today’s companies create fierce loyalty amongst their customers? This was the topic of conversation at a fireside chat at VentureBeat’s recent GrowthBeat conference, in which Re/code’s Ina Fried moderated a conversation with...Read More
Aug 19 2014 | Loyalty Today
Before retail was called “retail,” making a purchase was simple: go wherever the thing you wanted was sold (or traded for) and buy it. That was it — and it couldn’t be more straight-forward.But speak to someone in retail today, and they’ll tell you that world is long...Read More
Aug 15 2014 | Loyalty Today
I woke up this morning with the feeling that something was different. Something in my life had changed without me noticing. Yesterday was a normal day at Medallia. The Operating Team gathered for our weekly meeting in the same red-chair-flanked room, honestly evaluated our performance thus far in...Read More
Aug 13 2014 | Loyalty Today
When it comes to customer experience, what often separates big mistakes from little ones is how companies handle them after the fact. If your customers take the time to tell you about a problem only to be dismissed or ignored, even the tiniest errors can become major pain points. That’s why...Read More
Aug 11 2014 | Loyalty Today
Intuitively, most people recognize the value of a great customer experience. Brands that deliver them are ones that we want to interact with as customers — that we become loyal to, and that we recommend to our friends and family. But as executives leading businesses, the value of delivering...Read More
Aug 06 2014 | Loyalty Today
Consumers’ expectations for businesses and the customer experiences they deliver are being radically reshaped. Across hospitality, transportation, retail, and beyond, a wave of new online businesses — many of them digitally native — are raising the bar for how customers are...Read More
Jul 30 2014 | Loyalty Today
From the moment I joined a beta customer group that was testing a new type of software — software that we now know as CRM — I knew that it would revolutionize the way our sales teams tracked prospects and, ultimately, customer interactions. The promise of CRM was right there, in its...Read More
Jul 26 2014 | Loyalty Today
The viral fallout from last week’s Comcast call from “hell” has transitioned to a new phase: damage control and reform. In a leaked internal memo, the company’s COO sent a heartfelt message to employees, where he shared his thoughts on the incident, his apologies...Read More
Jul 19 2014 | Loyalty Today
Your company’s investment in a CRM — like Salesforce — wasn’t minor, and it wasn’t without good reason. Whether on the sales or service side (or both), you invested in the platform to better understand and manage the relationships with your customers. You use it as a...Read More
Jul 17 2014 | Loyalty Today
If you’ve been on the internet the past 24 hours, you’ve probably heard by now about the experience of Ryan Block and his wife with Comcast. Block, trying to cancel his Comcast service, called their contact center in order to switch his service to another provider....Read More
Jul 11 2014 | Loyalty Today
“Software eats retail.” For any brick-and-mortar company, this absolutist prediction from mega venture capitalist and entrepreneur, Marc Andreessen, is far from new. The footsteps from the likes of e-tailers such as Amazon, Zappos, and Bonobos have long been audible...Read More
Jul 09 2014 | Loyalty Today
Over the past 15 years, C-suite’s around the world have had some new company in the boardroom. Who are these new faces?The Chief Customer Officer (CCO).In 1999, Texas New Mexico Power made history by appointing the world’s first CCO. Since then, it’s become part of an...Read More
Jul 02 2014 | Loyalty Today
No matter how good you are at what you do, there is friction in your business. Friction that stands between your customers and what they want.Where is that friction? And how much is it costing you?Customer expectations around the availability, immediacy, and ease-of-use of what they purchase have...Read More
Jun 27 2014 | Loyalty Today
We often talk about great customer experience as a means to unlock revenue: You retain customers, realize more of their lifetime value, and mobilize an army of word-of-mouth marketers. There’s another benefit to it that is equally valuable, though; and it’s one that’s not as...Read More
Jun 18 2014 | Loyalty Today
Who is the most important person in your organization? The natural inclination is to point toward the CEO. But if that’s how you’re thinking about it, you’re not putting yourselves in the shoes of your customers — and it could be hurting your brand and your bottom-line.The...Read More
Jun 13 2014 | Loyalty Today
“What gets measured, gets managed.” You’ve probably heard Peter Drucker’s famous words before. When you can measure the outcome of an action, you can see what went well, what went wrong, what can improve — and then benchmark to track future progress.When it...Read More
