Customer Engagement Blog

Here's the most simple success formula ever. It will drive business success by driving customer and employee trust.

This formula is especially effective when thinking about customers - their experiences; what you want them to feel, think and do; and what kind of processes and systems you need to build to support them.

1. Treat people the way you want to be treated without fail.
2. Given that human beings are involved you will fail at some point. When it happens see #1.
   

Imagine you're about to walk into the waiting area of a body shop. What's the first image that comes to mind?

Dirt? Grease? Noise? What waiting area? Some dark, post-apocalyptic movie scene?

Happily there are those in the auto collision repair industry who are awakening to the power and value of putting the customer at the center of their business strategy. There's a revolution starting in the industry and it's having a profound impact for early proponents.

Auto collision repair shops are making these changes based on the principles of Lean Production. I'll spare you the details but suffice it to say that Lean starts with identifying value from the customer perspective and eliminates whenever possible anything that doesn't create value. Customers should also be able to receive value throughout the auto collision repair experience.

Here's a brief case study about the positive impact for car owners.

Seth Godin's blog posting today - How should you treat your best customers? poses a question all businesses should have an answer to. Seth's ultimate question is how to turn best best customers into best marketers.

So why do companies - large, small and in-between - not know how to leverage their best customers as their best marketers?

Happy New Year to you and yours. My wish for you all is that 2011 is a year filled with dreams come true.

I fully expect that in 2011 the Age of the Customer will continue to gain momentum and companies will continue to organize their businesses to empower customers and reap the benefits of doing so.

Here's a brief list of four wishes for 2011 that will help companies and their customers thrive in the Age of the Customer:

Ginger Conlin, Editorial Director, for 1to1 Media, asked the question "What's your go-to strategy for handling angry custommers?" on the 1to1 Insiders group page on Linkedin.

I responded with the following nine-step check list for handling angry customers. Not surprisingly it all starts with listening and being empathetic. Without the first two steps it's impossible to satisfy anyone's concerns.