Experience This!

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EP164: Clothing, Catchers, and Communication! May 10, 2022

Show notes

Learn about getting back to basics when everything else isn't working, how changing the rules can inspire creativity and innovation, and the state of local businesses in a post-COVID world.

Bite-Sized Delight From the Episode:

• Get Back to the Basics of Focusing on Existing Customers - after years of trying to chase new customers, JC Penney's new CEO is focusing on retaining the local customers that already shop there.

• Make Your "Rules" Customer-Centric - When the Savannah Bananas wanted to enhance the experience of watching a baseball game, they designed a new set of rules for the game that were more fan-friendly, and in the process created a remarkable, entertaining, exciting experience.

• Don't Forget the Local Experience - Podium's "2022 State of Local Business" research found that today's consumers are looking for ease of doing business and price as the key differentiators for the local business experience.

Are You Looking for Things We Referenced?

• "JCPenney's CEO Is Done Chasing New Customers. 'We Are Loving Those Who Love Us.'" - Suzanne Kapner in the Wall Street Journal

• The Savannah Bananas on MLB Radio

• Making Meetings Better in the Hybrid Workplace - an ebook by our friends and partners at Mitel

• State of Local Business Report - by Podium

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EP163: Beginnings, Middles, and Endings! May 03, 2022

Show notes

Learn about a warm welcome that creates new loyalty, key tricks for keeping going when the experience starts to wane, and the importance of a final positive experience before a customer leaves.

Bite-Sized Delight From the Episode:

• Make Sure Your Employees are Loyal to Your Loyalty Program - Loyalty programs only work if everyone on your team genuinely understands the benefits and can explain them succinctly to your customers.

• Get Back to Basics - Alan Stein Jr.'s new book "Sustain Your Game: High Performance Keys to Manage Stress, Avoid Stagnation, and Beat Burnout" offers tips and techniques for performing at a high level over an extended period of time - something every CX professional needs to do.

• Make Canceling Easy - Offboarding is just as important as onboarding and is often the final memory a customer has of your brand when they go out into the marketplace and talk about their interactions with you. Make sure they have nice things to say by making it easy to quit doing business with you.

Are You Looking for Things We Referenced?

• Kwik Rewards

• Dick's Sporting Goods

• Sustain Your Game: High Performance Keys to Manage Stress, Avoid Stagnation, and Beat Burnout - by Alan Stein, Jr.

• Making Meetings Better in the Hybrid Workplace - an ebook by our friends and partners at Mitel

• LawDepot

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EP162: Crimes, Deliveries, and Charles Dickens?! Apr 26, 2022

Show notes

Learn about when good customers do bad things, the "last mile" in retail, and the "great expectations" of your customers.

Bite-Sized Delight From the Episode:

• It Could Always Be Worse - Customer experience professionals often worry about their customer fails and while we should always be trying to improve, it's also okay to laugh from time to time at customers' crazy expectations.

• Don't Forget the Last Mile - If you sell products that are delivered to your customers, the experience of delivery to their front door is STILL part of your experience. Make sure you deliver all the way!

• What Do Your Customers Really Expect? - Research from Chattermill shows that businesses may be delivering on their own expectations (internal), but most aren't meeting their customers' expectations (external).

Are You Looking for Things We Referenced?

• "43 'Customer Crimes' That Customer-Facing Workers Can't Stand" by Ross Yoder at BuzzFeed

• Making Meetings Better in the Hybrid Workplace - an ebook by our friends and partners at Mitel

• "Great eCXpectations: How to Deliver the CX Your Customers Really Want" - by Chattermill

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EP161: Van Gogh, Oh No, and Duo! Apr 19, 2022

Show notes

Learn about an immersive art experience that keeps you coming back for more, a 90th birthday party gone awry, and the importance of cross-cultural consciousness.

Bite-Sized Delight From the Episode:

• Explore Immersive Experiences - Immersive visual and audio components that bring old art to life in new and mesmerizing ways at the Van Gogh Immersive Exhibit offer inspiration for what brands can (and should) do to enhance and augment interactions with customers.

• Don't Make Mistakes at Key Customer Milestones - A Listener Story relates how a series of mistakes for a customer hosting a 90th birthday celebration created a negative experience that will last for years to come.

• Design Experiences to Cross Borders - By paying attention to language differences, Duo Lingo created a series of brand mascots that can transcend national borders and serve an international clientele.

Are You Looking for Things We Referenced?

• Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit - Minneapolis, Minnesota (and other locations)

• Spotify Playlist for the Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit

• Making Meetings Better in the Hybrid Workplace - an ebook by our friends and partners at Mitel

• Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business - by Jenny Blake

• Duolingo

• "How Zari, Bea, Lily, Lucy, and Lin came to life" by Emily Chiu and Sam Zabell

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• Jacksonville Public Library in Florida

EP160: Data, Protein, and Google! Apr 12, 2022

Show notes

Learn about choosing between privacy and personalization, a meal prep delivery with only part of the meal, and how consumer preferences for online reviews are evolving.

Bite-Sized Delight From the Episode:

• Put Your Customers First with a Privacy First Mindset - Be deliberate and conscientious with your digital data policies to respect and honor the amount of customer data you collect and how you use it.

• Don't Forget the Key Ingredients of a Remarkable Customer Experience - When a meal prep box service failed to include the protein, it was a mistake. When it failed to show empathy to the disappointed customer or to proactively fix the error, it delivered all the ingredients for a horrible experience that the customer felt compelled to share with others.