Jun 11 2014 | Loyalty Today
During the recruitment of any great candidate, there’s a constant dance of “selling” between candidate and company. This culminates when the company presents its grand final pitch — the official job offer. Anyone in the recruiting world knows the art that goes into this...Read More
Jun 04 2014 | Loyalty Today
True or False: When it comes to customer experience, there’s only one Nordstrom.Well — at least, there can only be one company called Nordstrom. But is there only room for one company that creates an employee-empowered culture, focuses on the customer, and provides an...Read More
May 20 2014 | Loyalty Today
Your customers — let’s imagine that they spend less than five dollars in your store. That, on average, they’ll spend roughly three minutes while they’re there. You don’t know who they are, nor do you have any of their contact details — but you do know there are...Read More
May 19 2014 | Loyalty Today
What are the leaders of customer experience doing differently? Which of their best practices should you incorporate into your business?The Medallia 2014 Customer Benchmark is our annual analysis of just these questions. Created by the Medallia Institute, the Benchmark incorporates data from...Read More
May 17 2014 | Loyalty Today
Chris Zane, founder and president of Zane’s Cycles, likes to think of things very differently. He shared his approach in a keynote at Medallia’s Experience 2014. The core of it? Understanding that there’s a lifetime value to every one of his customers. Zane has calculated that...Read More
May 16 2014 | Loyalty Today
Improving the customer experience is finding its way to the top of more and more CEO’s list of priorities. You’d imagine that the obvious thing would be to focus on customer engagement. But according to NPS guru and co-author of The Ultimate Question 2.0, Rob Markey...Read More
May 07 2014 | Loyalty Today
Why even care about customer experience? Intuitively, lots of folks in business understand the value of it — from their experience as customers. But when it comes to prioritizing it as a business, there always seem to be skeptics — skeptics arguing that there are better places to...Read More
Apr 11 2014 | Loyalty Today
Just because you own the company, doesn’t mean that you own the experience. Whether you rely on frontlines or franchisees, many business leaders must trust individuals far beyond their immediate reach to dictate customer experience and represent brand. This is not a new concept in business....Read More
Jan 15 2016
Customer experience improvements draw on several important elements, and not all of them tend to be treated equally.An element that does receive a great deal of attention is a statistical mindset. Valuable improvements can arise from digging into customer feedback to see which customer experience...Read More
Jan 13 2016
Take 10 companies that deliver a great experience — chances are, you’ll find 10 very different customer satisfaction surveys that each of those companies rely on to improve their experiences.But regardless of what business objectives drive a survey, there is one thing that...Read More
Jan 07 2016
Chances are, you intuitively understand the value of a great customer experience. But when it comes to making customer experience a priority across your organization, intuition is rarely enough. Regardless of whether or not company leaders believe that good experiences are good for the company...Read More
Jan 04 2016
Delightful customer experiences often start with something simple: an employee noticing a surprising or atypical customer need, and going out of their way to make sure that need is met. Here are five great examples from this year.As you read these stories and look forward to 2016, ask...Read More
Dec 25 2015
It’s a tradition. With the crucial holiday shopping season in full swing, retailers raise armies of customer service personnel to bravely battle through the annual onslaught of store traffic. Sound a lot like a war? It can certainly feel that way to the shopper, and no retailer wants its...Read More
Dec 18 2015
Have you ever stopped to ask: why get customer feedback?There are a range of answers. A big part of it is knowing how you’re performing. There's also getting that information to everyone inside your organization so that they can use it to inform their decision-making. But perhaps the...Read More
Dec 12 2015
What’s the difference between a taxi and an Uber?On a lot of levels, they’re the same. A car. A driver. A passenger wanting to go somewhere. Yet riding in each one is an entirely different experience. Why is that?It boils down to a key fact: Uber drivers are held accountable for the...Read More
Nov 20 2015
We’ve all heard the promises — companies promising to “put customers first.” Many have the best of intentions, but that means very little if the infrastructure to actually deliver isn’t in place.If you really want to prioritize the customer, you need to get the right...Read More
Nov 02 2015
