[object HTMLTextAreaElement] via Best Customer Service Story in the World!. This is an interesting story of a barber who goes the extra few miles in taking care of his customer. I think there is a lesson or two for us all from this story. 1. Small acts of kindness on a daily basis are more important in keeping your customers happy, than anything else you could do. 2. Customer service does not only include doing things that your customers can see and experience. There are other things that you could do which they may not see but will affect them […]

I think it is the simple things that organizations do that have a big impact on the customer experience. For example, having a conversation as against doing a transaction or the business ensuring that their customer is fully satisfied with the service received as against requesting for a online feedback. Hope the large businesses also understand this and incorporate such behavior by design in their processes rather than hope that the service team will take care of keeping their customers happy.

Today, I read an interesting article in the McKinsey Quarterly titled – The trouble with travel distribution. In the article, authors, Robert Carey, David Kang, and Michael Zea go on to explain what ails the travel industry. Broadly speaking, they talk about the following: The ecosystem is completely fragmented. No trust between the players (airlines, hotels, travel agencies, aggregators). Instead of working as one integrated supply chain, they are fighting with each other on topics like how much should each of them pay each other and who owns the customer, which results in each of the participant trying to woo the […]

This is a very simple idea which is very powerful when done. But as I’ve seen in most large organizations, its the simple things that do not get done. So, I intend to atleast try setting up an internal meeting with the different stakeholders and pose this question – “How can we make it fun for the customers to do business with us?” Let’s see what comes out of it.