Archive for Customer Engagement
Bloomingdale’s is Writing a New Script for Winning Customer Loyalty and Satisfaction
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Richard J. Mast
A few weeks ago I was in Bloomingdale’s when a friendly young store employee approached me to ask if he could help. I wasn’t obviously shopping at the moment so I asked him who he was and learned he was Bloomingdale’s Director of Customer Loyalty, a new position in New York. This led to the following personal interview about the store’s robust customer loyalty program with Richard J. Mast, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Bloomingdale’s 59th Street in Manhattan. Mr. Mast discusses how understanding and responding to customer needs engenders customer loyalty and satisfaction.
Why did Bloomingdale’s create the Director of Customer Loyalty position? Is it part of a corporate branding program?
If you’re in the retail business you know that satisfied customers will continue to shop with you. So it’s our responsibility to enhance the customer experience. We’ve had employees assigned full-time to customer loyalty for several years. There are four Managers of Customer Loyalty in the Manhattan store but we decided to strengthen the structure by appointing a Director of Customer Loyalty with the other MCL’s reporting to him.
What are the responsibilities of this position and who does the Director report to?
The role of the Director of Customer Loyalty is to interface with the senior executives in charge of ready-to-wear, Men’s Young World, the Home Store, Fine Jewelry and other departments. They tell the Director what they need and what customers want, and then these needs are translated to the MCLs assigned to these departments who then implement the actions to be taken. Read More→
Coca-Cola Tampers With its Brand Again — in a Good Cause
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Coke has done it again – tampered with its brand by changing the color of it famous red cans to white for a holiday promotion with the World Wildlife Fund.
The promotion was to raise funds to bring awareness to the plight of polar bears, an endangered species. It caused a huge kerfuffle among consumers.
Many confused the holiday Coke can with the silver Diet Coke can — horrors. Coke was forced to recall more than a billion of the white cans and restock their shelves with the familiar red ones. Read More→
10 Tips to Build Your Business and Improve Customer Satisfaction
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Richard Shapiro, President, The Center for Client Retention
National Customer Service Week is being celebrated from October 3-7. I have a question: are you delivering the best customer service you can? That is the key ingredient to generating repeat business, increasing customer satisfaction, and building your company.
A company’s front line employees can be an organization’s “secret” competitive advantage to securing repeat business.
Too many companies don’t understand that while delivering excellent customer service is the key ingredient for repeat business, it’s that special personal relationship between customer and employee that provides the link between customer satisfaction and customer retention.
The service delivered by front line employees must be viewed as the first step in the journey of loyalty. Your employees can be your most effective brand advocates.
10 Tips for Generating Repeat Business
1. Make sure that every one of your front line associates is capable of making a good first impression. Positive or negative opinions are formed within the first 10 seconds. You never have a second opportunity to make a warm and welcoming first impression. Read More→
Blame Our Leaders for Incivility in Politics and a Hostile Workplace
Posted by: | CommentsThat’s the conclusion of a new report Civility in America 2011. The 2011 online survey* was conducted in May among 1,000 American adults to assess attitudes towards civility online, in the workforce, in the classroom and in politics.
I was particularly struck by the statistics on workplace civility: 65% of the respondents blame corporate leadership for making the workplace more uncivil.
More than 70% of Americans consider political campaigns, pop culture, the media, government and the music industry hubs of incivility. Not surprisingly, Congressional Democrats, Congressional Republicans and Tea Party supporters are all viewed as more uncivil than civil.
According to the study, “while more than one-third (39%) expected things to turn less civil when surveyed in 2010, now more than one out of two Americans — 55% — expect a lack of civility to become the norm. Only nine percent in this year’s survey expect civility to get better compared to 26% who expected some relief last year. Incivility seems to be here to stay.”
Workplace Incivility Hurts Sales
Approximately seven in 10 Americans (69%) have either stopped buying from a company or have re-evaluated their opinions of a company because someone from that company was uncivil in their interaction, says the study. Not good for sales or a company’s brand. In another disturbing finding, over four in 10 Americans — 43% — have experienced incivility at work.
Respondents blame workplace leadership and other employees for the growing incivility problem. As I wrote in an earlier post, Treating Fired Employees Like Criminals, losing a job can be devastating. But when companies mistreat employees they are letting go, it poisons the workplace and, now we learn, can add to incivility.
With the 2012 Presidential campaign heating up, I guess we need to be resigned to even more incivility as the battle lines are drawn by politicians and we’re subjected to mud slinging in commercials. How sad.
*Study sponsored by Weber Shandwick and Powell Tate and conducted by KRC Research
