Companies spend enormous amounts of time, energy and money trying to improve the customer experience. They invest in technology, redesign processes, create customer service standards, conduct employee training and measure everything from satisfaction scores and response times to reviews and customer retention. All of those things can certainly make a difference, but none of them address the most fundamental factor influencing the experience a customer ultimately receives: leadership. The customer experience does not begin when someone walks through your door, visits your website, calls your company or interacts with one of your employees. It begins much earlier, inside the organization, with the culture leadership has created. That culture influences how people communicate, how they solve problems, how much authority they believe they have, how willing they are to take ownership and, ultimately, how they treat the people they serve. This is why I have always believed that the culture inside an organization eventually becomes visible to the customer. You may be able to hide a dysfunctional culture for a while, but sooner or later the customer is going to experience it. Your Customers Experience Your Culture Think about what happens inside an organization where employees feel unappreciated, disconnected or uninspired. Eventually, customers feel that lack of enthusiasm. When departments operate in silos and fail to communicate effectively with one another, customers experience the confusion and inconsistency. When employees are afraid to make decisions without getting permission from several levels above them, customers experience the delays and frustration. When protecting company policy becomes more important than solving a customer’s problem, the customer gets a very clear picture of what that organization truly values. The opposite is also true. When people feel valued, trusted and connected to a meaningful purpose, they tend to approach their work differently. They communicate better, take greater ownership, look for solutions and become more willing to do what is necessary to create the right outcome. They are no longer simply completing tasks because the job requires it. They understand how what they do affects other people and why it matters. That distinction is important because customer service and customer experience are not the same thing. Customer service is the process. Customer experience is the emotion created by that process. Leadership and culture have an enormous influence on whether employees are simply following the process or genuinely trying to create an experience. Culture Is Not What You Put on the Wall Nearly every organization has a set of values, and they usually sound very similar: integrity, respect, excellence, innovation, teamwork and customer focus. There is nothing wrong with any of those values, but putting them on a wall, printing them in an employee handbook or adding them to the company website does not create a culture. Culture is what people actually experience every day. It is reflected in the behaviors that are rewarded and the behaviors that are tolerated. It is found in the way people communicate with one another, how disagreements are handled, what happens when someone makes a mistake and whether employees are trusted to make decisions. It is evident in whether leadership truly listens, whether people feel comfortable offering a different point of view and whether the standards expected of employees are also demonstrated by the people at the top. People pay far more attention to what their leaders do than to what their leaders say. If an organization claims that customers come first but employees are discouraged from spending the time necessary to solve a customer’s problem, the real priority becomes obvious. If leadership talks about innovation but punishes people when a new idea does not work, employees quickly learn that playing it safe is the smarter career decision. When there is a conflict between the stated values of the organization and the behavior of its leadership, behavior wins. Leadership Sets the Standard One of the most important responsibilities of leadership is establishing the standard for how people inside the organization treat one another and the people they serve. A leader who communicates a clear sense of purpose helps employees understand that their work has meaning beyond completing a task. A leader who demonstrates trust encourages people to take ownership. A leader who listens encourages open communication, and a leader who demonstrates empathy makes it far more likely that empathy will become part of the organization’s culture. None of this means creating an environment where everyone is constantly happy or where poor performance is overlooked. Strong leadership requires accountability, difficult conversations, high expectations and, at times, difficult decisions. However, there is a tremendous difference between accountability and control. Great cultures are not created by eliminating standards. They are created by combining high standards with trust, clarity and a shared understanding of what the organization is trying to accomplish. When people understand what is expected of them, why it matters and how their role contributes to something larger, accountability becomes much more meaningful. Instead of simply being told what to do, people begin to understand what they are responsible for creating. You Cannot Mandate an Exceptional Customer Experience This is where many customer experience initiatives fall short. Organizations attempt to standardize exceptional service by creating scripts, procedures and behavioral requirements. Employees are told how to answer the telephone, which words to use, when to smile, how to greet a customer and what steps to follow during an interaction. Standards and processes absolutely have value because they create consistency and provide employees with a framework for delivering good service. The problem occurs when the organization begins to believe the process itself is the experience. You can teach someone how to greet a customer, but you cannot script genuine caring. You can require employees to use a customer’s name, but you cannot mandate empathy. You can create procedures for handling complaints, but a procedure alone will never create the emotional connection that turns a frustrated customer into a loyal one. More importantly, you cannot continually demand that employees make customers feel valued if the employees themselves
A Satisfied Customer Is Not a Loyal Customer
One of the most important points I make in virtually every keynote I deliver on customer service and customer experience is also one of the most misunderstood: There is no direct correlation between a satisfied customer and a loyal customer. That may sound counterintuitive. After all, businesses spend enormous amounts of time and money measuring customer satisfaction. They send surveys, track ratings, monitor reviews and calculate customer satisfaction scores. And when those scores are high, everyone feels pretty good. But here’s the problem. Satisfaction is not loyalty. A satisfied customer may come back. A loyal customer wants to come back. There is an enormous difference. What Does Customer Satisfaction Really Mean? Think about what it means when a customer says, “I was satisfied.” In many cases, it simply means nothing went wrong. The product worked. The order arrived. The employee was polite. The room was clean. The food was good. The appointment happened on time. In other words, the company did what the customer expected it to do. That’s important, but that’s also the price of admission. If I stay at a hotel and my room is clean, I’m satisfied. But isn’t a clean room what I paid for? If I buy a product and it works properly, I’m satisfied. But isn’t that what the product is supposed to do? If I call a company with a question and someone eventually gives me the correct answer, I may be satisfied. But has that company done anything to make me feel differently about the brand? Probably not. Satisfaction often means the company successfully completed the transaction. Loyalty means the company created a relationship. Loyal Customers Feel Something This is where customer experience becomes so important. People don’t become genuinely loyal to companies simply because transactions go