Your customers know you better than you know yourself.It can be tough to hear this — but as customers have been empowered by information, it’s increasingly true, even for the world’s top brands. You have market research dating from weeks or even months ago; they have the...Read More
Oct 10 2015
This article was originally featured by Arizona State University’s Center for Service Leadership on October 2nd, 2015.Several years ago, I met a successful customer service director from a retail bank. She had led the charge to bring customer experience thinking into the bank...Read More
Oct 05 2015
Customers have more power than ever.They’re armed by information — a vast supply of it, all on the Internet — and it’s undermining the traditional ways of building a “brand.” It’s creating transparency, and making it easier for consumers to share their...Read More
Sep 28 2015
For companies that operate across multiple regions, cultural differences add a layer of complexity to customer relationships. How can a company consistently deliver experiences that are consistent with its values and brand promise, while still meeting local standards of respect and good service...Read More
Sep 08 2015
Growing up, my brother was autistic. Autism affects different people in different ways, but for him, what it meant was that he couldn’t communicate well — particularly his emotions. He could tell you factual things: “I went to the park. I ate lunch.” What he would have...Read More
Sep 05 2015
It’s no secret that there’s a lot of value to be had in building a high-cachet brand. People desire your products; they want to be associated with you. But not all of the effects are positive. Chief among the unintended side effects: a prestigious brand can actually mask problems in...Read More
Aug 30 2015
As an industry, banking does a poor job of connecting with customers. According to a recent Temkin Group report, consumers are more likely to recommend their fast food restaurants and airlines to a friend or colleague than their bank. Not good.Banks can do any number of things in an effort to...Read More
Aug 03 2015
My best advice for staying productive at work? Stop thinking about work as a place, and then do less work. This follows the platitude that everyone is different. Everyone has a unique chemistry for beingmore productive.Maybe you’re a morning person who does your best work between 6 a.m. and...Read More
Jul 29 2015
At RingCentral, we feel a great product combined with a great customer experience is a formula for long-term success. For this reason, we put passion, dedication and focus into delivering consistent, world-class customer delight.One key success factor has been collecting customer feedback and...Read More
Jul 22 2015
“Why do companies fail?”This question is what inspired Professor Clayton Christensen to pursue his work on the theory of disruption. There are many startups out there that manage to identify and meet a customer need. They become successful; they grow big. Systems are put in place to...Read More
Jul 14 2015
As Jeff Bezos and his team have tirelessly developed Amazon and its offering, one guiding principle has tended to rise above others: remove friction from the customer experience. No frills — but even less friction.That being said, if you asked an Amazon customer what’s the one thing...Read More
Jun 30 2015
To an outside observer, the most visible cause of customer experience excellence seems to be company’s attitude toward their customers. Employees at every level — from the CEO’s strategic decisions down to the frontline’s daily interactions — seem to magically grasp...Read More
Jun 18 2015
Oddly enough, a company’s happiest customers are often the ones who end up getting the least attention after they’ve provided feedback.The reasons for this neglect are rarely malicious. Since happy customers aren’t an obvious risk, many companies just don’t make time for...Read More
Jun 04 2015
You would be hard-pressed to find a company these days that doesn’t collect some type of customer data after important interactions — but this information alone won’t give those companies a big-picture understanding of the experiences they deliver. While customers do bring...Read More
May 28 2015
From inside an organization, it can be easy to think that a good customer experience is determined by the quality of the individual interactions you deliver. However, things look much different from the customer’s perspective. One of the most important learnings in becoming a customer...Read More
May 23 2015
Everyone has a love story or two. What’s yours?That moment you fell so hard that it was tough to remember life before. That experience that began a lifelong relationship that becomes a part of who you are.Just as with people, it can happen with brands. But how in the world can we feel...Read More
May 06 2015
