“The truth of the matter is, true differentiation – sustainable differentiation – is rarely a function of well-roundedness;” writes Harvard professor Youngme Moon, “it is typically a function of lopsidedness.” (Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd). Youngme Moon illustrates this with stories about IKEA – a throwaway brand in a traditionally permanent industry, Dove – using pictures of average women in a traditionally photoshopped, airbrushed industry, and Google – creating a stripped down search interface in an industry cramming search pages with every button and pop-up imaginable. And while we all understand intuitively the answer to the question “Why do these brands work?,” it becomes much more difficult to answer this question about ourselves.
Posts Tagged ‘Customer Feedback’
How Customer Feedback Can Help Create Meaningful Differentiation
Tuesday, December 6th, 2011Evaluating the Consistency and Quality of Your Customer Experiences
Monday, November 7th, 2011
We love the “wow” moments of customer service – when a committed employee goes above and beyond to make someone’s day or when a company goes out of its way to correct a service failure. But a customer experience strategy that relies only on superhero moments of great customer service is little more than a nice-sounding dream. A customer experience strategy must focus on creating experiences that are replicable and consistently great. To do this we have outlined seven important areas to evaluate:
Outsourcing Inspiration: How Customer Feedback Creates Meaning at Work
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011
Employee Engagement and Customer Engagement Connection (Fig. 1)
Consistency: Key to Building Customer Engagement
Wednesday, December 8th, 2010
Oscar Wilde may have disdained consistency as “the last refuge of the unimaginative,” but he wasn’t a businessman. In the business world, consistency is a distinguishing characteristic of thriving companies. Indeed, PeopleMetrics’ 2010 Most Engaged Customers (MEC) study found consistency to be the third step in achieving full Customer Engagement, which in turn correlates to desirable business outcomes such as higher stock prices.
Customer Engagement vs. Customer Satisfaction: Which Should You Follow?
Thursday, September 30th, 2010
“A science is as mature as its measurement tools,” Louis Pastuer once said. The concept applies to the business world as well. In order to survive, companies must retain customers. The tricky part is figuring out which measurement tools can be used to effectively assess, predict, and improve customer loyalty. Since the 1980s, customer satisfaction has been a popular measurement tool for improving retention. In the intervening decades, however, many business experts have questioned the importance of customer satisfaction, pointing out its weak impact on loyalty. These days, many organizations are instead tracking Customer Engagement. Following a brief history of customer feedback metrics, this article will discuss why Customer Engagement is an especially powerful “measuring stick” in the current market.