Articles by Brian Cantor

If a customer service representative’s slightly-errant word choice is capable of damaging your customer experience, odds are good that the experience is already broken. To people who know me personally or at least read my writing, the aforementioned declaration is likely a surprising one.  Many of my most popular Customer Management IQ pieces are the product of overanalyzing and/or...Full Article »

From emphasizing personalized responses that read like they came from humans rather than robots to assuring your Facebook page is not simply a syndication of what appears on your Twitter feed, the mountain of “best practices” for social media strategy is simply too tall for any customer management executive to ignore. And even though these tips and tactics often come from...Full Article »

A recent Forrester Research study that swept media outlets off their feet  reveals that customers who “Like” a brand on Facebook are more likely than non-Facebook fans to purchase, consider purchasing and recommend products from that brand. In other news, those who bought a brown shirt at some point in the last few years are more likely to wear a brown shirt than those who did...Full Article »

Shortly after my first encounter with Google Chrome’s new “Coffee” ad spot , I decided I simply had to write about the tech giant’s marketing strategy. This is not the article I initially intended to compose. A sucker for sentimentality, I found myself engaged by the 90-second commercial, which features a man named Mark Potter using Google’s various...Full Article »

As the call center continues to evolve, your team will naturally explore innovative solutions and strategies for satisfying customers.  This is IMPORTANT, but it also comes with many risks.  Find out how to properly balance your call center focuses as customer experience challenges continue to mount in this COMPLIMENTARY CustomerManagementIQ webinar . No one, by any stretch of the...Full Article »

Suffocated by their experience with studies confirming the financial advantage of retaining a customer over attracting a new one, customer management leaders know little of more importance than the need to build meaningful relationships with customers. And yet so few assume full responsibility for establishing and preserving those relationships.  Customer retention sounds like a great goal...Full Article »

“Social Customer Service” does not really exist. In the slightly-smarmy words of Domino’s CEO Patrick Doyle, “I’m not crazy.”  Of course I know that social media represents a valuable customer service channel,  and I wholeheartedly believe that nearly every organization needs to be addressing customer inquiries over networks like Facebook and...Full Article »

This might be a world of “strategic calls” and revenue-driven customer service, and it is true that metrics like average handle time are losing meaning for many organizations, but do not dare assume that successful call center leaders are leaving performance metrics in the dust! True, many are embracing customer satisfaction and NetPromoter scores as clearer indicators of excellence,...Full Article »

“Sex sells.”  “I sell the sizzle not the steak.”  Believe me, I fully understand that effective advertising is not always about how accurately it portrays the substantive value of the product. But a line needs to be drawn when it comes to the egregious overuse of tired, weightless “buzzwords” in product branding and marketing.  Some of the...Full Article »

As a child, I hated going to the barbershop. It was not because I objected to chit-chat with strangers—I was the loud, sociable kid whose parents thought was cute and everyone else probably found grating.  It was not because I feared scissors or razors—to this day, no sharp object or medical procedure has ever given me an ounce of fear. Rather, it was because of the burden I...Full Article »

When you, a customer management leader, ask for insight on how to “be like Disney,” you better understand the seriousness of your request. If you’re looking for quick fixes or cheap shortcuts from going from point A to point B, you might as well not even bother—you are never going to attain customer experience prestige.  True customer management success lies at the...Full Article »