As an industry, banking does a poor job of creating loyalty among its customers. According to a recent Temkin Group report, consumers in the US are more likely to recommend their fast food restaurants and airlines (airlines?!) to a friend or colleague than their bank. That is not good...Read More
Apr 28 2015
A man and his son are in a terrible car accident. The father dies, and the son is rushed to the emergency room in critical condition. In the operating room, the surgeon looks at the boy and exclaims, “I can’t operate on this boy, he is my son!” How can this be?If it took you a...Read More
Apr 22 2015
As insights and decisions become more data driven, it’s not surprising to have initiatives questioned with, “Do you have the data to back that up?” And this is a good thing. People are making more informed decisions without having to rely overly much on the uncertainty of...Read More
Apr 15 2015
If you could only ask one question on your employee survey what would it be? Would you ask about the employee’s manager? Work-life balance? Fulfillment on the job? Perceptions of compensation and facilities? Whether or not they had fun at the holiday party?Don’t answer yet.I like this...Read More
Apr 02 2015
When companies want to improve their customer experience, they often take a step back and take stock of how customer-centric their entire organization already is. The logic goes that, in order to prepare yourself for a big leap, you first need to know exactly where you’re standing.But in...Read More
Mar 27 2015
Whether we’re conscious of it or not, there are certain characteristics that we typically prioritize when we’re looking for our ideal job. These often include a good salary, generous perks and benefits, a position at a well-respected company, and perhaps even a prestigious role or...Read More
Mar 20 2015
Love makes us do stupid things.Like moving to Las Vegas to start a job in hospitality at the height of the 2008 financial crisis. Having just finished my MBA, I had a great job in a great city (New York). Everything was great — except my significant other lived 2,500 miles away.There are...Read More
Mar 14 2015
The excitement of getting a new job: is it even possible to accurately describe this feeling? You feel accomplished and, more importantly, special. And you should. You’re eager about your new role and your new company — maybe you’re starting a more senior position or finally...Read More
Mar 11 2015
Patent disputes aside, Amazon’s 1-Click is emblematic of one of the most important customer experience paradigms: that creating a path of least resistance for customers is essential. This is obviously true for online experiences, where bottom lines can be drastically...Read More
Mar 08 2015
Receiving feedback for the first time — especially criticism — can be difficult without the right preparation. Customer feedback is no exception.When a company adopts a new customer feedback system, many of its employees won’t be used to so many unfiltered customer opinions...Read More
Mar 05 2015
Failure isn’t pretty. From Motorola’s Iridium to Google Wave, business history is full of stories of huge, successful companies making some pretty bad decisions. Decisions that lead to big, fiery, costly, and public failures. Fingers are pointed, shareholders grumble...Read More
Mar 04 2015
A track team competed in the 4×400. Each runner on their team had the fastest lap of their respective group, but they still lost the race. What happened?They struggled with all the hand-offs.It’s a simple metaphor, but it’s useful in demonstrating the yawning gap between...Read More
Mar 01 2015
…As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know. — Donald...Read More
Feb 24 2015
Beyond price, one of the few ways companies think they can differentiate in the highly competitive telco market is by decidingwhich Kardashian they feature in their Super Bowl commercial.Sunrise Communications, Switzerland’s second largest telecom, decided to take a different tack. They...Read More
Feb 20 2015
Show me someone who isn’t facing challenges of one kind or another at work, and I’ll show you someone who is lacking in self-awareness. It’s a situation that, at one time or another, we all have to face—whether we’re at the frontline of an organization or in its C...Read More
Feb 16 2015
Transaction-based businesses have it tough. Compared to subscription-based businesses — where the default is for relationships to continue — there’s far from any assurance that the customer who walks in your door today will be back for a second date.But is this actually true...Read More
Feb 09 2015
Originally published on Fortune.com on January 28, 2015Companies often focus on how employees are brought in, but what about when they leave? Chances are, there’s not much thought put into making this transition comfortable (for both parties) or even in considering the value of...Read More
Feb 04 2015
When it comes to rolling out any business-wide initiative, gaining buy-in from your C-suite is one of trickiest steps — and customer experience initiatives are no exception.This difficulty often comes down to time and prioritization. Your whole C-suite will likely approve of the general...Read More
