The Customer Obsession Advantage

AI is one of the hottest topics in industry right now, and that's one of the topics I delved into with Kailey Raymond on the latest episode of Segment's Good Data, Better Marketing podcast. Among other things, we talked about * The impact AI will have on Customer Obsession * Hallmarks of Customer Obsession like giving customers what they want before they know they need it * How policies can be a telltale sign of whether your organization is Customer Obsessed or not Make time to listen to this episode, and you'll be treated to lots of concrete examples and takeaways that you can use right away. Click on the link below to get started. Segment's Good Data, Better Marketing podcast is also available on Spotify and Google. See comments below for those links. #ai #cx #customerexperience #customerobsession #customerobsessed #customerservice #employeeexperience #twilio The Customer Obsession Advantage https://lnkd.in/eP-hxK6S

Recently I posted about a glitch that enabled customers to purchase first class tickets from Qantas airlines at 85% off the normal price then I saw the story linked below about an ATM “glitch” at Chase that allowed people to withdraw amounts that they didn’t have in their accounts. The latter “glitch” is in quotes because it isn’t a glitch at all, and I thought it was worth it to point out the distinction between an error that produced a fortuitous opportunity for customers to get a screaming deal (Qantas) and a deliberate attempt by people to defraud a bank to obtain funds they know aren’t theirs (Chase). The scenario at Chase was instigated by TikTok videos that advised people that they could get “free money” if they deposited large unfunded (or underfunded) checks at Chase ATMs then withdrew the portion of the funds that became immediately available before the check bounced. A post about this practice on X was viewed 7.5 million times, and subsequently long lines formed at Chase banks in NYC. The bank has since warned that this amounts to check fraud and locked accounts for people who attempted to exploit the “glitch.” It’s very surprising that people even have to be told that this is wrong and illegal. It should be obvious that it is nothing other than theft and that they could be prosecuted for it. The irony of this scenario is that for honest customers, the bank gives them immediate access to some of the funds on checks they deposit as a benefit to improve their deposit experience. It’s pretty sad that some would see this as an opportunity to defraud their bank. https://lnkd.in/g-5JBiW4 #cx #customerexperience #customerobsession #customerobsessed #qantas #chase #ATM

Per the Fortune article linked below, like Southwest Airlines, Amazon is another company that is experiencing challenges surrounding its culture, which has been one of the foundational elements of its success. One of the elements that differentiated both companies from their peers was that they didn’t only clearly articulate their cultural imperatives, they made them come alive by embedding them in everything they do. Like the article puts it, “Any Amazon employee can recite most of them by heart (those who can’t won’t last very long).” For anyone who has spent time on the inside at Amazon (me included), they know that Amazonians can recite these principles not because they make an effort at memorizing them, but because they are so pervasive and they are used so frequently that you can’t help but know them. At least that’s how it used to be. This just highlights how challenging it is to preserve a differentiated culture through leadership transitions. That’s one of the points I make in my book Blueprint for Customer Obsession - “companies must be intentional about succession if a Customer Obsessed culture is to survive and thrive past the tenure of its progenitor” Successors have to be equally as committed to the culture as the progenitor, especially in times as challenging as these. I’m not making any judgment about the commitment of the successors at these companies. I imagine that they were chosen because that commitment was unquestioned. Yet, the aftermath of the pandemic has produced some challenges that would stress even the most versatile cultures. There might be some hiccups along the way, but I think ultimately Amazon and Southwest Airlines will be alright. What do you think? https://lnkd.in/ef4G6Cht #cx #customerexperience #customerobsessed #customerobsession #ex #employeeobsession #customerservice #consumerinsights #amazon #starbucks

Chick-fil-A Restaurants does it again! They’ve just launched a new drive-thru only concept to accelerate fulfillment of orders in response to the insane demand in their drive-thrus. It features an elevated kitchen twice the size of their typical restaurant above four lanes capable of holding up to 75 cars each. Plus they have conveyor belts to transport orders to team members in the fulfillment area who deliver to customers so there’s still a hospitality element. It’s worth noting that Taco Bell also launched a similar concept previously. Yet, in typical Chick-fil-A Restaurants fashion they’ve taken it to another level by offering lanes for both mobile orders and traditional drive-thru orders, plus there is a dedicated lane for 3rd party delivery orders. It seems like they worked backward from the customer and sweat all of the details. The concept is still a prototype depending on whether it delivers the intended results for customers. In the meantime, it provides a great illustration of another Customer Obsession principle - Innovate relentlessly! Love to hear what you think of how they’ve approached this. Check out the story in QSR Magazine share your thoughts. https://lnkd.in/eyRYrbPg #cx #customerexperience #customerobsessed #customerobsession #customerservice #chickfila #tacobell #qsr #qsrmagazine

