Customer Service | World Class Benchmarking

What Makes Sammamish America’s Friendliest Town?

Forbes Magazine has named Sammamish, Washington as the friendliest city in America. With a population of 46,700, this bedroom community to Microsoft was ranked by Nextdoor.com, a San Francisco-based social network for neighborhoods that assess small metro areas with populations between 5,500 and 150,000.

There are a number of factors that lend themselves to [...]

Do You Provide Excellent “Crappy” Service?

“Service is not only a matter of being pleasant to customers—just as being a doctor is not only a matter of having a comforting bedside manner—but also of understanding the systems that make customer satisfaction possible.”

“Understanding how and why the whole system works is the fundamental expertise [...]

Nordstrom: The Shoe Fits When It Comes To Great Service

Participants meeting before Nordstrom opens with store management.

Many people know Nordstrom as being one of the best customer-savvy deliverers in the country. And many of those same people have become loyal customers themselves. But because of their very modest corporate culture, few really know what has made this small shoe store become such [...]

Disney’s Four Keys: Improving the Guest Experience

America's oldest corporate university, Disney University here in Walt Disney World is the home to "Traditions" where new Cast Members are introduced to Disney's Four Keys.

Since the mid 1960′s Disney has had Four Keys for delivering great service:

Safety Courtesy Show Efficiency

They are a compass for everything Disney does–both strategically and tactically. [...]

CLEAR for TSA PreCheck?

A background check, a finger scan, and a bunch of cash up front gets you through CLEAR.

A few weeks ago Mark David Jones and I went to visit a client together. Whenever Mark travels he uses CLEAR, a pre-paid service which guarantees you to get through airport security in less than 5 minutes. [...]

Caring Until The End

We took this picture when I was with The Disney Institute a number of years ago. Everything in the box actually belongs to my family, including the picture of my grandmother Checketts as a small child, and a quilt made by my grandmother Kober.

We took the picture as part of a Disney Institute [...]

Keeping a Sense of Humor with Compliance

State regulations require shoes and shirt when you enter a public environment such as a restaurant. To that end a sign is usually found toward the front of the store, insisting on such compliance. Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches chooses to use humor to get people to do what is required. It aligns well with [...]

Finally Inside an In-and-Out Burger

Mark Jones has worked with this great organization. I personally had visited In-and-Out Burger several times over the years–especially on trips to California. But I had always gone through the drive-in. Therefore, there was not much to judge of the experience other than product and price–which was always great.

This last summer I was [...]

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