Impact of the requirement to wear face coverings for hospitality and retail businesses

Earlier this week, the government announced a new set of measures to contain the rise of Covid-19 cases in England. This included the requirement for face coverings (masks or visors) to be worn in a variety of settings. From the Gov.uk website: Customers in private hire vehicles and taxis must wear face coverings (from 23 September).Customers in … Continue reading Impact of the requirement to wear face coverings for hospitality and retail businesses

How inflated expectations can spoil a good experience

The kiddo has been keen to grow mushrooms at home. So, I followed Jennifer Ferreira’s lead, and ordered a growing kit from GroCycle. After placing my order, I got an e-mail confirming it, and promising to send me a notification when the order had been dispatched: The next day, the amount was deducted from my credit … Continue reading How inflated expectations can spoil a good experience

Customer service via Twitter – what a missed opportunity for airlines

Twitter can be a great channel for customer service. As my own research shows, customers see Twitter as a quick way of solving problems, obtaining information, and connecting with (and learning from) other users. Yet, not all firms seem to be embracing it. Research by Priyanga Gunarathne, Huaxia Rui and Abraham Seidmann, looking at how … Continue reading Customer service via Twitter – what a missed opportunity for airlines

Using 😄😩 makes you 👀 + 🥰 but – 🎓, 🔬 shows

Emojis and emoticons are well and truly part of the way we communicate, today. They’re on social media postings. They’re on e-mails. They’re even on marketing campaigns. But how do customers feel about company representatives using emojis in customer interactions, for instance, in an e-mail exchange or on Facebook? Will they think that it is … Continue reading Using 😄😩 makes you 👀 + 🥰 but – 🎓, 🔬 shows

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

Level vs source of customer (dis)satisfaction

We sometimes think of customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction as two sides of the same coin. If a certain feature is present – say, courteous service – customers leave satisfied; if that same feature is absent, customers leave dissatisfied. So, to have happy customers, all we need to do is keep improving on that feature. … Continue reading Level vs source of customer (dis)satisfaction

When loyalty programmes backfire: loyalty, entitlement and complaints

Disappointed customers complain. And while really loyal customers may be more forgiving that others, when they do feel disappointed and complain, they are particularly difficult to recover. These general truths of business make it particularly important to understand disappointment in loyal customers. Researchers Xiaofei Li, Baolong Ma and Chen Zhou conducted a study about … Continue reading When loyalty programmes backfire: loyalty, entitlement and complaints

The murky link between customer satisfaction and loyalty

Intuitively, it is easy to accept the claim that customer satisfaction leads to repeat purchases. After all, if you have a choice, why would you abandon a brand that has surpassed your expectations1; and why would you keep buying from a brand that has disappointed you? Happy customers buy again. Unhappy customers, move on. … Continue reading The murky link between customer satisfaction and loyalty

Going along with customer lies can be good for business

Yesterday, child #2 lost a tooth. At night, he carefully placed the tooth under his pillow, for the Tooth Fairy... even though he knows, a-hem, the truth about Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy. And, sure enough, this morning, when he checked under the pillow and spotted something left by the Tooth Fairy, he gave … Continue reading Going along with customer lies can be good for business