smoothly. Loyalty develops when the experiences surrounding those transactions create an emotional connection. Customers remember how you made them feel. Did you make things easy? Did you listen? Did you recognize them as an individual rather than an account number? Did you anticipate a need? Did you solve a problem in a way they weren’t expecting? Did someone take ownership rather than pass them to another department? Did you make them feel important? Did you demonstrate that you genuinely cared? Those experiences create something far more powerful than satisfaction. They create trust. And trust, repeated consistently over time, creates loyalty. The Competition Can Satisfy Your Customers Too This is where the distinction becomes dangerous for organizations that believe high satisfaction scores mean their customers are secure. Your competitors can probably satisfy them too. They may offer a comparable product. They may have similar technology. They may charge roughly the same price. They may deliver similar quality. In many industries today, the functional differences between competitors have become remarkably small. That’s why I frequently tell audiences: Customer service is the process. Customer experience is the emotion. Processes can be copied. Products can be copied. Technology can be copied. Pricing can be matched. But the emotional experience you consistently create for your customers is much harder to duplicate. That experience becomes part of your brand. Loyalty Is Built Through Consistency One extraordinary customer experience is wonderful. But one extraordinary experience followed by three mediocre experiences doesn’t create loyalty. Consistency does. Every interaction either strengthens or weakens the customer’s perception of your brand. That includes the obvious customer facing interactions with salespeople, customer service representatives and frontline employees. But it also includes billing, delivery, operations, websites, apps, automated systems, follow up communication and problem resolution. Customers don’t care which department is responsible. They experience one company and one brand. This is why customer experience cannot simply be the responsibility of the customer service department. Everyone owns it. Every person, every process and every decision ultimately has the potential to affect the experience your customer receives. The Real Test of Customer Loyalty Want to know whether you have a satisfied customer or a loyal customer? Give the customer another choice. What happens when a competitor offers a slightly lower price? What happens when a new company enters the market? What happens when another provider offers a promotion? What happens when switching becomes easy? The satisfied customer may leave because there was never anything emotionally connecting that customer to your organization. The loyal customer sees the decision differently. Price still matters. Convenience still matters. Quality still matters. I’m certainly not suggesting that loyal customers will tolerate poor products, bad service or unreasonable pricing. But loyalty changes the equation. A loyal customer isn’t simply comparing products and prices. They’re also considering trust, confidence, familiarity and the experiences they’ve had with your organization. Now you’re no longer just another option. You’ve become their preferred choice. Customer Loyalty Is Also Tested When Something Goes Wrong There is another interesting aspect of loyalty that organizations sometimes overlook. The true strength of a customer relationship often becomes most visible when there is a problem. Mistakes happen. Orders get delayed. Systems fail. Products malfunction. Employees make errors. Customers understand that. What they remember is what happens next. Does someone take responsibility? Does the company make it difficult to resolve the problem, or easy? Does the employee hide behind policy, or look for a solution? Does the customer have to tell the same story to four different people? Does the organization merely fix the transaction, or restore the customer’s confidence? Handled properly, a problem can actually become an opportunity to demonstrate what your brand stands for. That’s where culture becomes visible. Stop Trying to Satisfy Customers I’m not suggesting customer satisfaction doesn’t matter. Of course it does. I’m suggesting it is the starting point, not the finish line. Organizations that want true customer loyalty have to ask a much bigger question than, “Was the customer satisfied?” They need to ask, “What did we do that would make this customer choose us again when they have other choices?” That’s a very different question. And it changes the way you think about customer service. It changes the way
Why the Right Customer Experience Speaker Can Transform Your Next Conference
Choosing a speaker for a corporate conference or business event is about much more than filling an hour on the agenda. The right keynote speaker should challenge the way people think, give them ideas they can actually use, and create an experience they are still talking about long after the conference is over. That is particularly true when the topic is customer experience. Today, almost every organization is looking for ways to improve customer service, strengthen customer loyalty, differentiate its brand, and create deeper relationships with the people it serves. Technology continues to change how customers interact with businesses, but one thing has not changed: people remember how an organization makes them feel. That is where a powerful customer experience speaker can make a difference. Customer Experience Is Bigger Than Customer Service Customer service and customer experience are often treated as interchangeable terms, but they are not the same thing. Customer service is what you do. Customer experience is how people feel about what you do. A company can have excellent processes, great technology, competitive pricing, quality products, and well trained employees and still create an average customer experience. Why? Because customers do not build emotional connections with processes. They build emotional connections with experiences. A customer experience keynote speaker should help an audience understand that distinction and, more importantly, show them how to put it into practice. The goal is not simply to encourage employees to be nicer to customers. It is to help people throughout the organization understand how every interaction, decision, process, and touchpoint contributes to the customer’s perception of the brand. The Best Customer Experience Speakers Go Beyond Motivation There is certainly a place for a great motivational speaker at a conference. People want to be inspired. They want energy. They want to laugh, think, and feel something. But motivation without application has a very short shelf life. The most effective customer experience speakers combine motivation with practical business strategy. They inspire an audience while giving people a different way to think about customers, culture, communication, leadership, and brand distinction. People should leave the keynote not only saying, “That was a great presentation,” but also asking, “What can I do differently when I get back to work?” That is where a keynote begins to create real value. Customer Experience Is Everyone’s Business One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is assuming customer experience belongs primarily to sales, marketing, or customer service. It doesn’t. Customers experience the entire organization. The person answering a phone call creates an experience. So does the salesperson, technician, billing department, operations team, website, mobile app, delivery process, manager, and executive team. Even employees who never speak directly with a customer can influence the ultimate customer experience through the decisions they make and the support they provide to those who do. That makes customer experience an ideal topic for a corporate conference because the message crosses departments, titles, and responsibilities. It creates a common language around one critical question: What experience are we creating for the people we serve? Technology Has Made the Human Experience More Important, Not Less AI, automation, self service platforms, mobile apps, chatbots, and other technologies have dramatically