The High Cost of Layoffs

Yesterday, October 19, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell admitted that “inflation is still too high.” This comes amid reports that many large banks (especially at Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs) are reducing their staffs in response. The financial sector is not the only group of industries cutting back, however, as…
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Bad Service Says More about Managers than Employees

Customer service reigns supreme, as we all know. It’s the core tenant of offering a great customer experience—the combination of all the interactions your customers have with your company. As such, it plays a crucial role in defining your brand’s overall perception. When we experience subpar customer service, our first…
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The Whole Experience

Shep Hyken’s recent article titled, “We All Know What CX Means, But What about EX, WX, DX, UX, and More?,” is a tongue-in-cheek look at how customer service experts like to label everything as some kind of experience to manage. On this blog, we usually discuss the Customer Experience (abbreviated…
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The Power of Personalization

We all know that customer satisfaction is the make-or-break metric for all businesses, but small ones that don’t possess giant war chests to survive a string of bad press or ruinous policies. Personalizing your customer experience is how you keep that satisfaction high, as it makes those interactions about more…
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Finding a Competitive Edge

Every business is either looking for a competitive edge, or should be. Competition, regardless of industry, is perhaps at its highest level ever, especially given the online presence that most companies now have. In years past, two pizzerias on opposite sides of town might have been scarcely aware of one another; these…
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The Art of Compromise

Commerce is an intricate dance, one where both customers and businesses form partnerships toward mutual benefit. A customer wants a good or service, and the business is willling to provide it. The dance happens in the negotiation, but this often involves far more than simple haggling. Instead, so much of…
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Expertise and Empathy

Delivering a superior customer experience is a non-negotiable requirement for your business’s success. There are simply too many alternatives out there for a small business to survive regularly disappointing its customers, especially given the pervasive reach of Internet-based competitors. In many areas of the country, just about any consumer product…
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Cheap Is an Illusion

We all love a good bargain, so when advertisements offer the allure of cheap or even free products or services, many of us find the temptation hard to resist. But as in all things in life, the bill eventually comes due, and there is always a catch. Let’s take a…
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Enhancing Your Business Through Engagement

By now, we should all know that fostering a superior customer experience is critical for distinguishing a small business from both its direct competitors, as well as the much larger companies that attract a broad audience (think big-box stores, supercenters, and the like). Many of those businesses out there offer…
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