When consumers feel powerless about a situation, their attitude changes

I came across Dr Kristin Laurin’s work on rationalisation when she participated in episode 125 of the You Are Not So Smart podcast.   She found that people’s core beliefs change when they feel powerless about the situation that they find themselves in. This occurs via a process of rationalisation – i.e., we try to … Continue reading When consumers feel powerless about a situation, their attitude changes

What Amazon knows about customer satisfaction

The letter from Amazon’s CEO to its shareholders has been doing the rounds on social media, with various comments about what it says (e.g., those six-page narrative documents in lieu of power point presentations), as well as about what it doesn’t say (namely, about the rise in Prime subscription fees).   The bit that caught … Continue reading What Amazon knows about customer satisfaction

How service failures impact on what matters for customers

I came across an interesting paper that explored how the drivers of customer satisfaction changed in the event of a service failure vs. normal service, and how different types of failure influenced what factors were most important in driving customer satisfaction.   The paper is entitled “The Impact of Service Operations Failures on Customer Satisfaction: … Continue reading How service failures impact on what matters for customers

Starbucks is dealing with its social media crisis one tweet at a time

In the aftermath of the incident where two black men were accused of trespassing and arrested, Starbucks announced that it would close 8,000 of its US-based stores for race-sensitivity training.   Unsurprisingly, some members of the public took to Twitter to comment on this decision. For instance:   Less predictably, perhaps, Starbucks engaged with the … Continue reading Starbucks is dealing with its social media crisis one tweet at a time

The interplay between face to face contact, e-mail and timing in driving up sales of loyalty schemes

The question of how best to contact high value customers, how often and when, is very important for customer relationship managers, particularly when it comes to the sale of loyalty-inducing schemes such as season tickets or membership schemes. Season tickets or annual memberships are an important source of revenue for many service-based organisations such as … Continue reading The interplay between face to face contact, e-mail and timing in driving up sales of loyalty schemes

What is GDPR, and what it means for marketers

GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation. It is a EU law, enforceable from May 25th2018, which aims to protect the privacy and personal data of EU residents. If you collect, process or use customers’ personal data (and the definition of personal data is quite broad – see below), then GDPR is likely to be … Continue reading What is GDPR, and what it means for marketers

What a waste of a communication opportunity

On the occasion of my birthday, I received this message from an optometrist I used to go to: "Dear Ana, Just a quick note to wish you a very happy birthday! Kindest regards, [name of company] team.”   So far, so normal and predictable.   However, the message was accompanied by this photo: Can anyone … Continue reading What a waste of a communication opportunity

The real reason behind the spread of fake news

The journal Science recently published a paper exploring how and why fake news spread. You can access it here, or you can listen to this episode of Chips with Everything (a Guardian podcast that I recommended, previously).   The paper is authored by MIT researchers Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy and Sinan Aral. The researchers collected around 126,000 rumour stories on … Continue reading The real reason behind the spread of fake news

Examples of applications of Artificial Intelligence

The term “artificial intelligence” has definitely jumped from the realms of science fiction or something that ‘happens’ in robotics’ labs, to mass media and something that affects every aspect of our lives.   Not sure how ubiquitous Artificial Intelligence is, already? Then check Deepindex, a resource which collates examples of application of artificial intelligence in … Continue reading Examples of applications of Artificial Intelligence