Jan 27 2015
In the business world, the strength of a metric lies in — not only how accurate it is — but also the extent to which it helps drives change and action. The world of customer experience is no exception, where the metrics discussion has become a tried and true pastime.But there is no...Read More
Jan 25 2015
There are few things more disheartening for a customer than feeling that their feedback is falling on deaf ears.Recognizing this, many companies make a point of following up on customer feedback when something goes wrong. Some simply apologize or try to placate the customer with discounts and...Read More
Dec 31 2014
Customer-centric companies are winners. Customers can feel it when organizations bring them to the table for every business decision. Friction is reduced and processes are streamlined, and the quality of customer experience just goes up.Auto & General Services, an insurance...Read More
Dec 27 2014
Engineering management recruiting is broken.Why?The fundamental reason is that companies have done exactly what comes naturally to them: to be self-centered. They focus on what they want, and unfortunately, this tends to turn recruiting into a skill-set wish list. As a result, companies seek...Read More
Dec 26 2014
2014. It flew by before we could truly get to know it — but it was no less of a big year. How will it be remembered? The Year of Comcast? Of Uber? Of Amazon?Regardless, it was a year when customer experience made headlines and was embraced by more business leaders ...Read More
Dec 17 2014
Which role in your organization has the biggest impact on your company’s customer experience?If you ask most company leaders, they’ll likely name someone with a customer-facing position — frontline employees, perhaps, or even the CEO. And those answers wouldn’t necessarily...Read More
Dec 15 2014
My company recently reached a big milestone: there are now over 600 Medallians. In the tech world, this is the equivalent of going into the 21+ age bracket when you’re growing up. These kinds of milestones are always cause for reflection. In doing so, I saw that there were vestiges of our...Read More
Dec 11 2014
It’s increasingly the case that brand reputations are being made and broken by customers on the Internet and across social media. As a result, it’s more important than ever to take the pulse of every customer interaction — ensuring that you’re delivering great experiences...Read More
Dec 04 2014
Market research was developed almost a century ago, at the dawn of advertising in the 1920s. It was a response to the beginning of brand-crafting — companies wanted a means of testing the effectiveness of their products and their advertising. Market research gave companies a way to gauge...Read More
Nov 25 2014
Take a moment to think about the people you turn to when you need support or advice. If you’re like most of us, family members and friends are the ones who spring to mind. While we may have a good work friend here or there, we usually don’t go to our coworkers for help when things get...Read More
Nov 21 2014
What do the best CEOs do to connect themselves and their companies to their customers?The habits of customer-centric CEOs like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Apple’s Tim Cook aren’t as hard to pick up as some executives might expect. Here are three things leaders can start...Read More
Nov 19 2014
When you own (or are in charge of) a business, it becomes a close family member — you’d do anything for it. From tireless days and sleepless nights to unpleasant decisions and difficult problems to resolve, you’ll do what you think is right. You’ll take out the garbage if...Read More
Nov 10 2014
Like the “Shareconomy,” the Internet of Things (IoT) is currently a bit of a catch-all — if not an all-out tech world buzzword. But simply put, it’s the leveraging of WiFi and mobile technologies to give a digital pulse to previously analogue items and experiences. And the...Read More
Nov 04 2014
The Age of the Customer has long since arrived — but while many leaders grasp the implicit value of customer experience as a business driver and competitive differentiator, they don’t know where to invest resources and focus improvements.Medallia is all about solving this problem. We...Read More
Nov 02 2014
Traditional banks — venerable financial institutions housed in imposing stone and marble — are swiftly becoming a thing of the past. Customers are increasingly looking for friction-free ways of conducting their day-to-day banking, relying on online or mobile solutions to their banking...Read More
Oct 18 2014
While an increasing number of companies are investing in Voice of the Customer programs, many haven’t realized the level of impact across their businesses that they hoped for. The data they collect from customers is often siloed — and it’s not connected to financial results nor...Read More
