You’ve heard it a million times, a happy customer tells a couple of people and an unhappy customer tells everyone. Yet to this day, executives tend to run business strategy with an emphasis on transactions over experiences. More so, business value is expressed in short-term performance metrics and reports to an audience of shareholders and stakeholders over the very people who keep them in business…your customers. It’s all a bit absurd when you think about it. I know, I know…it’s…
ContextMatters Episode 2: T.J. Miller and ‘Bitchgate’ and CNN’s Sex, Drugs and Silicon Valley
Welcome to the second episode of ContextMatters. My co-host Chris Saad and I are having fun recording this series. More so, we’re enjoying expanding the community beyond our world here in Silicon Valley to explore the things that affect business, tech and culture. In this episode, we take out our macro lens to look closely at the strange fascination with what could best be described as Silicon Valley’s unconventional behavior. Listen (also embedded below). Schedule Topic 1: We attempt to…
Attention is a Precious Commodity: Earn it and Spend it Wisely
There’s an oft-shared quote that I’d also love to share with you here, “If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter.” French mathematician, physicist, writer and philosopher Blaise Pascal essentially captured the essence of thoughtful and purposeful communication with a bold but confusing statement in 1657. At first blush, his words almost seem counter-intuitive. I mean after all, how can spending more time writing a letter equate to its downsizing? That’s the point. Think about…
Why is AirBnB Singled Out by Government When Web 1.0 Competitors are Ignored?
Bloomberg’s Christian Thompson recently published a story on AirBnB and how it is and isn’t different than many Web 1.0 sites such as HomeExchange or HomeAway. Although only one or two lines from our discussion made the final story, the question and the answer are significant enough to share in this short post. Bloomberg: My question was why an outfit like Airbnb gets all this heat when something like Home Exchange doesn’t? My French in-laws use it all the time…
To Deliver a Great Customer Experience, Stop Focusing on the Customer You Think You Know
Guest post by Rajat Paharia (@rajatrocks), founder and chief products officer, Bunchball and author of Loyalty 3.0: How to Revolutionize Customer and Employee Engagement with Big Data and Gamification 2015 promises to be The Year of Customer Experience. Companies around the globe are resolving to become more customer-centric because, as Brian lays out quite eloquently in his book: “Now’s the time for an investment in something more than price, performance, or value. The future of business is about creating experience,…
Make Change Work for You: The Power of Observation
I’m a pretty private person usually. From time to time though, I share stories about my past to help others take their next step. This is one such case. Scott Steinberg is a good friend and the other of several books including his most recent title, Make Change Work for You. We chatted recently about lessons learned over the years. I wanted to share our conversation with you here… Scott Steinberg: You’ve been tremendously successful in your career. Would you call yourself…
Report: Some Brands Go All In on Mobile; Others Suffer from Mobile Mediocrity
Consumers aren’t just going digital, they’re also becoming increasingly mobile. To them, mobile isn’t the second screen, it’s the first screen. Brands however, struggle to keep up with them and as a result, mobile strategies are off target or underwhelming. This finding among many others is the result of new research conducted by my colleague Jaimy Szymanski and me. I’m proud to announce that the report, The Inevitability of a Mobile-Only Customer Experience, is available today for immediate download. Mobile…
25 Disruptive Technology Trends for 2015 – 2016
With every new year comes a landslide of predictions and trends to guide us into the new year. While the year advances, rarely do such transformative trends or changes take place in alignment with one of the top calendar apps. Not even Y2K could do so 😉 Now with that said, I was asked to present my thoughts on what lies ahead in Vegas during CES at Brand Innovators “Mega Trends” event. By the first week of January, there were…
Brilliance is Distributed Around The World; Opportunity However is Not
The rate at which we progress is defined by the time and energy we invest in ourselves. We can’t do everything alone however. As John Lennon and Paul McCartney famously wrote, “I get by with a little help from my friends.” But not everyone has access to the same resources you and I do. Sometimes those friends aren’t so readily visible or available and thus progress inches along, stalls or sometimes regresses. One of the biggest trends I’ve seen in…
Crossing the Experience Divide: Creating positive, lasting experiences is a crucial mandate for any brand
The Technology of Us I’ve been in the technology business for a long time and what I can tell you is this: Technology enables us to invent new products and services at rates that humans never before experienced. Whatever the next big thing is in tech doesn’t matter as much as the fact that anyone today has the power to disrupt entire industries with a single, smart idea. In fact, resilient companies, whether they’re startups or they merely acting like…