changed customer expectations. Customers increasingly expect speed, convenience, personalization, and immediate access to information. Businesses that ignore those expectations risk becoming irrelevant. But technology should not eliminate the human experience. It should improve it. The challenge for businesses is determining where technology makes the experience easier and where human interaction creates greater emotional value. A great customer experience keynote should help people understand that balance. Customers may appreciate the convenience of an automated transaction, but when something goes wrong, becomes complicated, or carries emotional importance, the quality of the human interaction can completely change their perception of the company. That is why the future of customer experience isn’t simply more technology. It is better technology combined with better human experiences. Your Conference Speaker Becomes Part of Your Brand Experience There is another factor companies sometimes overlook when choosing conference speakers. The speaker is part of the event experience. The audience doesn’t separate the keynote from the conference. They experience the venue, production, content, food, networking, speakers, entertainment, and organization of the event as one complete experience. That means selecting a corporate keynote speaker should involve more than reviewing a topic and watching a few minutes of video. Does the speaker understand business? Can the speaker connect with executives as effectively as frontline employees? Can the message be customized to your organization and industry? Will the audience be entertained while being challenged? Most importantly, will people remember the message after they return to work? The best business speakers do more than deliver information. They create an experience around the information. From a Great Keynote to Meaningful Business Change A memorable keynote can create an emotional spark. But the real opportunity begins when that spark becomes action. When people understand that customer experience isn’t a department or an initiative but rather the result of hundreds of decisions and interactions throughout the organization, they begin looking at their own roles differently. They start asking better questions. How does what I do affect the customer? Where are we creating unnecessary friction? Are we using technology because it improves the customer experience or simply because we can? Are our internal processes making it easier or harder for employees to serve customers? What are we doing that customers cannot easily get somewhere else? Those are the conversations that can turn a conference keynote into something much larger. Choosing the Right Customer Experience Speaker There are thousands of professional speakers available for corporate and business conferences. Some specialize in leadership. Others focus on motivation, sales, innovation, culture, branding, customer service, or customer experience. The right choice depends on what you want your audience to think, feel, and do differently after the event. If your goal is to strengthen customer loyalty, improve service, create greater brand distinction, build a more customer focused culture, and help employees understand the
How One Customer Experience Can Change the Way Someone Sees Your Brand
Most companies spend years trying to shape the way customers perceive their brand. They invest in advertising, marketing, websites, social media, messaging, technology and carefully crafted brand promises. And then, sometimes in a matter of minutes, a single customer experience changes everything. That is the extraordinary power of customer experience. A customer can walk into an interaction believing your company is average and walk away believing it is exceptional. They can begin the relationship focused primarily on price and leave convinced that doing business with anyone else would be a mistake. They can go from being a customer to becoming an advocate, sometimes because of one experience they simply did not expect. That transformation rarely happens because a company followed its customer service procedures perfectly. It happens because someone created an experience that made the customer feel something. Customer Service Is a Process. Customer Experience Is an Emotion. There is an important distinction between customer service and customer experience. Customer service is what you do. Customer experience is how what you do makes someone feel. A company can have excellent systems, efficient processes, well trained employees and impressive technology and still be completely forgettable. The transaction may have gone perfectly, but nothing happened that gave the customer a reason to feel differently about the brand. That is the problem with simply trying to provide “good service.” Good service is expected. The companies that create genuine customer loyalty understand that the goal is not simply to complete a transaction successfully. The goal is to create an experience that changes the customer’s perception of the organization. When that happens, something far more powerful than customer satisfaction begins to develop. An emotional connection is created. Perception Can Change Almost Instantly We tend to think brand perception develops slowly. Sometimes it does. But a remarkable customer experience can change someone’s perception of a company almost instantly. Think about your own experiences as a customer. Perhaps an employee solved a problem you were convinced would become a nightmare. Maybe someone remembered something about you from a previous conversation. Perhaps a company took responsibility for a mistake without excuses and went far beyond what you expected to make it right. Maybe someone simply recognized what you needed before you ever had to ask. The actual action may have been relatively small. The emotional impact was not. Suddenly, you no longer see that organization as simply another bank, hotel, retailer, manufacturer, healthcare provider, insurance company or service business. You see people who understand you. And once that perception changes, the relationship changes with it. Unique Experiences Create Emotional Memories There is a tremendous difference between a customer remembering what happened and remembering how an experience made them feel. Transactions are easily forgotten. Emotions are not. When an organization creates a unique, unexpected and highly personal experience, the customer attaches an emotion to that interaction. That emotional memory becomes associated with the brand. This is where genuine loyalty begins. Not points. Not discounts. Not loyalty programs. Those things may influence purchasing behavior, but purchasing behavior and emotional loyalty are not the same thing. A truly loyal customer has developed an attachment to the brand. They trust it. They identify with it. They are willing to recommend it. In many cases, they are willing to pay more for it because the relationship has become more important than the transaction. Most importantly, they want to come back. The Most Powerful Experiences Often Aren’t Expensive One of the misconceptions I encounter when speaking with organizations about customer experience is the belief that creating extraordinary experiences requires spending extraordinary amounts of money. It usually doesn’t. Some of the most powerful customer experiences cost almost nothing. They require awareness. They require empathy. They require listening. They require people who have the freedom and desire to recognize an opportunity and act on it. The magic is often found in doing something the customer did not expect. Remembering a name. Recognizing an important occasion. Solving a problem before it becomes a problem. Following up when there was no requirement to follow up. Taking ownership rather than passing responsibility to another department. Personalizing an interaction instead of treating the customer like another transaction. None of those things necessarily requires a large budget. They require a culture that understands the difference between processing customers and connecting with people. One of a Kind Is Almost Impossible to Compare There is another powerful business advantage to creating unique customer experiences. They make comparison difficult. If your customer sees your product or service as essentially