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Don’t ask questions if you already know the answers

A good lawyer never asks a question for which he doesn’t already know the answer.  That’s not necessarily just about being smart and being prepared.  Frankly, it’s a manipulation technique used to sway juries and judges:  When they get a witness on the stand, the most important thing for an attorney is to control the [...]

By |2021-02-09T16:14:29+00:00February 9th, 2021|CX Culture, CX Strategy, CX Thoughts|Comments Off on Don’t ask questions if you already know the answers

Employees are NOT your Customers

Can I start a controversial article being completely uncontroversial?  Thanks.  Here goes:  Good employee engagement is an absolute requirement in order to drive good CX.  Okay… now, feel free to refer to that as you read on, because I’m not trying to say that engagement isn’t fundamental; in fact, it’s a bedrock necessity if you’re [...]

By |2021-01-25T16:12:42+00:00January 25th, 2021|CX Culture, CX Strategy, CX Thoughts, Leadership|Comments Off on Employees are NOT your Customers

Do you hear yourself?

Have you ever had to say to a friend, “it’s not what you said, it’s how you said it”?  I remember a client who used that to describe some of the interactions their managers would have with front-line employees as an example of the need for a professional communications course I offered at the time.  [...]

By |2021-01-18T16:06:50+00:00January 18th, 2021|CX Culture, CX Strategy, CX Thoughts|Comments Off on Do you hear yourself?

Do you love your Customers as much as your employees do?

We hear all the time that hiring is destiny:  You have to be very careful when looking for new team members—especially those who are on the front-line and Customer facing—that they’re empathetic, Customer-focused, and just plain nice.  In fact, there’s an entire cottage industry growing around hiring for your support/services/sales teams to ensure you’ve got [...]

By |2021-01-14T15:29:36+00:00January 14th, 2021|CX Culture, CX Strategy, CX Thoughts|Comments Off on Do you love your Customers as much as your employees do?

When you can’t answer, “Why?”

I wrote recently about an incident at a local grocery store that sparked some thought about how sometimes we provide excuses instead of offering solutions.  Likewise, sometimes at my gym, I come across a piece of equipment that’s out of order for some reason or another.  Usually, there’s a note pinned to it alerting us that [...]

By |2021-01-11T16:32:23+00:00January 11th, 2021|CX Culture, CX Strategy, CX Thoughts|Comments Off on When you can’t answer, “Why?”

CYA is not CX

The other day I spent about 45 minutes round-trip (short by standards…read on) and about $45 mailing Christmas cards.  Happy Holidays to our family and friends who receive one from us! I use the word “mailing” deliberately because that’s all I was doing.  I wasn’t shopping for them, digging through my computer to find the [...]

By |2020-12-17T15:52:43+00:00December 17th, 2020|CX Culture, CX Strategy, CX Thoughts|Comments Off on CYA is not CX

CX professionals are the best (and worst) Customers

The Wall Street Journal has a daily column called “Best of the Web Today.”  Its originator, James Taranto, created it as a bit of a light-hearted end-of-the-day quick-hit piece with a bit of political commentary thrown in as well.  A recurring gag is to make little jokes about headlines published around the Web that, regardless [...]

By |2020-12-14T16:36:57+00:00December 14th, 2020|Consulting, CX Culture, CX Jobs, CX Strategy, CX Thoughts|Comments Off on CX professionals are the best (and worst) Customers

Some non-CX thoughts on Tony Hsieh

The turn in the narrative regarding Tony Hsieh’s death has been striking over the past few days as stories (like these in the Journal and Forbes) began to come to light based on accounts from those who knew him better than the rest of us who had merely admired him from afar.  While the universal [...]

By |2020-12-09T16:12:24+00:00December 9th, 2020|CX Culture, CX Thoughts, Leadership|Comments Off on Some non-CX thoughts on Tony Hsieh

Unnecessary escalations

This spring and summer have been rough on travel.  My partner and I actually had a hotel cancel our reservation after the world ended.  It was complicated by the fact that we’d used a combination of credit card points and cash to make the reservation for two different rooms, one for us and one for [...]

By |2020-11-30T16:57:07+00:00November 30th, 2020|CX Culture, CX Strategy, CX Thoughts|Comments Off on Unnecessary escalations

Good CX Principle #3: Take on the stress

Today I’m posting the third article in a five-part series on the Principles of Good CX.  There’s an intro to the series here, and parts one and two are here and here, respectively. I’ve previously mentioned the tongue-in-cheek observation that our jobs would all be a lot easier without the Customers, right?  (Forget that our jobs [...]

By |2020-11-16T15:46:23+00:00November 16th, 2020|CX Culture, CX Strategy, CX Thoughts, Principles of Good CX|Comments Off on Good CX Principle #3: Take on the stress
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