Oct 08 2014
Suppose you walk into a high-end clothing store and you tell the manager that you plan to spend $30K on a new wardrobe. How do you think the manager would react? I suspect you’d receive a pretty awesome shopping experience for the next hour or two, really solid fashion advice from their top...Read More
Oct 07 2014
What if there was a day dedicated to customer experience? A day to put customers front of mind, to put yourself in their shoes, and to surface ways to serve them better? A day to engage employees — celebrating customer champions and encouraging others to step up to the plate?Well, at some...Read More
Oct 01 2014
How many great candidates do you think you’re losing because of flaws in your recruiting process?The truth is that many companies – especially large or fast growing ones – lose more candidates than they should. Despite the significant resources spent bringing people into the...Read More
Sep 26 2014
The hospitality industry is famously competitive when it comes to delighting guests. But despite this stiff competition, Hilton Worldwide has won consistent acclaim as a leader in guest experience. This year, that acclaim included some prestigious hardware — the 2014 Gold Medal for CRM...Read More
Sep 19 2014
The Art of War is the darling of business and new age development gurus. How they interpret Sun Tzu’s classic is as you would expect. Attack your competitors’ weaknesses. Take them by surprise. Crush them with your wiles. Win at life. To summarize, these interpreters of Sun Tzu...Read More
Sep 17 2014
What makes a brand a luxury brand?People often think about the answer to this question in terms of quality of the product. More and more, however, companies are realizing that the experience they provide contributes just as much to whether their brand is viewed as a luxury one — or not...Read More
Sep 11 2014
For many of the world’s leading hospitality brands, building guest loyalty is a top priority. Hilton Worldwide understands the value of this more than most: after a three-year study across their entire family of brands, Hilton found that customers who receive a great experience spend on...Read More
Sep 04 2014
It’s that time of the year. Goal setting is in the air as companies prepare for year-end budgets and planning, and executives are asking: “What should we aspire to achieve in the next 12 months?”Many dive straight into the numbers and their impact on customers:What investments...Read More
Sep 02 2014
At first glance, it might seem that delivering a great experience is easier for business-to-business (B2B) companies than for consumer-facing firms (B2C). B2B companies typically serve fewer customers, and a small pool of relationships can be mistaken for a smaller challenge compared with the...Read More
Aug 27 2014
Given mounting customer expectations, how do today’s companies create fierce loyalty amongst their customers? This was the topic of conversation at a fireside chat at VentureBeat’s recent GrowthBeat conference, in which Re/code’s Ina Fried moderated a conversation with...Read More
Aug 19 2014
Before retail was called “retail,” making a purchase was simple: go wherever the thing you wanted was sold (or traded for) and buy it. That was it — and it couldn’t be more straight-forward.But speak to someone in retail today, and they’ll tell you that world is long...Read More
Aug 15 2014
I woke up this morning with the feeling that something was different. Something in my life had changed without me noticing. Yesterday was a normal day at Medallia. The Operating Team gathered for our weekly meeting in the same red-chair-flanked room, honestly evaluated our performance thus far in...Read More
Aug 13 2014
When it comes to customer experience, what often separates big mistakes from little ones is how companies handle them after the fact. If your customers take the time to tell you about a problem only to be dismissed or ignored, even the tiniest errors can become major pain points. That’s why...Read More
Aug 11 2014
Intuitively, most people recognize the value of a great customer experience. Brands that deliver them are ones that we want to interact with as customers — that we become loyal to, and that we recommend to our friends and family. But as executives leading businesses, the value of delivering...Read More
Aug 06 2014
Consumers’ expectations for businesses and the customer experiences they deliver are being radically reshaped. Across hospitality, transportation, retail, and beyond, a wave of new online businesses — many of them digitally native — are raising the bar for how customers are...Read More
Jul 30 2014
From the moment I joined a beta customer group that was testing a new type of software — software that we now know as CRM — I knew that it would revolutionize the way our sales teams tracked prospects and, ultimately, customer interactions. The promise of CRM was right there, in its...Read More
Jul 26 2014