the same as everyone else’s, the conversation eventually moves toward price. If three companies appear to offer roughly the same thing, price becomes an easy way to make the decision. But what happens when the experience surrounding your product or service is unlike anything your competitors provide? The comparison begins to disappear. Your product may be copied. Your pricing can be matched. Your technology can eventually be duplicated. Your features can be replicated. But the emotional experience created by your people, your culture and the way you make customers feel is extraordinarily difficult to copy. That is real brand distinction. Technology Makes Human Connection Even More Valuable Technology and artificial intelligence are making businesses faster, more efficient and more convenient. Used correctly, these tools can dramatically improve the customer experience. But there is an interesting consequence. As more routine interactions become automated, genuine human connection becomes more noticeable. Customers appreciate convenience. They want speed. They want technology to eliminate unnecessary friction. But there are also moments when people want empathy, judgment, reassurance and human understanding. The organizations that succeed will not be the ones that choose between technology and human interaction. They will understand when each creates the greatest value. Use technology to make the experience easier. Use people to make the experience meaningful. That combination can be incredibly powerful. Customer Experience Begins With Culture This is why I believe conversations about customer experience eventually become conversations about organizational culture. You cannot consistently create
How to Elevate a Business Conference from an Event to an Experience
A successful business conference does more than bring people together in the same building. It creates energy, encourages meaningful conversations, introduces new ideas and gives attendees something valuable to take back to their organizations. Unfortunately, many conferences are planned as a collection of separate components. The venue is booked, an event management company is hired, audiovisual equipment is ordered and speakers are selected. Each box is checked, but no one steps back to ask the most important question: What will this experience feel like for the people attending? Successful conference planning requires every vendor, deadline and attendee touchpoint to remain aligned. Cvent’s conference planning guide provides a helpful overview of the major planning stages. The strongest conferences are not simply well organized. They are intentionally designed. Every element works together to create a cohesive experience that feels professional, engaging and worth the investment of time and money. That requires the right event management company, the right audiovisual partner, the right venue and, of course, the best possible keynote speaker. Start with the Right Event Management Company A great event management company does much more than manage registrations, schedules and logistics. It becomes the operational backbone of the conference. The best event professionals anticipate problems before they become problems. They understand how traffic should move through the venue, how much transition time is required between sessions and where confusion or frustration may occur. They coordinate vendors, manage last minute changes and keep the event moving without drawing attention to everything happening behind the scenes. When event management is exceptional, attendees rarely notice it. They simply feel that the conference is organized, professional and easy to navigate. When it is not exceptional, they notice everything. Long registration lines, unclear signage, delayed sessions, poor communication and awkward transitions may seem like isolated inconveniences, but collectively they shape the attendee’s perception of the entire conference. Every one of those moments communicates something about the organization hosting the event. The right event management company understands that it is not simply managing logistics. It is helping manage the reputation of the organization. Never Underestimate the Importance of the AV Company Audiovisual production is often treated as a technical requirement. In reality, it is one of the most important parts of the attendee experience. The audience should never have to struggle to hear a speaker, read a presentation or follow what is happening onstage. Microphones should work. Lighting should direct attention and create the right atmosphere. Screens should be large enough and positioned correctly. Videos should play without hesitation, distraction or technical drama. Excellent AV professionals also understand that every speaker and every presentation is different. Some keynote speakers move throughout the room. Others use music, video, audience interaction or multiple presentation formats. A capable production team learns what each presenter needs and prepares for it in advance. The AV company should communicate directly with the event management team, venue staff and speakers. Equipment should be tested, backup plans should be established and rehearsals should happen before the audience enters the room. Great production does not overpower the message. It strengthens it. People may not leave the conference talking about the perfect sound mix or the quality of the stage lighting, but those elements influence how connected, comfortable and engaged they feel throughout the event. Choose a Venue That Supports the Purpose of the Conference The perfect venue is not necessarily the largest, newest or most expensive option. It is the venue that best supports the purpose, audience and personality of the event. Location matters, but so do accessibility, room configuration, lighting, acoustics, temperature, seating, food service and the proximity of meeting spaces. A beautiful venue can quickly become frustrating if attendees must walk long distances between sessions, cannot find the breakout rooms or spend the day sitting in uncomfortable chairs. The main meeting room deserves particular attention. A room that is too large can drain energy from the audience. A room that is too small can feel crowded and uncomfortable. Long, narrow rooms can disconnect the people in the back, while poorly placed screens and columns can obstruct sightlines. Room setup also affects participation. Theater seating may work well for a keynote, while training sessions and interactive programs may require tables, writing space and easier conversation among attendees. The venue should not simply contain the conference. It should contribute to the experience the conference is trying to create. Select a Keynote Speaker Who Can Carry the Purpose of the Event A keynote speaker should never be chosen simply to fill an hour on the agenda. The right keynote speaker gives the conference direction, energy and emotional impact. That person can establish the central theme, challenge the audience’s thinking and connect the purpose of the event to the real world attendees return to when the conference is over. A recognizable name may help attract attention, but name recognition alone does not guarantee relevance or impact. The best keynote speaker is the person who understands the audience, supports the objectives of the organization and delivers a message people can actually use. The speaker should be able to answer several important questions: What is this organization trying to accomplish? What challenges are these attendees facing? What does the audience need to think, feel or do differently? How can the keynote reinforce the larger purpose of the conference? A great speaker does not simply arrive, deliver a polished presentation and leave. The speaker collaborates with the client, studies the audience and customizes the message so it feels relevant to the people in the room. The difference is significant. A generic presentation may be entertaining, but a carefully aligned keynote becomes part of the conference’s strategic value. If you are planning a conference and looking for a keynote speaker who will understand your audience, reinforce your objectives and create lasting impact, contact Scott Deming to discuss your event. The Best Conferences Create One Connected Experience These four elements should never operate independently. The event management company should understand the speaker’s
