#2 Honesty from the top would be refreshing, Gartner awards for worst customer service

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Welcome to my second newsletter covering customer experience and customer-centric business strategy. The four topics this week are:

  1. News items and thoughts from the world of strategy and customer experience.
  2. Highlights from my own blog.
  3. Notable customer experience items from other sites.
  4. Looking forward.

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We have had 600 views of the first blog post “Hello world – you need a strategy.” That is great for a brand new blog. Lots of positive feedback too. Thank you for spreading the news. Please continue to let your friends and colleagues know and encourage them to sign up for the newsletter.

Thought for the week: Some honesty from the top would be refreshing

I have noticed a strange phenomenon over time. I suppose it is to do with human nature. When a business is going well, and the customers are happy, CEOs and leadership teams are quick to claim responsibility. When business is declining and the customers are unhappy, CEOs and leadership teams are once again quick… to blame outside factors or prior management.

I would love to hear a CEO be honest in their all-employee communication and say “I want to apologize to all of you. The leadership team and I made some mistakes. We chose a strategy that let our competitors win. We have spoken to some large customers who left us and we understand why. We are announcing a new busienss strategy today. Unfortunately, our mistakes mean we have to cut some costs to find the cash we need to invest in the new strategy…”

Wouldn’t that be a refreshing dose of honesty?

Our latest blog posts

Older posts are of course still available on the blog page.

image Customer-centric cost reduction – there are just 3.5 ways to reduce cost

This post is about customer-centric cost reduction, an apparent oxymoron. It includes the list of the only 3.5 ways of sustainably cutting costs that exist. Unfortunately, faced with a profitability crisis or a need to find money to invest, most companies want to sort out their P&L first and worry about keeping customers onside later.
image Differences between B2B and B2C

8 reasons business to consumer (B2C) techniques for improving customer experience may need to be changed for Business to Business (B2B). Bear in mind that many companies we think of as B2C are actually B2B because they sell to intermediaries who then sell on to consumers.

Notable customer experience items from other sites

Introducing Customer-Employee NPS

Matti Airas invited me to do a guest post for the Etuma blog. I used the opportunity to introduce what I think is a new concept: customer-employee NPS. Read more on the Etuma site here.

The Guardian’s 2016 awards for worst customer service

It is surprising how popular bad news is. The Guardian published its awards for worst customer service here. The reactions were such that they published readers’ own stories in a second article here. Sad reading. I wish I could say I did not enjoy some of the stories.

Looking forward

I confirm that I expect to be able to publish the results of my research on the relationship between employee and customer satisfaction next Tuesday, January 24th. I have most of the data I need and will be able to cover well over 300 companies this time.To avoid any confusion, employee satisfaction is not the same as employee engagement. What I am doing with this research is testing the truth of the statement “Employee satisfaction drives customer satisfaction.” Yes, I expect the results to be controversial and provocative.

Thanks for reading.

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You can also email me, Maurice FitzGerald, at mfg@customerstrategy.net.

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