When we talk about remarkable customer experiences, we usually think about creating something that is "bigger, better, more". I often argue in conversations about customer experience that “you don’t need fireworks to deliver remarkable customer experiences". Bigger, better, more is not the only way to deliver great customer experiences. It might be the most [...]

Jeneanne Rae observes in a recent article in BusinessWeek that "Design Thinking" is receiving increasing attention in the corporate world to crack difficult business problems where current approaches to innovation don’t deliver results. After Total Quality Management (TQM), Six Sigma and Business Process Reengineering (BPR), is Design Thinking yet another fad or is there [...]

Companies are increasingly shifting to self-service technology as a way to substitute expensive “human services” with cheaper solutions that empower customers to use an organization’s products or services. Examples can be found at airports (check in counters), train stations (ticket counters), banks (ATMs and Internet banking) and even in selected McDonalds restaurants where you are [...]

Strada del sole, a Swiss manufacturer of sunglasses, is offering service on their website that allows you to try different models with the help of their webcam and a small program that projects the sunglasses on your face. Here is what it looks like, if you have a webcam you can check it out [...]

The emergence of Web 2.0 technologies (blogs, forums, social networks, has created a public forum for customers to voice their opinions about companies, products and services. One challenge for organizations is that it is difficult to control what is happening outside their sphere of influence on blogs, forums or social networks. Dell Hell is just [...]

The question whether our economy is in a recession is a difficult one that not even our smartest economists are able to answer. It is not important whether the worst is already over or is yet to come, businesses are facing challenges to win and retain customers today. Companies that have systematically built relationships with [...]

Checkout Smartshop and other similar mobile price comparison software might soon be on the list of most-hated technologies of brick-and-mortar retailers. Price comparison for shoppers has become a lot easier through different online services yet most traditional brick-and-mortar retailers avoid these platforms since they cannot match the competitive prices on the Internet due to different, [...]

It is easy to focus on creating always better and more differentiated products and services when designing for remarkable customer experiences. Maybe it is simply human, that we tend to not look at situations when a product or service fails (think positive!) your customer’s loyalty will be negatively impacted. I see a huge opportunity for [...]

Recently I have been traveling quite a lot, mostly to locations where I haven’t been before. Since I use a BlackBerry Curve with GPS and Google Maps Mobile (GMM) as my main mobile phone, I thought that my mobile companion can definitely help me answer a lot of questions while on the road. I [...]

Delivering differentiated services that lead to remarkable experiences requires a thorough understanding of your customers. While this is a highly complex task that requires an analysis from different perspectives some patterns can help to identify these potential areas. The following is such a pattern that can be used to better understand the roles of your [...]