Passion and Purpose Aren’t Posters: They’re the Foundation of Customer Loyalty
Walk into almost any corporate headquarters and you’ll find them somewhere: mission statements, vision statements and core values, with words like integrity, excellence, teamwork, innovation and customer focus displayed prominently on walls, websites and employee handbooks. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those words, but words don’t create culture. Behavior does. A company can say it cares about its customers, but if its employees feel ignored, micromanaged, undervalued or powerless, customers will eventually feel it too. Culture has a way of escaping the building. I have spent decades working with organizations on customer service, customer experience, leadership and culture, and I believe one principle sits underneath all of them: You cannot consistently create an exceptional external customer experience without first creating an exceptional internal customer experience. Your employees don’t simply deliver your customer experience. In the eyes of the customer, they are your customer experience. Culture Is Where Customer Experience Really Begins Companies spend enormous amounts of money trying to improve customer loyalty through technology, loyalty programs, marketing campaigns, CRM systems, surveys and sophisticated analytics. Those things can certainly help, but customers rarely become loyal because of a system. They become loyal because of how an organization consistently makes them feel, and those experiences are created primarily by people. This is why some of the companies best known for extraordinary customer experiences are also known for extraordinary cultures. It isn’t a coincidence. It is cause and effect. Consider Wegmans. It has built an almost fanatical following in an industry where customers have countless alternatives and where many of the products being sold are essentially commodities. Yet Wegmans has consistently been recognized as one of America’s best places to work. In 2026, the company was ranked number five on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list, marking its 29th year on the list. Wegmans openly describes itself as an employee first company. Its values include caring about the well being and success of every person, respecting and listening to people, maintaining high standards and empowering employees to make decisions that benefit customers and the company. That last one is critical: empowerment. If I tell employees they are responsible for creating a great customer experience but require managerial approval every time they want to solve a customer’s problem, I haven’t empowered them. I’ve simply given them responsibility without authority. Wegmans understands the difference, and customers feel it. Great Place to Work reports that 91 percent of Wegmans employees say it is a great place to work, compared with 57 percent at a typical U.S. company. Even more telling, 95 percent of employees surveyed said their customers would rate the service they deliver as excellent. Employee experience becomes customer experience. SAS Proves This Isn’t Just a Retail Strategy Consider a completely different company in a completely different industry. SAS, the analytics and software company headquartered in Cary, North Carolina, became famous not only for its technology but also for the way it treats its employees. For years, SAS has invested heavily in creating an environment where employees can do meaningful work while feeling supported personally and professionally. The company has described its philosophy as creating an exceptional employee experience that includes meaningful work, a strong working environment and benefits designed around what matters to employees. But here’s where it gets interesting. SAS itself has explicitly connected its workplace culture with customer experience, explaining that creating a company employees want to work for helps create a company customers want to work with. Happy, engaged employees are more likely to listen to customers, innovate for them, solve their problems and develop lasting relationships. That isn’t an employee perk strategy. It’s a business strategy. When talented employees stay, customers develop relationships with people who understand their businesses. Knowledge stays inside the organization, trust grows and employees become more invested in solving customer problems because they are more invested in the organization itself. The result is something every company says it wants: loyalty. Nordstrom Built a Reputation by Trusting Its People For decades, Nordstrom has been almost synonymous with extraordinary customer service. There are countless stories about employees going beyond expectations for customers, but those stories didn’t happen because somebody wrote a detailed customer service procedure covering every possible situation. Nordstrom built its culture around trust and judgment. The company describes its leadership structure as an inverted pyramid, where leaders exist to support the people serving customers rather than employees existing simply to serve management. Nordstrom also states that employees are trusted to use good judgment and are given the freedom to make decisions that help take care of customers. When employees understand the purpose of the organization and know leadership trusts them, they stop asking, “Am I allowed to do this?” and start asking, “What is the right thing to do for this customer?” That difference can completely transform the customer experience. Passion Cannot Be Mandated This is where many organizations get culture wrong. You cannot tell people to be passionate or put BE PASSIONATE! on a PowerPoint slide at the annual meeting and expect everyone to suddenly become emotionally invested in the organization. Passion is the result of something deeper. People become passionate when they believe their work matters, when they understand how what they do contributes to something larger than their individual task, when they feel respected, when their ideas matter, when leadership trusts them and when they have the ability to make a difference. That’s purpose, and purpose is much more powerful than a mission statement. A person stocking produce at Wegmans isn’t simply putting apples on a shelf if that person understands the larger purpose. A Nordstrom employee isn’t simply selling clothing if the goal is to make someone feel confident walking into an important meeting. A SAS employee isn’t simply writing software if that technology is helping a customer solve an important business problem. The job hasn’t changed. The meaning attached to the job has, and when meaning changes, behavior changes. Your Customers Can Feel Your Culture
Silence Does Not Equal Satisfaction: What Your Customers Aren’t Telling You
I spend a lot of time in hotels, and after nearly twenty five years of traveling around the world speaking to organizations about customer experience, leadership and culture, I’ve stayed in everything from small independent hotels to some of the biggest and most recognizable hotel brands in the world. After a while, you realize something interesting: most hotel stays aren’t bad. They’re just completely forgettable. This week, however, I stayed at an upper level hotel belonging to a major national chain. My client was hosting a large event at the property and had booked a significant block of rooms for its customers, many of whom would be in my audience. Based on the brand and the property, I had every reason to expect a very good experience. It wasn’t. There was no hot water, which is obviously a pretty significant problem for a hotel. Taking a cold shower might be invigorating when I’m backpacking in the mountains, but it’s considerably less charming when you’re staying at an upscale hotel. But the lack of hot water wasn’t really what interested me. It was everything surrounding it. The people at the front desk weren’t rude, incompetent or particularly bad at anything. They were simply average. The restaurant wasn’t terrible, the food wasn’t inedible and the service wasn’t offensive. It, too, was average. And that’s what struck me. Nothing about the experience made me feel as though anyone was particularly concerned about what the experience felt like from my side