Quant Data, Qual Data: Use Just One To Derail Your CX Efforts

I love a good data graphic. One of my favorites comes from the website Flowing Data (and is replicated in the image above). You can clearly see that the number of Rambo’s kills increased across Rambo Parts I, II, III, and IV. You can also see that in each subsequent movie, Rambo makes a larger […]
10 Ways To Use Customer Journey Maps

Many companies embark on customer journey mapping projects without having a clear idea of how they’ll actually use the outputs. At the end such efforts, the CX team has checked “journey mapping” off its to-do list, but is left wondering what to do next… So before you wander aimlessly into customer journey land, first determine […]
The Disconnects Among Today’s Customer-Centric Disciplines

When I learned about the field of user experience in the mid 1990s, its primary objective—making technology easy to use—was easy for me to grasp. My education in cognitive science, psychology, and computer science gave me tools and frameworks that I could immediately apply. Service design took a bit longer for me to grok. […]
Design For Your Employees—Because The Employee Experience Matters

Almost 10 years ago, I visited a designer friend who worked at Google’s Mountain View headquarters. The office tour was impressive, as expected. But what’s stuck with me for all of these years was lunch. Yes, lunch. We had king crab legs. All you could eat. For free. Google’s employee perks are the stuff of […]
Travel Marketers: Does Your Loyalty Program Experience Miss The Mark?

Within the highly competitive travel industry, companies are under immense pressure to differentiate their offerings, solidify their brand in positive customer memories, and generate lasting customer loyalty. But sometimes this exuberance inadvertently leads to communications and interactions that degrade the experience of travel companies’ most loyal customers. Those that want to keep their best customers […]
How To Guide Your Customers To Mutually Beneficial Choices

After a recent office supply run, I happily provided my email address one letter at a time to the friendly cashier in exchange for the promise of digital receipt. A few days later I received not only my receipt, but also a message thanking me for joining the Office Depot mailing list. Though it was […]
What Makes For A Good Email Opt-Out/Opt-Down Experience?

In a moment of optimism and good faith, I visited healthcare.gov one time last December and somehow, foolishly, provided my email address. Like millions of Americans, I soon found myself on the receiving end of a deluge of increasingly apocalyptic messages reminding me the deadline for enrollment was nigh. I never finished setting up an […]
Welcome, Amelia Sizemore!

I’m thrilled to announce that I have a new partner in crime: Amelia Sizemore. Amelia and I worked together for several years on the customer experience team at Forrester Research, where we became close friends and terrific collaborators on both research and consulting projects. Amelia will be working with me to develop several new service […]
Humanizing Healthcare Through Hands, Heads, and Hearts

The following should not be news to you, but it’s sometimes easy to forget: Patients aren’t just lines in a spreadsheet, records in a CRM system, or the list of ailments in their medical records. They are people. And while lots of healthcare companies are talking about “humanizing the healthcare experience,” I get the feeling that […]
The Super Bowl’s Biggest Loser? Facebook

The Super Bowl is an annual bellwether for how brands and traditional ad agencies think about digital marketing and multichannel customer experiences. Since 2007, I’ve been watching with one eye on the game and the other on how TV ads promote (or don’t) digital channels. Over the years, we’ve moved from basically zero mentions of […]