So you messed up. Big. How do you explain your company’s misstep to the public? Back in july 2011, Netflix raised its rates by 60 percent for customers who subscribe to its DVD and streaming video services. Customers were outraged. Hundreds of thousands of people canceled their subscription, and Wall Street responded by punishing the …

The focus of any organization, no matter how big or small, must be the customer. Unfortunately in today’s business climate there is a lot of lip service paid to focusing on the customer, but very little actually being done about it. Companies actually fool themselves into thinking they are driven by the customer. But the …

How do you get your customers to talk about the experiences they’ve had with you? What motivates people to proactively tell stories about their customer experiences? What is it about an experience that makes it a story worth telling? What are the social and psychological benefits of telling these stories? Telling stories is one of …

Akio Morita, co-founder of Sony, once said: “We don’t ask customers what they want – we tell them what they want.” I’ll take his word for it, since Mr. Morita actual has developed very successful products. Much is being written about the impact that new communication technologies and channels – blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – …

Are your customers asking the very same thing Roger Waters famously asked on the 1979 Pink Floyd classic The Wall: “Is There Anybody Out There?” In today’s competitive world, a company’s reputation for satisfying clients is one of the key factors in whether or not someone will buy from them. From the perspective of a …