of the counter. Eventually, the hotel put points into my loyalty account as compensation for the inconvenience, but that didn’t happen proactively. It happened only after I called three times. And there’s another important part of this story: I never complained to my client. Why would I? They had brought me in to speak at their event, I value that relationship, appreciated the opportunity and certainly wasn’t going to burden them with a complaint about my hotel room. But think about that for a moment. If I didn’t have hot water, there’s a pretty good chance I wasn’t the only one. My client had booked a large block of rooms for its customers, many of whom were attending the same event where I was speaking. How many of them experienced the same problem? I don’t know. And here’s the more important question: How many of them never told my client? That’s where this becomes much bigger than a story about a hotel. Organizations make a dangerous assumption when they equate the absence of complaints with the presence of satisfaction. Silence does not equal satisfaction. Customers frequently don’t complain. They simply remember. Sometimes they leave, sometimes they don’t return, sometimes they tell someone else, and sometimes, as I did, they simply decide there is no reason to involve another party in the problem. This is where organizations frequently misunderstand customer experience. The front desk didn’t cause the hot water problem, the restaurant didn’t cause it and the server didn’t cause it. Someone in engineering or maintenance was probably responsible for fixing it. But here’s the problem: I don’t experience departments. I experience the hotel. Your customers don’t separate your organization into an organizational chart either. They don’t say, “Sales was excellent, but fulfillment dropped the ball,” or “The customer service representative was pleasant, but accounting created the problem,” or “The salesperson did everything right, but installation was disappointing.” They simply remember how it felt to do business with you, and every interaction becomes part of that experience. But in this particular case, there’s another layer. The hotel wasn’t simply serving me. It was also serving my client. My client chose that property, brought its customers there and trusted the hotel with a piece of the experience it was creating for those customers. That’s something every business should think about. Sometimes you’re not simply delivering an experience for your customer. You’re helping your customer deliver an experience to their customer. That raises the stakes considerably. That’s why exceptional customer experience cannot simply be the responsibility of the customer service department. It has to be part of the culture, and when something goes wrong, that’s when the culture becomes visible. Does someone take ownership, show genuine concern, communicate, attempt to make the situation better and make you feel as though your inconvenience actually matters? Because problems happen. Hot water systems fail, flights get delayed, products arrive late, technology crashes, orders get screwed up and people make mistakes. Customers understand that. What they remember is what you did next. Ironically, the hot water problem at this hotel could have created an opportunity for someone to make the experience memorable in a positive way. A sincere apology, genuine concern, proactive communication or someone taking responsibility for helping me rather than simply acknowledging the problem would have changed the experience. None of those things cost much, but they communicate something incredibly valuable: You matter to us. Instead, the entire experience simply became another transaction, and that’s dangerous for any brand because your greatest competitor isn’t always the company down the street offering a better product or a lower price. Sometimes your greatest competitor is indifference. When the experience is average, customers have no emotional reason to return. There is no story to tell, no loyalty is created and no connection exists. You’re simply another option. I’ve said for years that customer service and customer experience are not the same thing. Customer service is something you do. Customer experience is how people feel about what you did. And that experience isn’t created by one department, one employee or one interaction. It’s the cumulative effect of everything. So perhaps there are three questions every organization should be asking: What are our customers experiencing? What aren’t they telling us? And when something goes wrong, what do we do next? Because whether they complain or not, they’re going to remember how you made them feel.
What Meeting Planners and Speakers Bureaus Should Look for in a Customer Service Speaker
When a meeting planner, association executive or speakers bureau begins searching for a customer service speaker, the assignment often sounds fairly straightforward. “We need someone to speak about customer service.” But after nearly thirty years of speaking, training and consulting on customer service and customer experience, I’ve learned that what most organizations actually need goes much deeper than service techniques, communication skills or another reminder to smile, listen carefully and be nice to the customer. Those things matter. But they are not what creates distinction. When I talk with meeting planners and speakers bureaus, one of the first distinctions I make is this: Customer service is the process. Customer experience is the emotion. And understanding the difference can completely change what an organization should look for when hiring a customer service speaker. Customer Service Is What You Do. Customer Experience Is How They Feel. Customer service includes the actions and processes involved in serving someone. How quickly did you respond? Was the employee knowledgeable? Was the problem resolved? Was the transaction easy? Did everyone follow the appropriate procedures? Those are all important, and organizations absolutely need processes and standards. But customers rarely become loyal because a company followed its process correctly. They become loyal because of how the interaction made them feel. Did I feel valued? Did I feel heard? Did I feel like you cared about me or simply wanted to complete the transaction? Did I trust you? Did you make my life easier? Did you make me feel confident that I chose the right company? That is customer experience. It is also why I tell meeting planners that if they are looking for someone who will simply teach their audience how to deliver better customer service, they may be setting the bar too low. The real opportunity is to change the way people think about the customer altogether. What Are Meeting Planners Really Trying to Accomplish? In my experience, planners rarely contact me because everything is perfect and they simply need someone entertaining to fill an hour on the agenda. There is usually a business reason behind the request. Perhaps customer expectations have changed. Competition has increased. Employees are struggling with consistency. Leadership wants to build a more customer centric culture. The organization is losing customers it should be keeping. Salespeople are competing too heavily on price. Different departments are creating very different experiences. Or leadership simply recognizes that the experience surrounding its product has become as important as the product itself. That is the conversation I want to have with a planner before I ever walk onto the stage. I don’t want to know only how many people will be in the room, how long I have to speak and what time I go on. I want to know why we’re doing this. What is happening in the organization? What are customers saying? Where are the inconsistencies? What does leadership want people doing differently after the conference? What challenges are employees facing? What does the competitive environment look like? Those answers determine the presentation. Because the best customer service keynote shouldn’t simply be about customer service. It should be about their customers, their employees, their challenges and their business. A Customer Service Speaker Should Connect Service to Business Results One of the biggest mistakes organizations can make is treating customer service as a soft skill that sits somewhere outside the “real” business. It