Customers and employees are still underserved and underappreciated. Some would say, in business, social media lost its way. Others would argue social media failed to live up to the hype. There are unfortunately still many examples of businesses not getting it, viewing or outsourcing it as a mere “marketing” function, and operating in siloes where social becomes anti-social by design. Without purpose and collaboration, social will always be just another thing that businesses use to defer the inevitable…change. Even though…
The 80s Called, They Want Their Contact Center Back
Customer experience is meant to be evocative not reactive… We are entering an era of customer-centricity, mostly because we have to. But also, because employing a customer focus is the right thing to do. I guess businesses lost their way at some point. Blame quarterly earnings. Blame technology. Blame politics. But over the years, we overlooked the importance of the “C” and “R” and instead scaled the “M” in CRM. It didn’t hurt that we found ways to save time…
ContextMatters Episode 3: Brian Williams, The Future of Social Media + The Anti-Vaccine Movement
Three weeks in and three episodes are now online. Chris Saad and I really got into these topics in the latest episode of ContextMatters. There are parts that are charged and definitely NSFW. We stray a bit away from tech to tackle timely subjects related to journalism and the future of social media as well as the hotly debated topic of vaccinations. Schedule Topic 1: First up is Brian Williams and the controversy surrounding his news coverage in Iraq. We…
Companies Profit When Customers Suffer
You’ve heard it a million times, a happy customer tells a couple of people and an unhappy customer tells everyone. Yet to this day, executives tend to run business strategy with an emphasis on transactions over experiences. More so, business value is expressed in short-term performance metrics and reports to an audience of shareholders and stakeholders over the very people who keep them in business…your customers. It’s all a bit absurd when you think about it. I know, I know…it’s…
ContextMatters Episode 2: T.J. Miller and ‘Bitchgate’ and CNN’s Sex, Drugs and Silicon Valley
Welcome to the second episode of ContextMatters. My co-host Chris Saad and I are having fun recording this series. More so, we’re enjoying expanding the community beyond our world here in Silicon Valley to explore the things that affect business, tech and culture. In this episode, we take out our macro lens to look closely at the strange fascination with what could best be described as Silicon Valley’s unconventional behavior. Listen (also embedded below). Schedule Topic 1: We attempt to…
Attention is a Precious Commodity: Earn it and Spend it Wisely
There’s an oft-shared quote that I’d also love to share with you here, “If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter.”  French mathematician, physicist, writer and philosopher Blaise Pascal essentially captured the essence of thoughtful and purposeful communication with a bold but confusing statement in 1657. At first blush, his words almost seem counter-intuitive. I mean after all, how can spending more time writing a letter equate to its downsizing? That’s the point. Think about…
Why is AirBnB Singled Out by Government When Web 1.0 Competitors are Ignored?
Bloomberg’s Christian Thompson recently published a story on AirBnB and how it is and isn’t different than many Web 1.0 sites such as HomeExchange or HomeAway. Although only one or two lines from our discussion made the final story, the question and the answer are significant enough to share in this short post. Bloomberg: My question was why an outfit like Airbnb gets all this heat when something like Home Exchange doesn’t? My French in-laws use it all the time…
To Deliver a Great Customer Experience, Stop Focusing on the Customer You Think You Know
Guest post by Rajat Paharia (@rajatrocks), founder and chief products officer, Bunchball and author of Loyalty 3.0: How to Revolutionize Customer and Employee Engagement with Big Data and Gamification 2015 promises to be The Year of Customer Experience. Companies around the globe are resolving to become more customer-centric because, as Brian lays out quite eloquently in his book: “Now’s the time for an investment in something more than price, performance, or value. The future of business is about creating experience,…
Make Change Work for You: The Power of Observation
I’m a pretty private person usually. From time to time though, I share stories about my past to help others take their next step. This is one such case. Scott Steinberg is a good friend and the other of several books including his most recent title, Make Change Work for You. We chatted recently about lessons learned over the years. I wanted to share our conversation with you here… Scott Steinberg: You’ve been tremendously successful in your career. Would you call yourself…
Report: Some Brands Go All In on Mobile; Others Suffer from Mobile Mediocrity
Consumers aren’t just going digital, they’re also becoming increasingly mobile. To them, mobile isn’t the second screen, it’s the first screen. Brands however, struggle to keep up with them and as a result, mobile strategies are off target or underwhelming. This finding among many others is the result of new research conducted by my colleague Jaimy Szymanski and me. I’m proud to announce that the report, The Inevitability of a Mobile-Only Customer Experience, is available today for immediate download. Mobile…
