My POSITIVE Customer Experience Newsletter for September coincides with the Autumn Trade Fairs season: whatever your industry it’s a time to check in with the market, with your collaborators and competitors and with your business strategy and plan for the foreseeable future.
It’s time to move on from the holiday season and commit to the actions you will take to build Brexit resilience.
The newsletter contains 10 Top Tips to help you navigate the next few uncertain months and come out stronger.
I’m often asked to explain what exactly it is that I do.
The short answer is: I help Retail, Tourism and Hospitality organisations increase sales, productivity and profitability through creating POSITIVE Customer Experiences, Communication and Leadership.
The next question is, what’s “Customer Experience” – how does it differ from “Customer Service?”
I visited a museum at the weekend – just scraping in on the last day of a heavily-promoted, blockbuster exhibition.
As I waited at the ticket desk, I noticed that, despite there being a queue, only one team member was selling tickets – and yet there were four team members behind that desk. Two of the other three were having a chat; the other was (there’s no other word for it) slumped in her chair, staring into space.
The exhibition was great – I’d recommend it to you, but it’s over!
Also over is the massive opportunity the museum had to maximise its return on investment…
My newsletter this month was updated – literally a “Stop Press” moment – to reflect the incredible story of Leicester City’s achievement in winning the English Premier League. Pretty magnanimous of me, I feel, as a Spurs fan for most of my life!
Leicester’s story, and as importantly, their brand of lightning-fast, counter-attacking football, have captured the nation’s imagination, and in doing so, perfectly reflect the attributes of a POSITIVE Customer Experience…
Understanding how, and why, customers, and their attitudes, aspirations and behaviours will change – even in the next five years – is obviously essential to business. That’s why I focused on the future in two presentations I recently gave at an international conference in Zagreb.
If the future customer will define future business, then it’s essential to define the future customer. Grab a cup of coffee, then read on…
As I prepare to leave Zagreb, I’m excited at the prospect of returning soon, to work with new partners to help Croatia and the Balkan states to realise their potential. It takes hard work, it takes commitment, it takes creativity; but above all it takes a fundamental belief that, regardless of cultural differences, regardless of historical and bureaucratic hindrances, we human beings were put on this Earth to celebrate the miracle of our existence, and to collaborate in order to progress the betterment of our human condition.
What a night I had at Create in Canterbury’s Fruitworks! Create’s mission is simple and uplifting: “Create for change, for innovation, for discovery, for you.”
This business networking event (“Awesome people talking about awesome things”) gave me the opportunity to share a taster of my Communication programme “It’s a Zoo Around Here” – here’s seven things you should know about the programme:
Our latest newsletter (henceforth to be known as the Customer Experience Expert Briefing) is out: you can read it here.
On National Poetry Day (celebrated, it has to be said, with rather more enthusiasm and profile than National Customer Service Week). I heard on the radio about a brilliant website featuring pop songs re-written as Shakespearean sonnets. I decided, as a tribute both to Poetry and Customer Service, to write a sonnet on the subject of Customer Service…
This month’s Customer Experience Expert newsletter is inspired (if that is the right word) by the Labour Party leadership contest. We’ve seen a number of fascinating elections in recent months, and this one is no exception. But what, if anything, does this leadership election teach us about the nature of leadership?
As usual, the newsletter aims to provide a combination of useful or thought-provoking material, plus some light relief, presented as a quick read.
My philosophy on how to sell more of something is simple: you have to explain what it is, you have to make it look desirable, and you have to ensure that it creates an appropriate impact on your Customer.
One of my hobbyhorses is that most visitor attractions fail to maximise sales of guidebooks because they don’t follow this simple approach.
The key principle is to get the timing right. Whenever I’ve been involved in designing shops, cafes or visitor centres I’ve ensured that signature products have pride of place, in a prime location with point of sale that is written from the Customer’s point of view.