isn’t. Customer service and customer experience influence retention, referrals, reputation, employee engagement, pricing power and ultimately revenue. If customers see very little difference between you and your competitors, price becomes increasingly important. If they believe the experience you provide is meaningfully different, the conversation begins to change. Now you’re creating value. That is why I spend so much time talking about emotional connection. Products can be copied. Features can be copied. Pricing can be matched. Technology eventually becomes available to everyone. But the relationship an organization creates with its customers is much more difficult to duplicate. The employee who remembers something important about a customer, anticipates a need, solves a problem without making the customer fight through layers of bureaucracy or simply demonstrates genuine concern can create more brand loyalty in five minutes than an advertising campaign can create in months. That isn’t a customer service tactic. That’s an experience. The Customer Experience Begins Inside the Organization There is another question I believe planners and speakers bureaus should ask when evaluating a customer service speaker: Does this person understand culture? Because you cannot consistently create an exceptional external customer experience without first creating the right internal experience. Employees who don’t feel respected, trusted, supported or connected to a meaningful purpose aren’t suddenly going to become passionate brand ambassadors because somebody gave an entertaining keynote about customer service. Research from Gallup on employee experience reinforces the importance of creating a workplace environment that supports engagement and performance. The connection between the employee experience and the customer experience is one of the reasons I believe customer service can never be treated as simply a frontline responsibility. Leadership matters. Culture matters. Internal customer service matters. The way people treat one another inside an organization eventually finds its way to the customer. That means a strong customer service speaker should be able to connect the dots between leadership, employee experience, culture, customer service and customer loyalty rather than treating them as unrelated topics. They aren’t unrelated. They are all part of the same experience. Look for Someone Who Can Customize the Message, Not Just the Opening Slide I’ve seen the word “customized” used pretty loosely in the speaking business. Changing the logo on the first PowerPoint slide is not customization. Mentioning the company name several times isn’t customization either. A meaningful customer service keynote should reflect the language, challenges, customers and realities of the organization sitting in the room. That requires research. Before a major presentation, I spend time talking with leadership and often other people inside the organization. I want to understand what is happening from
Consistency: The Competitive Advantage Your Competitors Can’t Copy
Every organization wants to stand out. They invest in new technology, launch marketing campaigns, redesign logos, refresh websites, and search endlessly for the next big idea that will separate them from the competition. Those things have their place. But after nearly four decades of working with organizations around the world, I’ve become convinced that one of the greatest competitive advantages isn’t new at all. It’s consistency. I was speaking with an executive after one of my keynote presentations when he asked, “If you could fix just one thing inside our organization, what would it be?” Without hesitation, I answered, “Consistency.” He looked surprised. I don’t think that was the answer he expected. He probably thought I’d say leadership, communication, innovation, or customer service. The truth is, consistency touches every one of those. Without it, none of them reach their full potential. The companies we admire most aren’t necessarily the ones that amaze us once. They’re the ones we trust because they deliver, over and over again. That’s what builds a brand. Customers Don’t Remember Your Best Day Most organizations evaluate themselves by their highlights. They celebrate the employee who went above and beyond. They talk about the glowing online review. They remember the standing ovation after a major presentation or the customer who wrote a heartfelt thank you. Those moments matter. But customers don’t judge your company by your best day. They judge you by your average day. When every interaction feels different, customers begin to wonder what they’ll experience next. One employee is warm and engaging. Another barely acknowledges them. One department communicates beautifully while another leaves them waiting for answers. One location exceeds expectations while another simply gets by. Those inconsistencies slowly chip away at trust. Customers don’t expect perfection. They expect reliability. Trust Is Built Through Predictability One of the greatest compliments a customer can give your organization is this: “I always know what to expect.” Some companies hear that and think it sounds boring. I think it sounds priceless. Predictability creates confidence. Confidence creates trust. Trust creates loyalty. That’s why some organizations keep customers for decades while others struggle to keep them for a year. Consistency isn’t about delivering an unforgettable experience every once in a while. It’s about creating confidence every single time. Consistency Doesn’t Mean Sameness This is where many organizations get it wrong. Consistency does not mean every employee sounds the same, follows a script, or behaves like a robot. Customers don’t want scripted interactions. They want authentic ones. Your people should have different personalities. They should bring their own style, humor, empathy, and strengths to every conversation. What should remain consistent is the experience. Every customer should feel respected. Every customer should feel valued. Every customer should feel that your organization genuinely cares about helping them succeed. That’s culture. Culture isn’t built by telling employees exactly what to say. Culture is built by helping them understand why what they do matters. Marketing Makes Promises. Your Culture Keeps Them. Marketing is important. In fact, I spent twenty years running an advertising agency before beginning my speaking career. I learned something that completely changed the way I think about business. Marketing creates expectations. Your people either fulfill them or destroy them. You can spend millions telling customers you’re different, but if the experience varies depending on who answers the phone, who installs the product, who handles the complaint, or who sends the invoice, your brand becomes inconsistent. Customers don’t remember your advertising. They remember how you made them feel. That’s why organizations that create remarkable customer experiences invest just as much in their people as they do in their marketing. According to Gallup, organizations with highly engaged employees consistently outperform their peers in customer loyalty, profitability, and productivity. Employee engagement isn’t just an HR initiative. It’s one of the strongest predictors of the customer experience your organization delivers. Gallup Workplace Research Leadership Sets the Standard Consistency doesn’t happen because someone wrote a policy manual. It happens because leaders consistently model the behaviors they expect from everyone else. Employees pay far more attention to what leaders tolerate than what they say. If leaders ignore poor communication, inconsistent service, or toxic behavior, those things eventually become part of the culture. On the other hand, when leaders consistently reinforce the organization’s values, recognize excellence, coach improvement, and genuinely care about their people, consistency becomes part of the organization’s identity. Culture is nothing more than repeated behavior over time. Ask Yourself One Question Imagine I visited your company ten different times. I spoke with ten different employees. I visited different departments. I called your office. I sent an email. I walked into your lobby. Would I leave believing I’d interacted with one organization? Or ten different