Just back from a great evening of stimulating conversation about the pros and cons of e-mail at a Knowledge Cafe organised by knowledge consultant David Gurteen. Luis Suarez of IBM kicked off the evening by proposing that e-mail was a very poor tool for collaboration and there were more productive ways of communicating. Luis has not used e-mail for around 8 months now and seems all the happier for it. Through talking to a range of interesting people - the Cafe is structured (more…)

Recently I spent an evening at the theatre seeing Yazmina Reza’s new play God of Carnage. It’s got an excellent cast (perhaps the only time you can see DI Rebus, Voldemort and Debbie Archer in the same bill) and only detains you for about 95 minutes. Its central, rather bleak premise sparked thoughts about the conditions under which superior service flourishes.

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I was in a meeting with one of my clients recently where we were reviewing a document that dealt with how to get the voice of the customer more embedded into their project methodology. Following a battle with Microsoft Word’s spell-checker the document referred to a project mythology. Laughs all round but this got me thinking: methodologies are all well and good but it’s an organisation’s mythology that can make all the difference between successful innovation and unsuccessful stagnation.

Why so? Well, let’s look at myths and what they mean. (more…)

The New Year is typically the time when we resolve to give something up (looking at the date of the last post I wondered if I had temporarily given up blogging!) but for some businesses it’s time to think about making customers form a habit - with you.

I was struck by this thought recently (more…)

Most organisations suffer from a wariness of creativity stemming from the myths that I outlined last week. As a consequence, organisations typically don’t set out in an intentional and systematic way to build and maintain their creativity – and this is a wasted opportunity.

This fear of creativity (more…)

Smiling can offer instant benefits - as a recent bout of martial arts demonstrated. And although front line service staff generally don’t need to be black belts, an ability to smile is a great asset.

I returned to my Saturday-morning karate class this weekend after a 5-week absence (more…)

The UK launch of the Apple iPhone last Friday seems a good time to launch a series on innovation. Each week I will post on the topic of business innovation and, specifically, how it relates to the delivery of superior customer service.

Topics to be covered will include: (more…)

Superior customer service is largely about knowing what the basic elements of good service are – and delivering them consistently and well. A couple of examples from last week’s family holiday in Yorkshire illustrate how making people feel welcome sets the right tone for a good customer experience.

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Making a positive choice to deliver a Wow! service is a different strategy from avoiding an ‘Oww!’ service. Unfortunately many organisations implicitly choose the latter by failing to positively choose the former.

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When I was setting up this site my intention was to provide a source of stories about superior service from my own and others’ perspective. So I was particularly pleased to find a book that contains just that. The only problem is that I didn’t write it. (more…)