The headline in the article by Stephanie Mehta linked below piqued my interest and it’s one that I also found quite disappointing. Per Jennifer Tejada, CEO PagerDuty - “You have to anticipate these failures because they are the new normal,” It turns out that I actually agree with the main premise of the article, which is that businesses should be intentional about planning for tech outages so that they can rapidly recover and ensure continuous business operations in the event of one. That said, there’s no reason that outages like CrowdStrike’s should become the new normal. This is one case where looking backwards might help us to move forward. There are two frameworks that have been successfully used to prevent network outages and to minimize software bugs that were once more widely recognized as top industry standards and that we need to take another look at. First, there’s Five Nines (99.999%) reliability that was embraced by the telecom industry. It required that architectures, processes, and policies be designed to ensure that network outages were limited to no more than five minutes of downtime per year. It was designed to be an always on business and they did an excellent job of living up to that standard. These days many more businesses are supposed to be always on and some even position themselves as always on businesses, but they aren’t architected to the five nines standard. Maybe it’s time they should be because in some ways the stakes are much higher now and and businesses’ track records aren’t living up to the always on hype. Meanwhile, Carnegie Mellon University’s Capability Maturity Model (CMMI) Level 5 was once embraced as the standard for determining whether a company’s software development practices were designed to deliver bug-free software. Both of these standards have been criticized for being overkill, too onerous, or too expensive, but you can’t argue with their results. They have lived up to the hype as advertised and delivered for the businesses and industries that have snapped to them. Meanwhile, the costs of adhering to these standards pales in comparison to the costs incurred by meltdowns from outages like the CrowdStrike one. Think about it. Have you ever tried to make a toll-free call that didn’t go through because the network was down? No, the problems we are seeing in other industries now are because these standards have been pushed to the back burner or never embraced at all. We need to rethink that urgently! Weigh in with your thoughts and don’t be shy. https://lnkd.in/e4zG3T5C #cx #customerexperience #customerobsessed #customerobsession #crowdstrike #microsoft

The Budget / Avis Rent a Car case described in the article linked below strikes me as a classic example of the wrong way to respond when something goes wrong in the middle of delivering a service to a customer. In a nutshell, here’s what happened: Avis Budget Group provided a car that wasn’t properly registered, at least not from the perspective of the police The car was pulled over and impounded by the police leaving the customer and his family stranded by the side of the road for hours. They didn’t provide any solution for the customer to get to his planned destination (a college graduation) in a timely manner. They didn’t proactively offer any concessions for their slip up then doubled down on their mistake by threatening to prosecute him for not returning the car that had been impounded by the police Clearly this was an unusual situation, but the reps who the customer dealt with didn’t resort to any unusual measures to deal with the customer’s problem. They just gave standard answers. The company didn’t resort to any unusual measures to recover the customer experience. They just did everything according to their standard script. Eventually they got around to dealing with the customer’s issues, which were quite a lot by this time. He had to get a car from another rental company. He had to incur additional expenses because that car couldn’t be dropped off where they had originally planned. The list goes on. The point is that by the time the company got around to addressing the issue, the fix was big enough that they had the customer sign a non-disclosure for the settlement. That’s not a great outcome! The thing is that no matter how great a company is experiences will go wrong sometimes and some of experiences are going to be unusual. To be truly Customer Obsessed, your team needs to be trained recognize how to recover bad experiences as well as unusual ones. Your business has to be intentional about that and your practices have to be designed to account for that. Plus, your team has to be empowered to deal with the situations that aren’t accounted for. Have you had any experiences like this one that a company recovered successfully or even one that they didn’t? I’d love to hear about it or any other comments you’d like to share. In the meantime, for the full story check out the article linked below. https://lnkd.in/ey8d_964 #cx #customerexperience #customerloyalty #customerobsessed #customerobsession

Would you buy barbecue brisket at a rest stop gas station? I think I just heard a very loud and resounding “NO” from most of you, and I’m not least bit surprised. If that’s the case, why does some of the most popular brisket in Texas come from a gas station? That’s right, a gas station! That’s because Buc-ee's, Ltd. gas stations are known for obsessing over the things that customers care about most, e.g., award-winning clean bathrooms, well-stocked convenience stories, and freshly made food. They even announce - "Fresh, hot brisket on the board!" so customers can get it at its peak freshness. Buc-ee's, Ltd. isn’t your average rest stop gas station by any stretch of the imagination. They have succeeded in demonstrating that by obsessing over customers you can turn a place that is an unappealing as a rest stop gas station into an inviting place that people stop at not just because they have to on the way to somewhere else but because they want to. Check out the article linked below for more insights into Buc-ee's, Ltd. secret sauce of Customer Obsession and circle back with your thoughts about how other businesses could differentiate by adopting some of their practices or the spirit underlying them https://lnkd.in/euDUtnbN #cx #customerexperience #customerobsessed #customerobsession #Bucee #krispykreme

Wow, what a year-and-a-half it’s been for Southwest Airlines! Their reputation for being a Customer Obsessed company has really been challenged, beginning with the flight cancellation meltdown during the 2022 holidays and subsequently by a series of safety incidents in the skies and on runways. Then yesterday they announced a change to their 50-year old policy of open seating. The good news is that the change appears to be rooted in customer feedback. I got a chance to speak with a few news outlets about the change and its implications for customers, including CBS News, The Dallas Morning News, and The Baltimore Sun. Please check out my comments in The Dallas Morning News article linked below and let me know your thoughts. Links to other articles are in the comments. https://lnkd.in/ehPiZzxr #southwestairlines #cx #customerexperience #customerobsessed #customerservice #customersuccess #cbsnews #thedallasmorningnews #thebaltimoresun