The viral fallout from last week’s Comcast call from “hell” has transitioned to a new phase: damage control and reform. In a leaked internal memo, the company’s COO sent a heartfelt message to employees, where he shared his thoughts on the incident, his apologies...Read More
Jul 19 2014
Your company’s investment in a CRM — like Salesforce — wasn’t minor, and it wasn’t without good reason. Whether on the sales or service side (or both), you invested in the platform to better understand and manage the relationships with your customers. You use it as a...Read More
Jul 17 2014
If you’ve been on the internet the past 24 hours, you’ve probably heard by now about the experience of Ryan Block and his wife with Comcast. Block, trying to cancel his Comcast service, called their contact center in order to switch his service to another provider....Read More
Jul 11 2014
“Software eats retail.” For any brick-and-mortar company, this absolutist prediction from mega venture capitalist and entrepreneur, Marc Andreessen, is far from new. The footsteps from the likes of e-tailers such as Amazon, Zappos, and Bonobos have long been audible...Read More
Jul 09 2014
Over the past 15 years, C-suite’s around the world have had some new company in the boardroom. Who are these new faces?The Chief Customer Officer (CCO).In 1999, Texas New Mexico Power made history by appointing the world’s first CCO. Since then, it’s become part of an...Read More
Jul 02 2014
No matter how good you are at what you do, there is friction in your business. Friction that stands between your customers and what they want.Where is that friction? And how much is it costing you?Customer expectations around the availability, immediacy, and ease-of-use of what they purchase have...Read More
Jun 27 2014
We often talk about great customer experience as a means to unlock revenue: You retain customers, realize more of their lifetime value, and mobilize an army of word-of-mouth marketers. There’s another benefit to it that is equally valuable, though; and it’s one that’s not as...Read More
Jun 18 2014
Who is the most important person in your organization? The natural inclination is to point toward the CEO. But if that’s how you’re thinking about it, you’re not putting yourselves in the shoes of your customers — and it could be hurting your brand and your bottom-line.The...Read More
Jun 13 2014
“What gets measured, gets managed.” You’ve probably heard Peter Drucker’s famous words before. When you can measure the outcome of an action, you can see what went well, what went wrong, what can improve — and then benchmark to track future progress.When it...Read More
Jun 11 2014
During the recruitment of any great candidate, there’s a constant dance of “selling” between candidate and company. This culminates when the company presents its grand final pitch — the official job offer. Anyone in the recruiting world knows the art that goes into this...Read More
Jun 04 2014
True or False: When it comes to customer experience, there’s only one Nordstrom.Well — at least, there can only be one company called Nordstrom. But is there only room for one company that creates an employee-empowered culture, focuses on the customer, and provides an...Read More
May 20 2014
Your customers — let’s imagine that they spend less than five dollars in your store. That, on average, they’ll spend roughly three minutes while they’re there. You don’t know who they are, nor do you have any of their contact details — but you do know there are...Read More
May 19 2014
What are the leaders of customer experience doing differently? Which of their best practices should you incorporate into your business?The Medallia 2014 Customer Benchmark is our annual analysis of just these questions. Created by the Medallia Institute, the Benchmark incorporates data from...Read More
May 17 2014
Chris Zane, founder and president of Zane’s Cycles, likes to think of things very differently. He shared his approach in a keynote at Medallia’s Experience 2014. The core of it? Understanding that there’s a lifetime value to every one of his customers. Zane has calculated that...Read More
May 16 2014
Improving the customer experience is finding its way to the top of more and more CEO’s list of priorities. You’d imagine that the obvious thing would be to focus on customer engagement. But according to NPS guru and co-author of The Ultimate Question 2.0, Rob Markey...Read More
May 07 2014
Why even care about customer experience? Intuitively, lots of folks in business understand the value of it — from their experience as customers. But when it comes to prioritizing it as a business, there always seem to be skeptics — skeptics arguing that there are better places to...Read More
Apr 11 2014
Just because you own the company, doesn’t mean that you own the experience. Whether you rely on frontlines or franchisees, many business leaders must trust individuals far beyond their immediate reach to dictate customer experience and represent brand. This is not a new concept in business....Read More