• A Customer Review Strategy is a Must for Businesses - The 2022 Local Consumer Review Survey by brightlocal offers the newest research on how consumers are using online reviews to choose, trust, and understand the businesses offering services in their local area.

Are You Looking for Things We Referenced?

• "Is It Possible to Have Both Privacy and Personalization?" - by Michelle Hawley at CMSWire

• Making Meetings Better in the Hybrid Workplace - an ebook by our friends and partners at Mitel

• Conversation Corner with Help Scout

• Local Consumer Review Survey 2022 - by brightlocal

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EP159: Bananas, Burgers, and Bu-Byes! Apr 05, 2022

Show notes

Learn about how drains can draw customer attention, a whopper of a delivery tale, and a 1 star ending to a 4 star offering. Bite-Sized Delight From the Episode:

• Everything Speaks, Even Your Drain Covers - The commitment to customer experience is so great at The Savannah Bananas that an employee noticed rusty drain covers and replaced them with custom banana-themed drains - much to the surprise and delight of the team owners who always strive to put Fans First.

• Partner with Like-Minded Businesses to Find Like-Minded Customers - DoorDash Dash Pass holders received exclusive access to Burger King's new Whopper Melt as a way to drive interest and orders with these two symbiotic businesses.

• It's Okay If Customer Experiments Fail - The closure of Amazon's retail bookstores and 4-Star stores wasn't a failure because Amazon learned so much from the experiments and was willing to keep trying new ways to reach customers - even if it didn't work out the way they hoped.

Are You Looking for Things We Referenced?

• Jesse Cole - New Banana Drains (originally posted on LinkedIn)

• Savannah Bananas

• Making Meetings Better in the Hybrid Workplace - an ebook by our friends and partners at Mitel

• DoorDash Dash Pass

• Burger King - Whopper Melt

• "Amazon plans to shut down more than 50 brick-and-mortar stores" - by Karen Weise in The New York Times

• The Non-Obvious Newsletter

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EP158: Dining, Designing, and Priming! Mar 29, 2022

Show notes

Learn about how one restaurant is taking accessibility to new heights, putting the "customer" in "customer experience," and what loyalty looks like when price doesn't matter.

Bite-Sized Delight From the Episode:

• Accessibility Needs to Be Part of Your Customer Experience - Contento (a restaurant in New York City) excels at creating remarkable experiences for all patrons and especially those in wheelchairs as reported by Pete Wells in his article for The New York Times, "Accessibility Is a Right. This Restaurant Treats It That Way."

• Forget What You Think, What Do You Know?! - Annette Franz's book, Built to Win: Designing a Customer-Centric Culture that Drives Value for Your Business, emphasizes the importance of listening to your customers and incorporating their input into your experience design.

• Increased Value Counters Price Increases - Amazon Prime realizes that they can increase prices for their subscription as long as they keep increasing the value of the membership.

Are You Looking for Things We Referenced?

• "Accessibility Is a Right. This Restaurant Treats It That Way." - by Pete Wells in the New York Times

• Pizzability - Experience This Show!, Season 4, Episode 82

• Built to Win: Designing a Customer-Centric Culture that Drives Value for Your Business - by Annette Franz

• Amazon Prime

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EP157: Revisiting, Revising, and Refining! Mar 22, 2022

Show notes

Learn about the improving experience of virtual reality, the evolving schedule of sharing content, and a simple way to add time to your day.

Bite-Sized Delight From the Episode:

• Virtual Is Becoming More Real - Attending a business meeting in virtual reality demonstrates that all businesses need to be thinking about the impact virtual reality will have on their business and the experiences they offer customers.

• Play with the Pacing of Content Distribution - Critically acclaimed series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel shifts from dropping an entire season to dripping content at a pace of two episodes per week - continuing to experiment with the optimal experience for their viewers.

• Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business - Free Time by Jenny Blake offers an easy-to-implement approach for systematizing your business, creating better customer experiences, and making sure every question lives three lives.

Are You Looking for Things We Referenced?

• John Bowen - CEG Worldwide

• Jayson Gaignard - MMT

• Michael Potts - M2 Studios

• Accenture Buys 60,000 VR Headsets

• Here's When Every New Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Episode Drops on Amazon Prime - by Emily Burack in Town & Country Magazine

• The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

• Conversation Corner with Help Scout

• Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Products - by Nir Eyal

• Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business - by Jenny Blake

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EP156: Witty, Wowing, and Wonky! Mar 15, 2022

Show notes

Learn about how to make marketing fun, the current state of customer experience, and avoiding the buzzwords that people love to hate.

Bite-Sized Delight From the Episode:

• Fun Interactions Creates a Fun Workplace - The more colorful and playful your brand, the more you will attract that type of customer and employee.

• Happy Employees Equal Happy Customers - Based on research by GetFeedback, the relationship between employee experience and customer experience should be an infinity symbol - when employees are happy, they better serve customers, thereby making those customers happy.

• Beware Buzzwords - Using meaningless buzzwords leaves employees and customers confused, irritated, and wanting to run away from you and your offerings!

Are You Looking for Things We Referenced?

• Verblio - a fun place to work with fun marketing

• State of CX Report - by GetFeedback

• 31 Buzzwords That Employees Truly Hate - by Geoffrey James on Inc.com

• 9 Business Buzzwords People Hate So Much They Won't Want to Work With You - by Minda Zetlin on Inc.com

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