ones? That answer tells you almost everything you need to know about your culture. Consistency Is the Ultimate Brand Builder Competitors can copy your products. They can lower their prices. They can imitate your services. What they can’t easily duplicate is an organization where every employee shares the same commitment to serving customers, supporting one another, and delivering on the promises the company makes. That’s what creates distinction. That’s what builds loyalty. And that’s what turns customers into advocates. Consistency isn’t glamorous. It rarely makes headlines. But it quietly builds reputations that last for decades. In today’s marketplace, where customers have more choices than ever before, consistency may be the most underrated competitive advantage your organization possesses. The question isn’t whether you’re capable of delivering an exceptional experience. The question is whether you can deliver it tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that. Because remarkable brands aren’t built on occasional excellence. They’re built on consistent excellence. If your organization is looking to create a culture where exceptional service becomes the standard rather than the exception, learn more about my work as a customer service keynote speaker, explore my insights on customer experience, or learn more about Scott Deming and the philosophy that has helped organizations around the world
Why Great Customer Experiences Begin with Great Employee Experiences
“Clients don’t come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they’ll take care of the clients.”Richard Branson Walk into almost any organization and you’ll find some version of the phrase, “The customer comes first.” It’s printed on posters, included in mission statements, and repeated often enough that most people accept it without question. The intention is certainly admirable because every successful business should be committed to serving its customers well. However, if we stop there, we’ve missed something fundamental. Customers don’t experience your mission statement. They experience your people, and the way those people treat customers is almost always a direct reflection of the way the organization treats them. Throughout my career as a Customer Experience Speaker, I’ve worked with organizations in manufacturing, healthcare, retail, financial services, agriculture, technology, construction, and dozens of other industries. While their products, services, and markets may be dramatically different, the organizations that consistently deliver remarkable customer experiences all have one thing in common. They invest as much energy in creating an exceptional employee experience as they do in creating an exceptional customer experience. They understand that loyal customers are built by loyal employees, and that culture always works its way outward. Your Employees Are Your Brand Companies spend enormous amounts of money trying to shape how customers perceive their brand. They invest in advertising, marketing, websites, social media, technology, artificial intelligence, and customer relationship management systems, all in an effort to stand apart from the competition. While each of those investments has value, none of them can compensate for an employee who feels disconnected, unappreciated, or uninspired. Your brand is not your logo. It isn’t your advertising campaign, your slogan, or your website. Your brand is the feeling customers walk away with after interacting with your organization, and that feeling is created almost entirely by the people representing your company every day. When employees genuinely enjoy where they work, believe in the organization’s purpose, and know they are trusted to make decisions, customers notice. Conversations become more authentic, problems are solved more creatively, and service becomes personal rather than procedural. Customers may never know why they enjoy doing business with your company more than your competitors, but they will certainly remember how your people made them feel. That is why creating an exceptional customer experience always begins with creating an exceptional workplace. Customer Service Is a Reflection of Leadership Many executives believe they have a customer service problem when, in reality, they have a leadership problem. Customer service is not a department. It is not a training program that employees attend once a year, nor is it a script they memorize before answering the telephone. Customer service is a reflection of culture, and culture is created by leadership. Employees pay far less attention to what leaders say than they do to what leaders consistently do. They notice whether leaders listen. They notice whether promises are kept. They notice whether respect flows in every direction or only from the top down. They notice whether initiative is rewarded or criticized, whether mistakes become learning opportunities or occasions for blame, and whether people are treated as valuable contributors or simply another expense on the balance sheet. Those daily observations shape attitudes, and attitudes shape customer experiences. Organizations that want to create extraordinary service must first create an environment where employees feel respected, trusted, and empowered. That philosophy is at the heart of my work as a Customer Service Keynote Speaker, because sustainable customer service excellence is never achieved by focusing only on customers. It begins by creating a culture where employees naturally want to deliver their very best. Employee Engagement Is About Purpose, Not Perks Many organizations proudly announce new employee engagement initiatives that include free lunches, game rooms, casual Fridays, or company outings. While those perks are certainly appreciated, they rarely create genuine commitment. People don’t become passionate about their work because they received a company coffee mug or attended a pizza party. They become passionate when they understand that what they do matters. Every employee wants to know that their contribution has value. They want leaders who communicate honestly, recognize meaningful accomplishments, provide opportunities for growth, and trust them to make good decisions. More than anything else, they want to believe they are contributing to something worthwhile. Purpose creates pride. Pride creates ownership. Ownership creates customer experiences that no competitor can easily duplicate. Research from Gallup consistently demonstrates that organizations with highly engaged employees experience stronger customer loyalty, greater profitability, higher productivity, and significantly lower turnover. Those findings shouldn’t surprise anyone. Employees who feel connected to their organization naturally invest more of themselves in every customer interaction. Technology can automate transactions. It cannot automate genuine care. Loyal Employees Create Loyal Customers Customer loyalty is rarely earned through one spectacular interaction. Instead, it develops through hundreds of consistently positive experiences that reassure customers they made the right decision. It’s the employee who remembers a customer’s name long after the initial sale. It’s the technician who patiently explains a repair instead of rushing to the next appointment. It’s the customer service representative who listens first instead of immediately reading from a script. It’s the manager who empowers an employee to solve a problem without requiring multiple approvals. These moments rarely appear in an operations manual, yet they become the stories customers tell their friends and colleagues. Over time, customers stop comparing your prices because they trust your people. They become more forgiving when occasional mistakes occur because the relationship has been built on consistency, integrity, and genuine concern rather than transactions alone. That is when satisfaction evolves into loyalty. Loyal customers don’t simply return. They recommend. They advocate. They defend your brand. Those relationships become one of the few competitive advantages that cannot be copied. A Customer Centric Culture Begins on the Inside Organizations often describe themselves as customer centric because they conduct customer surveys, measure Net Promoter Scores, or track online reviews. Those are valuable measurements, but they are outcomes rather