customer experience articles

DEAR electronics makers, you must be getting pretty excited about the holiday season. That’s when we, your customers, hand you a huge chunk of your annual income - about $17 billion of our cash.
But what will you give us in return? Do you really want to earn our love and loyalty? Do you want us [...]

Is customer experience management anything other than the repackaging of original CRM concepts? Angela Eager investigates. CRM is about as fashionable as a dot-com IPO, but vendors and consultants still have to try to make money out of it; and organisations who invested in the initiative have no choice but to carry on in the [...]

Even the most-admired businesses have a few flaws. And they should want to get better, right? So we've helpfully identified opportunities for improvement, as they say on performance evaluations, at companies otherwise celebrated for great customer experiences. Here's how they're fixing the problems — or not.

While considered among the best Houston health care providers, Memorial Hermann's previous customer-focused organizational efforts were perceived as flavor of the month by employees, resulting in temporary buy-in and unsustainable customer satisfaction improvements, making new changes a challenge.

After an unsatisfactory customer experience a few days ago, I had a follow up conversation with one of the managers. The response was that customers should understand that they cannot always get what they want. I also had to hear this decision maker let me know that he had a lot of things to worry [...]

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.

Craig Newmark spends his days fielding hundreds of customer emails from a corner of Reverie, his favorite coffee shop in San Francisco. “Much of what good customer service is made of are things that nobody notices,” he says, “until you stop doing them.”

Happy employees mean happy customers - a lesson learned from USAA’s generous perks and receptive atmosphere. USAA’s 13,000 customer service agents give new meaning to the phrase “frontline employees.” “[We have] a dedication to keeping the decision making at the lowest level of the company,” says David Travers of USAA’s approach to answering customer calls.Employees [...]

Talbot’s innovative online reservation system fits the customer well. Shopping online for clothes could be a huge time saver for busy professional women - if only they matched the exact size and shape of the models wearing the goods. In February, classic-apparel retailer Talbots went high tech to solve that disconnect with Style Search, a [...]

Travelocity is the customer’s knight in shining armor when it comes to supplier isputes. That kind of customers-first attitude has led Peluso to launch Travelocity’s new “customer championship” initiative, which guarantees that it will step in and advocate for customers when things go wrong with suppliers. In preparation for the initiative’s launch, each business line [...]