customer experience articles

The Internet hasn’t destroyed brick-and-mortar retailing, as many once feared. But has it ever changed consumer behavior. Across the U.S., stores are playing catch-up with shoppers habituated not only to the speed and convenience of purchasing online but also to the control it gives them. The Web provides shopping when you like, where you like, [...]

Not only did the airline move quickly to apologize, accept full responsibility, and proactively introduce a passenger’s bill of rights (all effectively communicated by e-mail from CEO David Neeleman) but they actually had someone call to apologize. The caller was not some outsourced telemarketer working from a script. Instead, she actually asked for what went [...]

E-mail is a powerful way to help small and medium businesses build customer relationships and increase repeat business. It is a quick, personal way to communicate with your customers and keep your business in customers’ minds. Unlike traditional direct marketing campaigns — which can take months to develop and execute — e-mail campaigns can be [...]

The customer experience doesn’t happen neatly down each individual silo. The customer experiences a company horizontally - across the silos. This creates the breeding ground for the lack of respect customers feel and the discontent they have with us. The typical silo structure bumps the customer disjointedly along to deliver the outcome of its experience. [...]

The concept behind CEM is to monitor customer touch points and interactions to build customer loyalty and improve customer retention. It also ensures that customer service representatives are consistent in what they tell the customer. “One of the differences between a CRM and CEM approach (is) you’re not taking a once-a-year snapshot of what you [...]

Frederick Reichheld, in The Loyalty Effect, pointed out that many, if not most, customers are loyal not to the brand or the firm, but to the people who serve them at the firm. When you lose employees, you often lose customers as well. Any marketing program aimed at customer retention must begin with looking at [...]

Reducing defections by 5% boosts profits 25% to 85%. The basic premise is that a relatively small increase in customer retention (loyalty) will drive relatively large increases in profits.

Reed Hastings, founder and CEO of Netflix — and Fast Company’s Customers First Award winner — talked recently with Fast Company Associate Editor Jena McGregor about customer experience, the Amazon and Blockbuster threats, and what’s in store for the online DVD rental service company.

The starring role in Netflix’s customer experience strategy goes to its top-secret, highly customized technology, which offers its more than 3 million customers their own personal box office. We peek behind the scenes at our Oscar-worthy Customers First Award winner.

A design whiz aims to enhance the home page - without fixing what ain’t broke. On one hand it’s a rare opportunity to shape the customer experience and design of a seminal Web portal that draws millions of visitors in a single day. “Anything I do will have a huge impact on a lot of [...]